The Coming Together

Chapter 11

Dénouement

Our comments at the end of the last chapter raise the vastness of the canvas on which we have chosen to paint. To return to us and our place in an emergent sentient Gaia, a few more speculative points can be made about the process by which Gaia as a sentient entity may come to be. Because these ideas are in “our” mind, we cannot but put them out there.

We have argued that we are on the cusp of great change on our planet. We should be in no doubt that the outcome of this is by no means certain. The very conceiver of Gaia, James Lovelock, has suggested that the outcome is probably dire.

Evolutionary processes are not deterministic, and so there is no predictive guarantee of what the outcome of what we have described will be.

We have already chosen to argue that the forms that emerge from the evolutionary acceleration of positive feedback are hugely diverse. This is to be expected. The starting points are very different and things unfold at varying speeds. Positive feedback turns such small variations into huge differences in final form.

This is true, but it is also true that success breeds success. A successful form in a new environment is likely to be replicated at an impressively fast rate. In the hunter-gatherer societies of early man, this form was probably tribes based on kinship, in feudal society it was the growth of a bureaucratised state or even empire, and under capitalism it has been the democratic nation states inter-penetrating each other, largely by trade but also by war.

Each of these forms were replicated time and again in their own era with huge local variations, depending on when and where positive feedback occurred. Nature builds from what exists. It does not destroy. All of the above forms exist to this day, scattered between and within the bounds of the nation states that currently dominate the world. We can still find hunter-gatherer societies, feudal societies, and so on. No doubt the democratic nation state will survive into the New Age.

However, the biological analogy can perhaps provide some useful conjectural fruit. It has been very difficult for biologists and others to give us a proper explanation of two processes in nature. We believe a version of each of these may be imminent in the context we now find ourselves.

Most living things initially grow by cell division. This produces 2 then 4 then 8 then 16 then 32, and so on, identical versions of the initial cell/egg. However, in higher organisms differentiation occurs at some point. How do millions of identical human cells stop dividing as such, and start dividing as hand leg, arm, heart and brain cells etc.?

This process begins to occur after what biologists call gastrolation. This is a process by which what had been rapidly replicating cells reorganise themselves in relationship to each other, and begin instead to divide and grow as the differentiated cell types that form our digestive, cardiovascular, skeletal and nervous systems.

We suggest that replication within the coordinated ambit of one living thing has an upper limit to size. It becomes impossible for the coordinating signals to pass rapidly enough from cells that are ever further from each other in space. To ensure their coordinated at-oneness, they need to find a new way to achieve this, if they are to remain one entity.

At this point, we speculate that it becomes necessary, for those parts of cell activity that need to be coordinated as one, to come together in one place to assume that role for the developing entity of which each forms a part.

We conjecture that we are probably at a similar point in the development of Gaia’s brain. The replication that has occurred so far is into families, communities, villages, towns, cities and states, nearly all defined by their geo-political context. The Internet allows us to interpenetrate all of these and form relationships based as much on function as on kinship, social trust or patriotism.

The speed at which we can now communicate globally does not necessarily mean that those sharing a common functionality must come together in one place.

However, there is some evidence that there is a tendency for this to be so, as Silicon Valley illustrates.

Our experience with technology so far suggests that, while cultural melting pots seem to be very creative places, this is not universally the case. In any case, the Internet makes them unnecessary. If universities are a model for creative production, we note that some of the most successful and ancient ones once organised themselves socially on a different basis from that on which they now organise themselves functionally.

Before the Internet, creative activity could only be conducted by the proximity of scholars to each other. This may no longer be necessary. People can now choose to live wherever they find life most conducive to their being, yet carry on a functional working relationship in their area of expertise at a virtual place created on the Internet for that very purpose. Such places already exist.

The other process in biology that we think merits consideration, at this point in human evolution, is that people have found it hard to understand the specifics of how symbiosis between separate organisms evolved into a separation of functions within one organism that encapsulates the processes provided by the symbiosis.

Again, it could be that we are reaching that point in the evolution of Gaia. The loose connectivity between the geosphere, protosphere, biosphere and humanity needs to become more strongly coupled for the sake of Gaia’s survival, and our own. In fact, many feel, including Lovelock, that they must either come together, or else this evolutionary experiment will fail, for the time being. I hope not, but we do not live in a deterministic world where guarantees to the contrary hold good. However, given the billions of years it has taken to reach this point, it seems unlikely that the Way would bring such an investment to an abrupt end.

We have the physical, intellectual, and spiritual tools to tackle the problems that face us and our planet. It would be difficult to wipe us out entirely and, for that matter, to wipe out all our accumulated knowledge. As a result of the Internet, our knowledge is now so widely distributed around the planet that, for all this knowledge to be lost, the planet itself would have to be destroyed in its entirety.
However, we could precipitate geo-physical or meteorological activity that might set the whole experiment back many years.

Our brains operate with around 10 million neurons, and at some time in the coming century mankind will reach this number. However, many believe we cannot sustain such numbers, given our current lifestyles. We are altering our lifestyles, and it should be remembered that the products of the new age are helping us to consume less and less as we maintain the same level of output.

The worst kind of event that we have as yet imagined, under the heading of global warming, is unlikely to be dire enough to reduce us hugely, but it would cause a hiccup in the working-out of the plan, if a population of 10 million is necessary for sentience.

Our tale contains much hope, and much of that comes from my wish to see the cup as half-full, not half-empty. Perception always has a major part to play in life. Without judgement, with forgiveness and “letting go and letting God”, life is a truly joyous thing. This is especially so if one sees that the freedom implied can be applied in any manner one sees fit in a universe so full of things to do, and of things that we need. We only have to perceive how to access them and they can be ours.

It is possible to see the world and the Way as depressing things, full of darkness and negativity. It is our belief that such darkness is entirely dependent on the perspective we take. We choose to let in the light, and the sun shines forth.

Our recipe from all this is neither indolent non-striving or competitive strife. Living off nature’s bounty as discovered by others, and fatalistically accepting whatever befalls us in our allotted role, is not on the Way. Nor is competitively pushing our fellows aside to obtain all we can for ourselves.

To act without acting, by finding the ways in which water permeates our and our planet’s lives is to be where we are, and to feel what we are becoming