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A GAIAN PARADIGM
Bill Ellis

FORWARD About this book
A Gaian Paradigm
INTRODUCTION

AN INTRODUCTION
About this book

This is a very personal book. It is an edited compilation of thoughts, activities, articles, journals entries I've had or written from high school through my current interests and actions to create the ground work for radical social change. Some of the articles are almost unchanged. Other literature comes from books I have read or actions in which I’ve been a participant. The rest is my imagination and whatever spontaneously self-organized.

My first epiphany occurred in the local library as a freshman in high school. The librarian suggested I might enjoy reading "A History of Philosophy" by Will Durant. I was captivated by the wonderful ideas created by the human mind. I delved deeper into the history of ideas for the next few years, considering various concepts, noting correlation and disagreements. The next epiphany came as a senior in high school when I read Einstein and Infeld's "The Story of Relativity." I suddenly realized that everything I'd read before was speculation! If I wanted to search for a reliable truth I'd have to become a scientist and draw my conclusions from indisputable facts and a system of logic, Since then my life challenge has been to do just that. I reject any authority outside my own mind and use facts and logic to understand cause and effect and to reach sound conclusions about the cosmos, Gaia [The Earth and all of its life forms], and my place in them.

In my search I skipped around colleges for a number of years studying crucial subjects of the time earning a couple of degrees in physics. and gaining some knowledge of other fields like anthropology, history, social studies, etc. I also chose a wife, who as an anthropologist could join my search. So I settled down to raise and support a family. For the next 20 years I pursued my high school dream in organizations such as the National Science Foundation, UNESCO, and the World Bank. In all these organizations my positions included evaluating the impact of science on society. In NSF the task was to provide support for research in physics; with my hidden agenda of concern for practical technologies and social results. After publishing a few articles and joining public discussions on these subjects I was asked by UNESCO to move to Paris, to help design programs to help Third World nations determine which scientific programs would most benefit their people. After two years in France I returned to the US and responded to a proposal from the World Bank to help establish a new path of foreign aid to help "the poorest of the poor."

My work in both the last two brought me to the realization that science and particularly the technologies coming from it were as important, if not more important, to the Third World as it was to industrial society. But there is one major difference. What is called for is what E.F. Schumacher (see chapter **)
called "Intermediate Technology," -- something better than the digging sticks and winnowing by beating; but not as complex and expensive as harvesting machines and spinning jennies. It came to be called the Appropriate Technology (AT) movement. With a commitment to promoting AT I left the world of paid employment to become an AT activist. One of my first free lance assignments was to help bring AT practitioners from around the world to the NGO Forum, Habitat, associated with the U.N Conference on Human Settlements. The 1976 two weeks of meetings increased the level of interest in the U.S. and in the press. At plenary session near the end the grassroots innovators considered a a proposal from the U.N. for establishing IMAT (an International Mechanism for Appropriate Technology). The plenary session rejected the idea with the worry that any centralized bureaucracy would soon make the decisions of what local innovators could do. Instead they called for a "non-organization," a "network" that would promote direct communications among the AT practitioners on new designs and new innovations. Since I had been the facilitator of the AT forum, It was suggested that I become the facilitator of TRANET (a TRANsnational NETwork for Appropriate Technology). Tat has been the center of my life for the past 30+ years. And it is the central resource for my writing.

There are some basic themes in this book that may not be obvious on the surface So I'll outline them here.
The first, and most basic theme, is that all humans are shaped more by nurture (their culture) than by nature (their genes) [see the review of Mary Clark's book in Chapter **]. Each of us absorbs as true and immutable values and concepts whatever comes from our families, friends, schools and our society. That is called a paradigm or a world view. We seldom challenge the paradigm but live within its totems and taboos without thinking.
A second basic tenet of this book is that "life is good." It is a optimistic understanding that there is no evil No person is out to harm others or damage the world without cause. We have no "enemies" but only people we don't understand. Our purpose in life and the purpose of the system we belong to should be to try to understand the motives of even those who seem most evil. From their understanding, or paradigm. Their goal, like our own, is to improve themselves selves by improving others.
The third theme is "democracy." The concept of Gaia gives a whole new foundation for the future. It is now recognized that the cosmos is one. All of its sub parts are dependent on one another, their parts and the whole. All that is is holons composed of holons embedded in holons. Couple to that is the new technologies that connect us in real time in all parts of the world. These make possible a new direct democracy in which all people has the ability to have a affect in every decision that has an effect on their lives.

It is not important for the reader to accept these themes. It is far less important that the reader accept any of my ideas, solutions or speculations in this book. I do hope that the following text will stretch your mind to recognize that there are different ways to view the world, to have the courage to express your own, and to take action to bring them to fruition.

CHAPTER #1 -- THE FOUNDATION

For some 2000 years or more civilization has been ruled by a social paradigm on which all Aspects of the EuroAmerican cultures are based -- the “dominator paradigm.” In the past 2 decades a new social paradigm has been emerging that could have the most profound and fundamental impact on human civilization since humanids first came down from the trees. The old paradigm placed humans in a purposeful universe created by some superormal power for the domination and use by man. The new paradigm we’ll call “A Gaian Paradigm.” It suggests a spontaneously self-organizing universe in which humanity is but one of the created interdependent webs of being.

THE DOMINATOR PARADIGM

The “dominator paradigm,” has had a long evolution. It grew from the Jewish creation myth that held that the earth was created for the use of and domination by man. It was strengthened by Greek philosophy with its postulate that "Man is the measure of all things.” The early Church held that a "chain of being" put man at the top of a hierarchy with only a few celestial beings above. Below were women, children, other races, animals, plants and the Earth, each there to serve and be dominated by the rungs above. The “dominator paradigm” was stamped in the minds of Europe by the thousand-year Inquisition that burned some one million people, mostly women, at the stake for believing in Earth as our creator. It was spread to the East by the crusades that destroyed “infidel” humans, cities and nations. During the Age of Colonization and Discovery it was perpetuated and made worldwide by the sword (technology), the cross (Christianity), and the flag (nationalism). Newton’s clockwork concept of that cosmos, and Darwin’s theory of evolution were interpreted to “prove” the validity of the dominator paradigm. It was fixed in our secular moral system by the acceptance of Adam Smith's economy that claims that human "self-interest," competition and materialism should, and does, dictate all human actions. This abomination as the essence of humanity now rules the world.

THE GAIAN PARADIGM

A Gaian paradigm not only has many roots but can be, and is becoming, the underpinning of a new global network of cultures replacing the now dominant and domineering man-centered industrial cultures. The new cultures will be, like all cultures, holistic unified coherences of interdependent components -- religion, economics, social and others. The emergence of the Gaian paradigm is resulting in a deep fundamental transition of our world view, our social institutions and our lifestyles. The need for this transition is being made obvious by the growing numbers of dangers inherent in industrialism. And the transition is happening, and being made real in the introduction of many positive and creative social innovations.
This millennium is being looked upon as a time of radical and fundamental change. Minds are opening to new ideas. People are looking for new actions. It is in this spirit of a hopeful, deep, fundamental social transformation that this book is addressed. These are the concepts we’ll explore in the next few chapters.

FOUNDATIONS FOR A GAIAN PARADIGM

Many basic scientific observations led to this new scientific/social paradigm. The advancement of the Gaia theory, the establishment of Chaos and Complexity theories, and new concepts of evolution were among them.
The observation that biological evolution did not progress as Darwin predicted by a series of minute changes which led over time to the emergence of new species. Rather, biological evolution happened in quantum leaps. Major biological changes and new species are created in relatively short periods of time after long periods of stability. This observation was designated by Stephen Jay Gold as "punctured equilibrium."
James Lovelock, a scientist working for NASA, observed that the biosphere of the Earth was radically different from all other planets. It stayed amazingly constant within ranges which supported life. Lynn Margulis, a microbiologist, at the same time was studying the evolution of microorganisms over the billions of years before animals appeared on the face of the earth. She found that life forms were interdependent. Life was able to exist on Earth because of a symbiosis among all life forms and the geological Earth. Everything was interdependent with everything else. Life created its own biome. Lovelock and Margulis proposed that the whole Earth was a self-organized, self-supporting ecological system At the suggestion of a neighbor of Lovelace, William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, they termed this living Earth system Gaia, after the Greek Earth goddess.
A theoretical understanding of how Gaia, or in fact any system, might spontaneously self-organize came from other fields of science including mathematics, physics and particularly computer science. Chaos and Complexity theories made possible by computer modeling have moved science beyond the limits imposed by linear mathematics, algebra and calculus. Study of the transition of order into chaos, or chaos into order, and the formation of complex systems from simpler ones has opened a whole new area for science. Two particular breakthroughs in the field are relevant to the Gaia concepts.
“Self-organizing criticality" is an idea proposed by Brookhaven National Laboratory physicist, Per Bak. His first computer model representing self-organizing criticality was of a pile of sand. As you pour grains of sand on a spot it slowly builds into a stable inverted cone. As you continue pouring the cone becomes unstable until sand slides and avalanches restore a new larger stable cone. He showed that biological evolution occurred in such bursts. Simple entities formed more complex systems, which remained stable until internal pressures built up and caused a rapid reorganization. There seems to be a law of nature, self-organizing criticality, by which new forms come into being.
“Autocatalysis,” developed by Stuart Kauffman at the Santa Fe Institute, is another concept which provides a theoretical base for the evolution of Gaia. Autocatalysis holds that systems of biological entities may promote their own rapid transition into different forms. Kauffman uses the simple example of the slippery-footed fly and sticky-tongued frog. The mutation of slippery footedness gave no environmental advantage to the fly until the mutation of the sticky-tongued frog. Only then did Darwin's survival-of-the-fittest come into play. Networks of potential mutations may develop and remain dormant until triggered by an environmental change or another phenomenum that brings on the avalanche of transition. Autocatalysis, linked with-survival-of-the-fittest. explains how complex organs like the eye, or new species emerge.
Self-organizing criticality and autocatalysis are among the scientific concepts that show how biological entities self-organize in quantum-like leaps from simple cells to linked complex networks of cells, organs, plants and animals. More than that, physicists like Lee Smolin and Nobeli Laureate Murray Gellmann, have extended self-organizing back to the beginning of time at the Big Bang, suggesting that the same principle may apply to the self-organizing of fundamental particles into atoms, atoms into molecules, and molecules into galaxies, solar systems, planets, and life. At the same time economists like Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow, Brian Arthur, and Jon Holland have extended the new paradigm in the other direction, to include economics, social organization, and human consciousness.
This new scientific/social paradigm suggests that people have no superior divine mandate within a universe created for them. They are not independent of, above or beyond the natural world in which they are imbedded. They do have the unique ability to understand, through science, the laws that govern them, to envision future worlds, and to co-create those future worlds within the laws of science.

CYBERSPACE AND THE NETWORKED UNIVERSE

“Everything is connected to everything else” is one way of stating the Gaian Paradigm. It is a fact of science, and is a social mindset. But it is more than those, it is a fact of technology. “Networking” was identified by John Naisbit in Megatrends as one of the major new trends of the century. As he saw it, it was a social and political trend. It was made possible by the railroad, the automobile, the telegraph, and the telephone. Each of these technologies made the Earth smaller and put people in more rapid and reliable touch with one another. The real quantum jump in networking is only now before us. Computers and the Internet are providing a challenge that has hardly been explored. Cyberspace is a global phenomenon providing humanity the opportunity to work globally in real time. This takes networking well beyond the concept about which Naisbitt wrote only a few years ago, or the concept of transnational networking which was the root of the formation of TRANET, the organization with which I’ve been working since, 1976.

The Gaia Hypothesis, the theories of chaos and complexity, the Gaian concepts, and the computer technologies which now face us grew independently of one another. But they form a unity. They in themselves are an example of the self-organizing principle which shapes all of cosmic evolution. Together they make up the Gaian Paradigm. They challenge us to prepare ourselves for an avalanche of social, political and economic change in the years ahead. This millennium is evolving radically differently from man-centered paradigm which has dominated the past 2000 years.

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