Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

I wanted to briefly expand on the Lovelock Gaia-death article that I linked a few days ago. I support a literal and unified Gaia theory, meaning that I believe that the Earth is a singular lifeform and that we are all small pieces of that life form. I believe that we are not men, but are in fact the Nephilim — the combined seed of the sons of God (microbial life) and the daughters of men (complex multi-cellular life — including plants).

I also believe that for the first time in the history of this planet, that alliance between “God” (the singular microbial ecosystem) and “man” (creatures which we falsely perceive as individuals) is severely threatened. Let me expand on what must at first seem rather whacky by quickly running through a quick set of facts and observations:

• The surfacing and die-off of deep water animals like the coelacanth strongly implies a serious imbalance in the deep ocean ecosystem, an ecosystem we know very little about — and combined with over-fishing the oceans are already severely crippled.
• The ocean is at this point polluted enough that there are many places far from land where you can't swim without emerging covered in plastic. These are persistent (ie. they don't break down) substances that are often hormonally active. The ocean fuels the land, and this planet is 2/3 ocean. Destroy it and we destroy the rest.
• Our freshwater ecosystems are also severely depleted and polluted; so much so that many people believe that water wars will far outshadow any upcoming and ongoing wars for oil.
• Food preservation techniques like root cellars and other low-tech methods that kept humans alive through the winters until fifty to a hundred years ago no longer work in many cases. Food rots much faster. That is, the microbial ecosystem — another one that we know almost nothing about — is either failing or radically changing, and incredibly quickly.
• Microbial biomass makes up the majority of life on the planet.
• If you look at the cells in the “human” body, the vast majority (over 90%) do not contain human DNA; they are microbial symbiotes. Most of what we are is not human. These microbes predate humanity and sometimes live between hosts. If you want to come up with a physical explanation for the soul and the paranormal, this is it.
• This microbial life has persistent memory (using, as far as we know, chemical signalling that is being deeply damaged by pollution) that interacts with our own memory and nervous system. Interpret the meaning of that as you wish; soul, intelligent design, even past lives can be drawn from this without having to resort to the supernatural.
• With artificial hormones in plastics, medicines, pesticides, and so on, we are rapidly altering and sterilizing both our human and microbial selves.

I could go on, but the point is that the parts of the Earth's biosystem, whatever level of interconnectedness you buy into, is either changing quickly and radically or is outright failing. Global warming in and of itself is inconsequential in comparison to this shift.

Even without the energy and population crisis that we are currently facing, things look quite grim. The combined effect of killing the microbial life in ourselves, in the soil, in the ocean, and in the air, is in effect killing God and killing our souls. I mean that in an entirely non-spiritual and non-supernatural way. I don't believe you need to have “blind faith” or religion to have an omnipresent entity — these tiny beings are the singular life force that holds the planet together and binds us all to each other. Without them it is difficult to say exactly what we are or what we mean.

When newspapers were talking about a hardcore push by Christians to go see Chronicles of Narnia, as well as boycotts by atheists, I thought it was all a little bit silly… Sure, CS Lewis was a Christian, but he always maintained that Narnia was just a fantasy tale. Well, I finally had a chance to actually see the movie yesterday, and I kind of have to agree with the “this is a Christian movie” theory as I watched it echo Biblical stories and even quote scripture on a regular basis… Maybe I know the Bible better than I should, but I think a movie is being a little obvious about its real intentions when I can say, “hey, that's Matthew 5 they're quoting”, point out which Narnia characters are which Biblical characters, and so on?