CEPTUAL INSTITUTE - Ecological Self - - Gaia Foundation Journal

The more we all study the intricacies of existence and life, the boundaries blur wonderfully, almost to the point of disappearing. This is no inference that the distinctions aren't important in some way, or serve some utility, but the interdependence of organic and inorganic segments of universing processes is ever present and for the most part - seamless.

Where do bio-metabolic molecules become 'alive'? If you have a vat full of one particular molecule? That comes under the heading of 'chemistry' - inert and isolated. Is haemoglobin 'alive'? Some living systems aren't alive without them, but the molecules aren't alive in and of themselves.

So where is the 'distinction'? And where is the distinction when the global environment - all its diverse parts and aspects - is the field under consideration? Is the oxygen 'in my body' part of 'me' only when metabolically bound? Isn't is just as accurate to say that the rest of the atmosphere, even the plants and animals, are temporary storage recepticles of 'my' oxygen? Of course it is. So 'where' am ... "I"? Part of 'me' is out-there-somewhere, waiting to filter through me very briefly and quickly.

Most of what I was - what I will be - isn't anywhere in the vicinity of my 'identified physical body'. The vastest part of 'me' is somewhere else and somewhere to-be.

So where am "I" ... really? Where are any of us? We are so much 'involved' with the total processional dynamic structure of the Gaian globular world that everything around us is 'us'. Even down in the tectonic bowels of the planet. Even in the evanescent vacuousness of the highest atmosphere. Even in the unseen but stimulating seething envelope of electromagnet- ism washing around the entire planet.

Our structure may have local-condensations which we identify as 'us', 'me', whatever - and those are real and valid and useful distinctions - but the over-arching reality is that our skins and our behavior-places aren't the limited locales of "where to find" each of us. It's not our 'traces' that exist out in the rest of the Gaia engaged world, it's really us. Linked in ways other than neural closeness or extreme metablic intimacy. It is 'us' involved in trans- metabolic intimacy. So intimate that if you take away or disturb any of the 'out there', we feel the affects ... somewhere, sometime, somehow ... fully and unavoidably.

And the essence of a purposeful universe is that the pieces are indigenous supports of the products and the emergent. "Non-living" is a mis-characterization of the fundamentals and simplicities of existence. They aren't 'non-living' at all. In performance, in abilities, in potential ... they are proto-life or pre-life systems. They have innate qualities which contribute to the construction and organization of 'living' systems ... characteristics that orchestrate into what we've come to recognize or label 'living'. But the primordial abilities and qualities are there first, in the bits, in the pieces, in the existences of these isolates. It's these qualities that I've spent the better part of my life defining - redefining in ways science typically doesn't. There are times I've been charged with trying to overlay a biological model of behavior on non-organic systems. That's not accurate. The accurate view is that the qualities and behaviors that BLOSSOM into what we recognize as 'biological' are there in the fundamental particles too, if we just recognize the precursive and performing relations and dynamics in a broader way.

That's what makes the concept of Gaia such a deep and important one. The existential boundaries of each entity or system are links with the rest of the world, not separators. Boundaries aren't isolators, they're bridges and binders of being.

Co-presence, co-dependence, symbiosis ... aren't simple words or convenient identifiers ... they are the fact and reality of what existence is and is all about: Communication. Simultaneous, complete, hyper-involved and total.