The Future of Life

I just read an interesting excerpt from Edward O Wilson's book 'The Future of Life' over at James Media:

Environmentalism is something more central and vastly more important. Its essence has been defined by science in the following way. Earth, unlike the other solar planets, is not in physical equilibrium. It depends on its living shell to create the special conditions on which life is sustainable. The soil, water, and atmosphere of its surface have evolved over hundreds of millions of years to their present condition by the activity of the biosphere, a stupendously complex layer of living creatures whose activities are locked together in precise but tenuous global cycles of energy and transformed organic matter. The biosphere creates our special world anew every day, every minute, and holds it in a unique, shimmering physical disequilibrium. On that disequilibrium the human species is in total thrall. When we alter the biosphere in any direction, we move the environment away from the delicate dance of biology. When we destroy ecosystems and extinguish species, we degrade the greatest heritage this planet has to offer and thereby threaten our own existence.

I agree with this on many levels, but Wilson and many other environmentalist are missing a much larger picture; one that is staring us right in the face - The human species with all our technology and pollution is a part of nature.

How can otherwise really intelligent people like Wilson miss this very basic point? My theory is they're still suffering from an anthropocentric view that we are somehow elevated or at least removed from nature somehow. How is this even possible? To me this is a hang up from peoples left-over religious memes continuing to permeate their thinking. So although these intelligent people have embraced the sancity of life they have retained the medievel illusion that we are not part of nature, or at the very most a plague, a virus, or a cancer that needs to be eradicated for the benefit of life as a whole. Personally I have no make-wrong about any form of life, even predatory life like viruses. They exist and propogate, just like we do. Since our co-existence could easily become competitive, I have to either resign to its right to life, or fight for my own right to live. Well, selfish or altruistic - I want to live, so the virus must loose if I have anything to say about it.

If, as Wilson claims, it has come down between humanity and the biosphere, which he claims we can't live without (not necessarily true), then the biospheres survival choice would be to wipe us out as a disease. Well this hasn't happened yet, despite nature's apparent attempts. So Wilson says, "we must forget our urge to colonize space, to expand technologically. We must get back to nature".

But Mr. Wilson are you listening? WE HAVE NEVER LEFT!

We are a part of nature, and nature is a part of us. We are inextricably one and the same. Our inexorable drive to expand and explore is what life itself has always done. Life has never once settled into complete homestasis. There has always been a small segment of it mutating, evolving, growing, expanding, filling new niches, creating new habitats. Without intelligence the biopshere will eventually die in a billion years from the Suns lethal radiation output. But evolved intelligent life expaning beyond the womb planet does have a chance of living indefinitely. Perhaps if I'm still around I might be able help Earth survive this heat death. In the meantime, the biosphere is plugging along nicely, despite our civilization. Yes, we are seeing massive species extinction. This is not the first time, but at least the fifth time this has happened, and the biosphere has survived all of them. Either way, I want to survive and see the complexity and diversity of life that Wilson talks about survive also. Therefore these two drives are not mutually exclusive, something many environmentalist like Wilson refuse to see.

I'm not willing to sacrifice my life and that of the only known intelligent life on the off-chance that we might screw it up and take all of life with us. We simply do not know enough about the 'big picture' to know if killing ourselves off is the right answer. And unfortunately there are some wackos out there, like the one depicted on Twelve Monkeys, who would be willing to make that collective decision for us.

No, I'm with people like Timothy Leary, Robery Anton Wilson , Lynn Margulis and Dorian Sagan on this one. I think whats really happening is the Biosphere (aka Gaia) is giving birth, and we are part of this birth. Ladies and Gentleman, life is about to leave the womb planet and spread out into the universe. And this isn't just plain old life, but intelligent life, complex life, beyond anything a mere bacterium or even domesticated primates like ourselves can imagine at the moment. As Leary said, pollution is the by-product of a successful species, just like the aerobic Eukaryotic cell polluted the atmosphere of primitive earth with oxygen forcing the anaerobic prokaryotic undreground or into extinction. If it wasn't for this so-called pollution, eukaryotic life would not have evolved multi-cellular life, resulting in the Cambrian explosion and our beautiful green earth today.

There was an old debate raging in the circles of the transhumanist community back a few years, Gaians vs Extropians. Like then, and now these two philosophies are not mutually exclusive. I consider myself to be both. I see no reason why we shouldn't be able to survive, prosper and grow, while making every attempt to minimize the damage to the biosphere along the way. If done right, nanotechnologies are the most environmentally friendly technology that could possibly exist. In no time at all, nanotechnology could reverse every "damaging" thing we've ever done, while simulataneously bootstrapping civilization to the stars.

I adore nature. I just spent the last weekend communing with wildlife up here in the Sierras, basking in the spring sun, smelling the flowers, appreciating the delicately evolved balance of flora and fauna around where I camped. In most respects I'm a tree hugger. But I also love my computer, and can't wait to travel the cosmos in search of other intelligent life, expand my personal intelligence and wisdom without end and become a cosmic immortal. I believe the philosophies of Gaia and Extropy are two sides of the same coin - both are inherently against entropy. Any apparent difference is an illusionary false dichomotomy. I believe the "Gaians" and "Extropians" will each need the other for long term survival of any kind of life. Only intelligence has the capacity to meet the threats to life head on. An asteroid almost wiped out all life 65 million years ago. The next time that asteroid doesn't stand a chance.