" 'Centrisms' . . . are what part of my life?"

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GAIA-PC list  December 6, 1998:

"Hello everyone,

It's been a while that I've written, though I've read every gaia-pc email during the last half year or more.

I agree with Steve Kurtz's remarks, and it seems really strange to me that discussion has resorted to fine-tune re-defining 'anthropocentric' in order to get the message across that humans are part of the fabric of life on Earth, and have profound impacts on the rest of the world, whether people are alert and cognizant of their affects or not.

We don't talk about young children struggling over who can hold and play with a certain toy as "toddler-centric" behavior.   We simply recognize that attention and concern can be 'focussed' in a being's life.   'Ego' and functional-coherence-unity are an aspect of every entity that exists ... it is unavoidable.    Systems 'behave' according to their physical construction to behave in certain ways. Some are very limited. Some are less so.

Humans have the awareness capacity to learn and recognize that an apple plucked off a tree could nourish them, but the co-effect is to conditionally deprive another person or life-form of that particular nourishment.

Several billions of years of life-forms have struggled with the cyclic ebbing and flowing of narrow and limited 'life-spaces' perceptions interacting together. We are unavoidably part of that scenario and process. But, not 'inescapably' so.

Put all the 'morality' issues aside. Unclutter the "kindness" and "good or bad" notions about how we "should or shouldn't treat" other life forms.   Human lives aren't just what we see in the mirror or feel as our 'bodies'....and that is the lesson, the message, that has to be understood by our - and future - sapiens and evolving 'anthropes'.

There is no completely perfectly individual "us" inside our thoughts, and some "else" or "rest of the world" out there somewhere. That distinction is real, not illusory, BUT, in only in the loosest sense. Whatever "me" there
is in this world requires the existence of everything else all about, in order to accurately define "me".

Part of who "I" am - for example - includes Gaia-pc and the interactions, behaviors, concerns, thoughts et al of me sitting here and reacting to the 'extended behavior system" that is my life.  No different
than my right hand and fingers reaching over to touch my left arm or run my fingers through my hair. What my left arm 'does" affects the 'life-space' and behavior-space of my right arm.

"We" humans are therefore part of a 'whole-body' also, whether we ever took time to amend and coordinate our "local" behaviors with the rest of our "body" or not. An "arm" is not expected to be anything but an arm. A person must enact its life as a 'person' ... there is precious little option in this regard.   But there is outrageous option to enlarge ourselves, to do new behaviors based on expanding our 'life-space' awareness to include the rest of the more incredible 'body' we are - also unavoidably - part of:   Gaia.

Forget the fact that we are physical/territorial/egoistic entities as separate people; focus and teach that every "I" doesn't end at the pseudo-limit boundary of our skin. Every life, as the theologian Martin Buber enunciated, is an "I-Thou". It includes that batch of oxygen molecules floating 50 feet away from me that I haven't met/encountered yet, but I will breath in in about 10 minutes, and so sustain my "life". It includes you and everyone else I know. My life is my own, and yet not. And I have responsibility to, with, and for it all".

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"GAIA-PC list  January 10, 1999:

"Thanks, Don, for forwarding Buzz Nixon's comments on Anthropocentrism.  I haven't access to or read the Janmaat/Gintis/Roper commentaries he referred to but want to remark on Buzz's thoughts anyway.

Not to come down on either side of the conversation, it just bothers me that logic observations can too often be carried to illogical extremes.

Any animal will act according to its physiology ... and that extends to 'ethnocentric' behaviors also.  A "set" ideology can be as rigidifying as any physionomic structure ... especially when encouraged and supported by companions and established environments.

It is the way a lifeform "endures" ... by functioning safely within its/any 'econiche'.   Humanity is just as susceptible to this as any other lifeform, and in fact exhibits extreme tendencies to carry out this psychological version of "territorial behavior" ... acting to secure and maintain 'established' ways of life.

Now this doesn't mean that adaptation isn't possible, it certainly is.  Just the diversity of human cultures and social habits shows that we are not pre-determined from birth to exhibit and enact ultra-specific behaviors, eat only certain foods, utter limited vocalization sets, or do other similar restricted parts of our life-options.   But we are also loath to break from "traditions" once they are established.  The 'meaning' of our lives could alter drastically and disruptively if values, actions and behaviors are shifted unacceptibly ... whether by imposition of outside forces or internal anarchy.

But growing integration of 'Homo Globalis' (Kourinsky) is corraling coordinated social structures, while having to give homage and respect to the individual cultures which are already in place, each with their own individual goals, ideas, dreams and dignity.

We are in the midst of meta-level changes that many folk are not used to, let alone prepared for.  But we are smart enough already to avoid bringing that old psychology-debate into this forum also ... whether we are pre-destined at birth or totally open to the impacts of experience.

It was not either/or at the personal level, and it is not either/or at the social-cultural level.  It is both birth/tradition AND environment which complement interactively, to produce the world we are in.

One facet of a diamond doesn't make a brilliant gem.  The diverse attributes do.

Humanity is anthropocentric by physiology, humanity is ethnocentric by habituation, humanity is trans-centric, meta-centric, and even pluro-centric by conceptual association, by empathy, and by the ability to identify our 'self' with "more" and with "else".... people, Gaia."

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