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Gaian Dreaming
96% of our genes are of unknown use. Genes can be present but either switched on or switched off. Circumstances can cause a gene to switch on. Is this the two step by which dreaming translates to evolution?
Dreaming analogous to software. Dreaming redesigns the associations and linkages of genes, setting some on and some off, and linking and separating patterns.
A subtle reorganization proceeds by the dreaming. When it is "tested" it either gives way to the previous means, or strengthens as it is tested.*
If it strengthens, it becomes the new means of coping or dealing with the pressure which tested it.
This is very close to Sheldrake's morphogenetic fields in that it forsees understanding a 'medium' where 'reside' the 'subtle' field or effects spoken of, which are present at the 'reception' of the 'outside' stimulus or pressure, and which either weaken and dissolve in favor of a tried and tested means, or which strengthen, and 'do the job' and become the new means at the organism's disposal.
The difference with Sheldrake is that he focuses on the effect of past patterns in molding this hypothetical morphogenetic medium, leaving aside the question of how beings (up to gaia and beyond) move 'forward' in their own evolutionary time, if the only molding is done by habit.
Into this vacuum have come 3 descriptions.
1, that there are two fundamental forces affecting this morphogenetic medium, namely, novelty and habit, which in their interplay allow beings and indeed all things to proceed through the new in continuity with, and secured by, a molding by the past. (This is Terence McKenna's hypothesis .) *
2 The concept of attractors which pull the present to the future- exert a field effect to attract current chaotic state toward (future) events or states.
3 A further definition of the hypothetical qualities of the morphogenetic field combined with the hypothesis of dreaming 'subtle patterns' into the field.; this is what I am proposing, though by no means to the exclusion of the others.
The deep biosphere, undisturbed, deep in its own distributed and complex self cognition, deep in its own spell, makes a dreaming.
This dreaming is the medium for evolution.
As the biosphere is frayed and fragmented, the species still exist, and dynamics may continue, but the dreaming diminishes, no longer mediating evolution.
The dreaming of Gaia, the dreaming of the biome, the dreaming of a species. These are holistically, simultaneously, self embedded - and ultimately experienced by the dreaming of the individual artist, which like some kind of receiver, picks up, gives form to, and transmits into the human realm the sense of these embedded dreamings: as art, traditionally.
We humans have estranged ourselves from the first two dreamings. Our species dreaming has gone its own way. Our canonical dreaming is now pretty much exclusionary of the rest of the holism. It wasn't always thus: classical arts from Greek thru Art Nouveau show consistent themes of dreaming our place in Nature; visions, our yearnings. (See for example the Arcadian Movement)
The continuity of this species dreaming of ours has been frayed and broken in this latter 20th century. One can argue that enlightenment humanism was the last whole vision we experienced; (The current thing, free market capitalist democracy, being not a vision for the future but an abnegation of our visioning to the current commercial reality culture.)
We have so degraded the biosphere that the resonant dreamings of the biomes and Gaia herself are critically diminished, and our resonance with these encompassing dreamings is lost. Our Culture at Large is no longer dreaming our future evolution. While the urbanization of the visual arts in the latter half of the 20th c. have left "important" painting and sculpture isolated and insulated from Nature; this is not true of the Poetic Arts, which have continued to host this human dreaming fractally embedded in our species dreaming and the Gaian dreaming.
***
"The pleasant, shady woods of modern times are nothing like the forests of
those days, which were alive, not just with trees and squirrels, bracken,
maidenshair, and sprouting acorns. The old green world was alive in its
leafy soul. A forest then was one great breathing creature that felt
everything. It felt the nervous tread of the royal stag that no one was
permitted to hunt under the king's ban. It felt the hatching of the cuckoo
egg and the pitiful cries of baby warblers when the cuckoo chick pitched
them out of their nest. It even felt the slow creeping growth of the thick
moss that carpeted every moist space like a velvety, verdant shawl."_
***
Either humans aim to reintegrate themselves into a living flourishing Gaia, or they accept the idea that this is all for the human species to chew up, and make with it what they want. In this view the purpose of humans should be to outgrow their original habitat, and ultimately spread thru the galaxies.
Cybertribe Rising
Morphogenetic Fields (Rupert Sheldrake)
Deep Ecology: Think Like a Mountain
Gaia, from Think Like a Mountain
Deep Ecology and Feminism . . .
Deep Ecology and Odinism
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