(7.01) An Alternative Philosophical Perspective - “Earth Centrism”
What is “Earth Centrism”?
The Earth Centrist’s perspective acknowledges that Earth, her material constituents and physical processes, unfolding one day at a time, are our fundamental touchstone with reality. We acknowledge Earth and glory in understanding her pageant of Evolution and appreciating how that pageant is reflected within our own bodies.
We glory in the physical fact that humans were created out of Earth’s evolving biosphere.
Science shows us that we belong to the mammalian branch of one of Earth’s amazing animal kingdoms. Yet, it’s undeniable that something quite unique happened around six million years ago when certain apes took a wild improbable evolutionary turn.
By and by, besides the marvel of our two hands, we developed two feet and legs, that could stand tall and run for hours, combined with keen eyes and a growing brain that learned rapidly and remembered.
During this period our brain physically morphed in some significant ways that enabled it to host a profound leap in cognitive information processing, storage and retrieval ability.
On the outside hominids learned to make tools, hunt, fish, and select plants, plus they mastered fire for cooking and better living.
On the inside our brains were growing and benefiting from the new super nourishment while human curiosity and adventures started filling and stretching our Mindscapes with experiences and knowledge beyond anything the “natural” physical Earth ever knew.
By Mindscape, I mean the product of all that our body/brain perceives and processes, which of course, evolutionarily speaking, was dependent on our brain’s hardware keeping pace with and driving the ever increasing volume of information and thoughts.
While the human mind and spirit seem ineffable mysteries, they are also of tremendous consequence and real-world physical power. They drove our growing ability to study and manipulate our world; to communicate and record our experiences; and to formulate explanations for a world full of mysteries, threats and wonders.
People learned to think and gossip and paint pictures upon the canvas of cave walls, and even better, upon the canvas of each other’s imaginations. We’ve been adding to our mind’s awareness and complexity ever since.
Of course, while all this was going on our extraordinary human mind was also beginning to wonder about the ‘Why’ of the world it observed and the difficult, fragile, short lives we were allotted.
In seeking comfort and answers to unknowable questions it seems inevitable that Gods would inhabit our Mindscape. I suspect inspired by buried memories of being coddled within mom’s protective loving bosom those first couple years of life.
No doubt these “Gods” enabled further successes, though not through super-natural interventions, rather through their ability to form, conform, reform & transform the Mindscapes of the people beginning to congregate. Thus, combining pragmatic civil societal needs with universally felt, but keenly personal questions, fears, and dreams.
After the middle ages tribal stories, accepted ancient doctrines, and religious “truths” were no longer enough to satisfy our Mindscape’s growing desire for ever better understanding and power over our destinies and the biosphere that sustains us.
The human mind took another tremendous leap forward in awareness with the Intellectual Enlightenment and the birth of serious disciplined scientific study . Science’s success was dazzling in its ability to learn about, control and manipulate Earth’s physical resources and to transform entire environments.
Science was so successful that today most believe we are the masters of our world and too many have fallen into the hubristic trap of believing our ever fertile Mindscape is reality itself. But now I’m digressing, back on point, in summary,
Earth Centrism , is a perspective on our human condition that’s based on the understanding that Earth is our fundamental touchstone with Physical Reality and that we are creatures made through Earth’s own natural processes.
Earth Centrism comes from appreciating the “Human Mindscape ~ Physical Reality divide.” It also helps in getting a handle on how the paternalistic Abrahamic traditions, with their self-serving attitudes towards other peoples, creatures, landscapes and resources imposed a simplistic dualistic mindset, that has blinded humanity to fully appreciating this planet that created us.
The Mind/Brain conundrum and the Hard Problem of Consciousness are rooted in ancient religious and philosophical arguments, contrivances of our minds, dressed up in modern language.
Earth Centrism is founded on the understanding that scientific study of the material world is our best window into understanding physical reality, because Science is, at it’s core, a set of rules for observing and recording and learning about our natural world that strives as much as possible to eliminate the human ego driven bias from its deliberations.
Science is founded on an unspoken understanding that we need each other to keep ourselves honest. It’s a community of educated, competitive, skeptical, experts who are constantly looking over each other’s shoulders. With fidelity to honesty being science’s Golden Rule.
I also contend that science offers spiritual/mystical challenges, experiences and resolutions , well beyond the traditions of our self-made, ego straddled, religions with their tunnel vision and that ingrained resentment towards Earth and learning.
Earth Centrism is an emergent appreciation, when the sum total of all those insights one has collected from a life time of learning come together into a tapestry, a pageant of life and circumstance that is harmonious and graspable. When understanding and increasing awareness blossoms into a visceral connection that infuses one’s body.
Along with that comes a grounded feeling. A deep inside awareness that, I have arrived, I am a self-aware element in the flow of Evolution and it is good.