THE GAIA PROJECT
A Systemic View on Our Daily Lives
Let’s find practical, systemic solutions for our own neighborhoods
Yesterday, I heard from Dr John Rose and Dr Mehmet Yildiz that the former is starting a sub-group in the Illumination publication about sustainability.
He calls it The Gaia Project and he puts Gaia Theory central.
In this article, you can read in his own words what he has in mind when he calls it ‘Connected Environmentalism’.
What I really like, is that he says:
“I feel strongly about our need for action rather than just talk.” — Dr. John Rose
What is Gaia Theory?
“The Gaia hypothesis, Gaia theory or the Gaia principle, proposes that living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a synergistic and self-regulating, complex system that helps to maintain and perpetuate the conditions for life on the planet.” — wikipedia
Thanks, John! This new initiative makes me happy. I love connecting to others on my journey.
What does Gaia Theory mean in my words?
What can Gaia Theory mean for our daily lives?
Pfew, where do I begin? To me, it means that I feel Gaia inside me. I AM nature. We are animals with a brain, a heart and a soul. And if we really feel that, we will also feel that nature is in origin abundant.
In our human societies, we are trying to control her because someone once said that scarcity is the way to buckets full of money. Well, it’s certainly not the way to much happiness. So if we start to put life over money, we’ll make different choices.
We will restore the natural world. Create healthy soil. Produce healthy, natural food. Build healthy houses with local, abundantly available building products. It can be done, we just need to make the choice to do it.
We’ll learn how we can add value to the natural resources in our products, that will fulfill basic needs. Because, what do we actually need in our lives? Lots of love, lots of support, and then also water, food, clothes, shelter.
By going on this journey, our minds will be challenged. We’ll never be bored. Our curiosity is challenged. We will heighten our senses. We’ll train our intuition. We’ll connect deeply to Gaia, to ourselves and to each other.
Combining Economy and Ecology
In our regular world now, we made silos for everything. Care for nature, ecology, is a job for environmentalists, for NGOs, for governments. Designing products and creating a vibrant economy is a job for companies. And we, civilians, are in the middle. Feeling powerless.
Well, the end to this world has come. As soon as we start to see that all things are connected, we can make a change. Do things differently.
- We are not powerless
- Understanding and restoring nature is essential for life on this planet
- Companies can innovate in such a way that our economy is aligned with ecology and it will make us all happy and healthy
- We will create value (all values, not just money)
- We will support each other fiercely
And I can tell you how much fun that is. I only learned about Gaia Theory in 2013 and since then my life has turned. I meet the most amazing people now, we do super cool things. We connect for real. And we LIVE.
It means re-inventing our lives with daily choices. With small first steps. With love and care and dealing with the complexity that’s the reality of our home, Planet Earth. Finding new ways to build our daily lives together. And making a local, sustainable economy, society and environment work for real.
Power of Synergy and Collaboration
What John is suggesting, is what I do in my daily life. Initiating new projects in my own neighborhood or helping others create new projects in theirs. Worldwide.
With respect for local nature and local culture.
Creating practical examples. Zooming out and giving people the bigger picture of what’s happening in the world right now.
Connecting designers who work with new, biodegradable materials or local rest streams. Inspiring entrepreneurs with new business models. Talking to governments about new societies in which people and their basic needs are central, but also embedded in the local ecology and basic needs of the planet.
Working with farmers on healthy soil. Inspiring architects and builders to create healthy buildings. Talking to investors about money and value and how the latter encompasses so much more than just money.
Showing the power of synergy and how we can create abundance together. If only we would follow Gaia’s leadership. Collaborating instead of competing. Not thinking in good or bad, but taking local circumstances as a starting point. Respecting our local place. Our local community.
It’s Already Happening
An economy and society like this is definitely possible. And the real-life examples in cities as well as in the countryside are starting to pop up like mushrooms in the dark.
There’s no getting around it anymore!
New Zealand already adopted Gross National Happiness instead of Gross Domestic Product as a measurement for the country’s success.
Amsterdam has just embraced the Doughnut Economy model to make a new selfie of the city. Fulfilling basic needs by measuring Global Goals that have been formulated by the United Nations in 2015. Inventing together with its citizens how to stay within planetary boundaries.
By 2030 we should have achieved these global goals. Another 10 years to go…
And there are examples on every continent.
Like Plant Five for Life in Pittsburgh, USA.
“We connect children and families to nature from birth.” — Plant Five for Life
Like Permaculture food production, that started out with Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in Australia and has since spread to ALL continents.
Like architecture in India. This Indian architect, Trupta Doshi is one of my heroes.
Entrepreneurs are creating nature-based solutions based on the work of think-tanks and do-tanks like ZERI, the Blue Economy, and the Biomimicry Institute.
So, count me in, Dr John Rose. I’ll tell my stories with love. Love for our planet. Love for the people inhabiting this place. And love for all our creativity and ingenuity.
We can do it! And I really hope you come along in our endeavor to make the world a better place for us all.
Gaia’s Action Lab
As far as I understood, we will be a kind of Gaia’s Action Lab within the Illumination network. We’ll discuss on Slack, make Medium-stories and YouTube-films. John is creating a website.
I don’t know what will emerge, but I do know I want to be part of it.
We can write about projects in our own neighborhoods. Producing our own food with regenerative methods. Reducing our waste. Finding new, cool products to use for our basic needs perhaps.
Exchanging our struggles with simplifying our lives and shedding our addictions to stuff. And shopping. Sharing our love for nature as something connected to us. Not outside, in the park, but nature in our hearts. Our love for a tree. For a worm. For our neighbor.
Understanding, discussing, writing, exchanging views. Helping each other along to make Gaia Theory real for our worldwide communities.
You can leave a message in the comments if you want to be part of The Gaia Project and I’ll tag you in my future stories. You can also ask questions in the comments and I’ll answer them as best I can or give them to Dr John Rose to answer.
Happy connecting to Gaia. Happy transitioning.
Happy living!
Extra Information
If you want to follow some other writers on Medium that are showing a systemic Gaia-based view and inspiring systemic solutions, you might want to follow Daniel Christian Wahl, jenny andersson, Anna Pollock, Heather Jo Flores, Eliot Kersgaard, Nenad Maljković, Ina Matijević, Anna Blume, Zairah Khan, Josine Bakkes, Anna Birney, Gemma Adams, Louise Armstrong, Corina Angheloiu, Zahra Davidson, Sahana Chattopadhyay, Jodie Harburt.
Some of them are very active on Medium, others I know from outside Medium and you can follow their work via Facebook, e.g. the large community of Impact Journey- Creating the Future, or via LinkedIn.
Some Medium-publications you might want to follow in this regard, are Activate the Future, Permaculture Women, System Change Field Notes, Virtual Teams for Systemic Change, The Earth Guide, Earth & Me.
There might be others, so please share in comments if I’ve missed out on some goodies you know of, and I don’t yet…
We all have different tastes in what works for us on our journey. So let’s not compete, but embrace all diversity! Nature flourishes with biodiversity. Humans flourish with diversity and compassion…
I’ll tag a few friends who might be interested to go on this journey together. If you don’t want to be tagged, let me know. If you want to be added to the tag in the future, let me know as well. We’ll grow organically…
Chris Hedges, Infiniti, Lanu Pitan, Amy Marley, Livia Dabs, Kathryn A. LeRoy, Ph.D., Rasheed Hooda, Keno Ogbo, Selma, Paul Myers MBA, Elisabeth Khan, Ann K Frailey, Sylvia Love Johnson, Eliot Kersgaard, Joe Luca, Bob Jasper, Tree Langdon ♾️, Isabela Vasiliu, Agnes Laurens, Agnes Louis, Tim Maudlin, Trista Ainsworth, Aurora Eliam, CMP, Robert Nelson, Eli Snow, Martine Weber, Henery X (long), George J. Ziogas, Mathias Barra, Suntonu Bhadra, Christyl Rivers, Phd., Supriya Verma, Francesca Brandani, Maria Antoanela Ionita, Lets Save Earth, Kayli Kunkel, Chowa Sekai.
Lots of love from me for all the people coming on this journey. And don’t worry about getting it wrong. There’s no wrong. There’s just our personal journey.
And if you want to connect, you can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, or my website. Or somewhere putting my hands in the soil. Fermenting my kitchen waste to become compost. Laughing and making space for new explorations…
