GENERATING LIFE

This planet of ours, that we call “earth,” has what we call life. What we usually mean by that is that this planet contains living trees and plants and animals—like us. But the earth itself has life. We need to realise that, before it is too late. And maybe we don't know what its life is.

In the plant and animal world, seeding provides for continuous life. Generation and regeneration keep what we call life going. We animals are still generating and regenerating, but the plant world with which we live and upon which we depend isn't doing very well. It seems, in fact, to be dying. And the earth itself? Is it dying? In what way or ways?

In the last fifty years we have been exploring what we call “space,” to discover whether or not there is what we call “life” on those other lumps of matter wandering around out there. We call those wanderers “planets.”

What we are looking for , out there in “space,” is our version of life. We are looking for what we already know. And we are thinking of the possibilities of our colonizing somewhere out there. That's what animal scientists call the “fouled nest” syndrome. Humans and some other animals live that way: when they have made a big enough mess of where they live, they move somewhere else.

But science isn't just a housing office, or Noah's dove looking for someplace to land. Science should be much more than that—and smarter than that.

What we call life—plant life and animal life--grows from seeds. Have we asked if this earth itself has seed? This earth seems to be dying; all things, we say, must die. But in our experience, generation is the companion of dying, which lets life itself continue.

But is there just one kind of life? And does it have to live by our rules?

In exploring space, we look for life on other planets: but we are looking for what we call life. Ego interferes with learning, even with understanding. Other is hard for us to accept. Our exploration of space is limited by our self-centered definition of life.

And thus we think of colonizing other planets. “Will other planets support life?” we ask. Of course, what we mean is will those other planets support us, and what we call “life.” Once we have made this planet, earth, uninhabitable, we will need someplace to go. We are like vermin, or maggots. And when we have killed our host we want to move on to some new body.

With our determined assistance, this earth may be dying. So we want off. We want another planet to go to. But maybe what is needed, in the larger order of existence, is for earth itself to “seed” another planet, not with us but with its own seed.

Of course, we don't know what earth's seed is. And we haven't even tried, yet, to find out. Or imagine. So we are stuck with the other scenario. Never mind a “seedling” earth--which is a natural image. We are the vermin who want to leave this carcass and find a new one to foul and kill.

Human ego would send us to other planets. But other planets may not want us. Other planets may see us as parasites. Parasites who have killed our own host body: this planet.

This world is—by definition—what we know. The universe is everything, or everything-once-around: an unmeasurable continuous ring. “Everything” is bigger than what we know, bigger by far than what we are or what we know or can imagine, even with our space ships and telescopes.

 And maybe nobody out there will want us. Maybe we had better try to save our world's life instead of exploring elsewhere. Let's spend our money on this world, not on leaving it.