Aug 29, 2023 06:25 PM
(This post was last modified: Aug 29, 2023 07:30 PM by C C.)
https://bigthink.com/13-8/biocentrism-sc...ning-life/
EXCERPTS: A Universe without life is a dead Universe. A Universe without minds has no memory. A Universe without memory has no history. The dawn of humanity marked the dawn of a mindful Universe, a Universe that after 13.8 billion years of quiet expansion found a voice to tell its story.
Before life existed, the Universe was confined to physics and chemistry, stars forging chemical elements within their entrails and spreading them across space. There was no purpose to any of this, no grand plan of Creation. Through the unfolding of time, matter interacted with itself, as gravity sculpted galaxies and their stars. The emergence of life on Earth changed everything.
Living matter doesn’t simply undergo passive transformations. Life is “animated” matter, matter with purpose, the purpose of surviving. Ecotheologian Thomas Berry wrote, “The term animal will forever indicate an ensouled being.” Life is a blending of elements that manifests as purpose. This sense of purpose, this autonomous drive to survive, is what defines life at its most general.
And in our world, the mountains, rivers, oceans, and air sustain every living being. Life elsewhere may be very different from life here. But if it exists, it must share the same urge to survive, to perpetuate itself in deep communion with its environment. The alternative, of course, is extinction. When life exists, it will struggle to remain existing. Life is matter with intentionality.
Life without higher levels of cognition doesn’t know itself as living. It knows it needs to survive and will do what it can to remain alive, developing survival strategies with varying levels of complexity. [...] But deep as their emotions might be, animals don’t ponder the meaning of their existence. They don’t have the urge to tell their stories and wonder about their origins. We do.
And what have we done with this remarkable ability? We became expert hunters and warriors, we became artists and storytellers, we worshipped gods and coveted love and power. We became a paradox, half beasts, half gods, capable of the most beautiful creations and the most atrocious crimes...
[...] Our success has lulled us into a false sense of confidence, leading us to believe that we are above Nature. But our planet, vast as it is, is limited, and it is responding to our voracity in ways that might destroy us or, at the very least, compromise the future of our species and countless others...
This old narrative of the human has reached its end. The time has come for new humans, humans who understand that all forms of life are codependent, who have the humility to position themselves alongside all living creatures, and not above them. We have seen that this new narrative for humanity is founded on a confluence of cultures, merging Indigenous traditions with our growing scientific knowledge of the trillions of worlds around us. This new vision for humanity combines reason and spirituality, the material and the sacred, refusing to objectify the natural world. [...] Biocentrism is a vision for a morally aware humanity that celebrates and protects all forms of life as the only way to secure a healthy future for our project of civilization... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: A Universe without life is a dead Universe. A Universe without minds has no memory. A Universe without memory has no history. The dawn of humanity marked the dawn of a mindful Universe, a Universe that after 13.8 billion years of quiet expansion found a voice to tell its story.
Before life existed, the Universe was confined to physics and chemistry, stars forging chemical elements within their entrails and spreading them across space. There was no purpose to any of this, no grand plan of Creation. Through the unfolding of time, matter interacted with itself, as gravity sculpted galaxies and their stars. The emergence of life on Earth changed everything.
Living matter doesn’t simply undergo passive transformations. Life is “animated” matter, matter with purpose, the purpose of surviving. Ecotheologian Thomas Berry wrote, “The term animal will forever indicate an ensouled being.” Life is a blending of elements that manifests as purpose. This sense of purpose, this autonomous drive to survive, is what defines life at its most general.
And in our world, the mountains, rivers, oceans, and air sustain every living being. Life elsewhere may be very different from life here. But if it exists, it must share the same urge to survive, to perpetuate itself in deep communion with its environment. The alternative, of course, is extinction. When life exists, it will struggle to remain existing. Life is matter with intentionality.
Life without higher levels of cognition doesn’t know itself as living. It knows it needs to survive and will do what it can to remain alive, developing survival strategies with varying levels of complexity. [...] But deep as their emotions might be, animals don’t ponder the meaning of their existence. They don’t have the urge to tell their stories and wonder about their origins. We do.
And what have we done with this remarkable ability? We became expert hunters and warriors, we became artists and storytellers, we worshipped gods and coveted love and power. We became a paradox, half beasts, half gods, capable of the most beautiful creations and the most atrocious crimes...
[...] Our success has lulled us into a false sense of confidence, leading us to believe that we are above Nature. But our planet, vast as it is, is limited, and it is responding to our voracity in ways that might destroy us or, at the very least, compromise the future of our species and countless others...
This old narrative of the human has reached its end. The time has come for new humans, humans who understand that all forms of life are codependent, who have the humility to position themselves alongside all living creatures, and not above them. We have seen that this new narrative for humanity is founded on a confluence of cultures, merging Indigenous traditions with our growing scientific knowledge of the trillions of worlds around us. This new vision for humanity combines reason and spirituality, the material and the sacred, refusing to objectify the natural world. [...] Biocentrism is a vision for a morally aware humanity that celebrates and protects all forms of life as the only way to secure a healthy future for our project of civilization... (MORE - missing details)
