There seems to be a revival of the 70s concept of Gaia (Mother Earth). The concept, in a haze of hallucinogenic visions, endowed the Earth with consciousness and purpose. It made a new God of the Earth’s biosphere and attained a form of cult status – especially among the mindless and the great unwashed. It seems the millennials too are searching for meaning and purpose and some have revived some of the virtuous and self-righteous cults of 40 -50 years ago.
It brings back the classic dilemma of group versus individual. There can often be conflict between a “group purpose” and an individual. Invoking the “common good” is often used to suppress the individual. Democracy is all about suppressing the minority. Is a group purpose (perceived by who? defined by who?) superior to that of an individual? This is just another manifestation of the same kind of conflict interface which appears between local/global, national/international, bilateral/multilateral and centralised/distributed.
A few months ago I observed:
Consider the characteristics of purpose.
- Purpose is not confined only to conscious minds or only to all living things. Purpose, as an objective or a direction, can be attributed to anything. But the attribution and its articulation seems confined to the existence of a conscious mind.
- Having (or being attributed with) purpose implies the flow of time. It implies a current state and actions to reach some other desired state at a later time. A purpose can not and does not address a past state.
- A purpose as an objective may describe a future state outside the space of perceived causality (and therefore of an imaginary state). But observe that even an imaginary future state can provide a real direction for current actions.
- A consciousness does not need to have a purpose and all its actions may be merely reactive. It also follows that if a conscious mind perceives no desired direction (no purpose), then its actions are reactive and merely respond to the prevailing imbalances it experiences.
- When more than one conscious mind is involved, individual purposes and the actions they engender, are additive and combine as vectors giving a “net” purpose.
The purpose of purposes is to give direction to actions. If an individual perceives no “higher” group purpose, that individual’s actions are then directed by that individual’s own purposes (or lack of purpose). Even where a group purpose is discernible, it can only be effected by the actions of individuals who subordinate their own purposes to that of the group. “Higher” purpose is irrelevant unless – and until – it is adopted by the entity carrying out the action. A “higher” purpose is ineffective except as disseminated and adopted by the actors.
Ultimately there is no higher purpose than that set or adopted by an individual for himself or herself.
When a group purpose suppresses or overrules an individual purpose, a feedback loop from the individual to the group (registering protest or dissent) is possible. A pseudo group consciousness comes into play (even if that can only be effected through other individuals).
But no form of group consciousness can be ascribed in any way to any species or to life in general or to Evolution or to the Earth or to the Sun.
Ultimately there is no higher purpose than that set or adopted by an individual for himself or herself.
And Mother Earth does not care what humans do or don’t do.
Tags: consciousness, Purpose
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