I do not necessarily think that the Earth is overpopulated with humans and obsessing about the overpopulation of Earth may result in immoral justifications for reducing populations. Some thinkers even believe a deliberate population reduction has already been happening for years by nefarious design, but I will not go into that subject here.
My view is that humans are analogous to being some of the most complex “stem cells” of Gaia, as we can be whoever we want, consciously choose whatever actions we want to take out in the world and choose what we want to grow. We could choose to grow a permaculture garden or practice silvopasture on a plot of land increasing wildlife and insect habitats while providing food for our family. On the other hand, we could instead choose to pave over that plot, put up a cell tower, dig a quarry, and sell unnecessary merchandise to our neighbors to make a lot of money to buy more stuff we don’t really need. It is up to us. Most of the environmental degradation happening on the planet is caused either directly or indirectly by conspicuous consumption of resources as detailed by many authors (including in one of my previous posts). However, notice that in a conversation about population many people usually mutter “too many people” under their breath, never “too many machines” or “too many things,” for example. The programming runs deep. Though, choosing to have small families does seem to be a wise choice given the state of the planetary ecosystem right now and would allow for a gentle stabilizing of the world population.
Despite what we see going on environmentally around the world, it seems a bit ridiculous to automatically assume that humans are born inherently greedy and thus become selfish destroyers of nature. Another possibility is that in modern societies many humans are starved of meaningful relationships, nutritious food, and high quality air/water, in a similar vein to how cancer cells are previously healthy cells that are starved of oxygen and proper voltage. Thus these cells must resort to anaerobic respiration to maintain growth at the expense of the larger system (the body of the organism in this case). It seems that many of us humans resort to “anaerobic” activities in a feeble attempt to fill the inner void of our psyches and bodies. Cut off from real community, intimacy, authentic relationships, nutrient dense food, good quality air and high quality water (all examples of real wealth), people will fall into many different addictions in an attempt to make up for these losses. Buying a mansion, multiple cars, excessive electronic gadgets, overindulging on high fat, high sugar foods, taking various drugs, watching pornography, random hook-ups, these actions seem to all be desperate attempts to fill unmet needs with environmentally and/or psychologically damaging consumption, and I have even taken some of these actions myself trying to create an environmentally-conscious life here, they are not easy to avoid.
Top: USGS map depicting urban and suburban areas (purple and red coloring) spread over the interior northeast of the USA despite little population growth in this area over the past 50 years. Bottom: Aerial photos depicting an area north of Houston, TX in 1944 on the left and in 2021 on the right, an extreme example of suburban sprawl.
It does not necessarily have to be this way however, many people are finding ways to escape the socioeconomic matrix by building organic farms, homesteads, environmental non-profits and other things. The matrix is very difficult to escape from as I can personally attest, so I am making due at the moment by just trying to focus my attention on alternative environmental science subjects and volunteering. I agree with the notion that a universal basic income would allow more people to take more financial risk in building environmentally sustainable systems. Many of my own environmentally destructive decisions (such as agreeing to work on questionable ‘environmental’ projects in corporate America) have been made due to financial woes. Though, I would obviously like to see the UBI provided without government stipulations such as vaccine passports or carbon credits, for example. Good luck to anyone else wanting to make the journey on creating a more green world!
Small organic farm with sustainable forest management.
A quote from Richard Reese’s book What is Sustainable also speaks to this topic:
“A while back, a friend spent time with the MicMac teacher, Albert Ward. She was furious and frustrated about how we civilized humans were destroying the planet. Albert told her that if she wanted to heal Mother Earth – which he really felt didn’t need our help – the first step was to heal herself. She needed to discover who she was, and then she needed to be herself.”
In virtually every sphere of life including the physical, biological, and social, technological devices are displacing and replacing natural systems and the innate abilities of human beings. Why is that? Why don’t we focus on restoring our natural environmental systems and developing our innate physical, mental and social abilities to their fullest potential? For centuries humans have been embarking on a process of mechanization and utilization of increasing amounts of technology, culminating here in the early 21st century with the rollout of a worldwide 5G wireless network over the landscape and the launching of a literal “skynet” of satellites into low-earth orbit. Yet, mental illness is at an all-time high, pollution of our air, water, and food is still widespread, and the entire enterprise is obviously unsustainable on any number of environmental, ecological, and even psycho-spiritual fronts.
Many technologies have their uses and their places, as obviously this blog would not exist without the internet, but the extreme focus on mechanizing, controlling and manipulating every life and planetary process with complex technology leaves something else to be desired for many. A new renaissance is sorely needed at this time, right? The following is a short list of examples of where technology has usurped natural processes and following that is a list of ecological alternatives to those technologies.
Immune Systems and Pharmaceuticals
Regarding our overall health, our natural immune systems are being disrupted and degraded by different types of environmental pollution, as I have discussed at length in previous posts on environmental health. Consequently, our innate immune system capabilities are systematically being replaced with an ever increasing number of vaccines and other kinds of pharmaceuticals, many of which have significant side effects, including the over-stimulation of our immune systems and their contribution to the development of autoimmune disorders. In addition, think of the immensely complicated industrial supply chain that has to exist in order to mass produce a vaccine or other pharmaceutical that is delivered from a research lab all the way to being directly injected into your body. The different biochemical laboratory facilities, the large factories for constructing glass vials or plastic containers, all of the delivery trucks along the supply chain, the refrigeration systems and many more technological systems just to keep the vaccine/pharmaceutical supply chain going. This entire supply chain requires the consumption of vast amounts of natural resources and human labor in order to perform a natural function (immunity to pathogens) that our bodies could easily do well if we actually took good care of them (our “terrain”) and the environments we live in.
Human Breast Milk and Cow Milk/Formulated Milk
In the 20th century, some scientists and doctors decided that breast milk from a human mother could be replaced with cow’s milk or other formulated milks to improve a baby’s nutrition. The problem is that milk from the mother has just the precise balance of nutrients for satisfying the needs of a human baby. As Edward Goldsmith notes in The Way: An Ecological World View, human milk has a higher calcium to phosphorous ratio than other milks which is important for the growth of a baby’s musculoskeletal system. In addition, the level of sodium in cows milk is too high, leading to potential blood pressure issues in babies and toddlers. The level of copper in cows milk is also too low, leading to iron/hemoglobin transport issues and the development of anemia, which was common in North American infants a few decades ago.
Physical Tolerance Limits and Heating/Air Conditioning
After heating fuels and air conditioning became economical in the beginning of the 20th century many people have let their physical tolerance limits atrophy. They do not feel comfortable with temperatures below 65 degrees Fahrenheit inside of buildings in the winter, and temperatures above 72 degrees Fahrenheit inside of buildings in the summer. This is an extremely narrow range of comfortable temperatures and the consumption of vast amounts of fuels and electricity is required to maintain this narrow range inside of the built environment.
Innate Cognitive Capacity and IT Devices
Regarding memory and cognitive capacity, our innate memory skills are being degraded by increased reliance on information technology devices like GPS for navigating, for example. A study was done around a decade ago showing that old-school taxi drivers who had memorized the streets of London had a larger hippocampus compared to citizens who used GPS devices to get to their destinations. The citizens’ ability to create a mental map of London had atrophied, and a part of their brain literally became smaller after increased reliance on the new technology. Regarding cognitive capacity, calculators replace our ability to do simple arithmetic in our heads, emails cause our ability to compose hand-written letters with legible handwriting to atrophy… the list goes on, it is the the literal outsourcing of our cognition and memory to the technosphere.
Natural Waste Recycling Processes and Sewage/Wastewater Treatment Plants
Historically, human waste was delivered by wagon and wheelbarrow back to the agricultural fields surrounding the village for use as humanure commonly referred to as “night soil.” In modern societies, gigantic wastewater treatment facilities are built next to natural water bodies and dump large amounts of treated wastewater, which then still heavily pollutes natural water bodies with excess nutrients, trace pharmaceutical residues that are not filtered out by the treatment process, and some heavy metals. Other areas use cesspools and septic tanks, which when they fail, cause drinking water aquifers to be contaminated with excess nitrogen and traces of pharmaceuticals.
Traditional Social Networks and Social Media/Dating Websites
The vast majority of people desire to be accepted as part of a group and to find a loving partner, and historically this goal was accomplished by living in a small band of people with whom you were intimately familiar with. In modern anonymous mass societies people are now strewn across the country in urban sprawl conurbations with weak social connections to the people around them due to people continuously moving away for jobs and other reasons. The social connections, that often had a large physical component (e.g. handshakes, hugs, sex, etc.), between people in historic social networks have now been largely digitized by social media websites, dating websites, and email. For example, a few extroverted people in historic social networks used to be great matchmakers, introducing potential mates to each other and helping to form couples. This formerly organic process has now been largely relegated to social media, dating websites, and professional matchmaking services with mixed results, not to mention the large amount of resources including the electricity it takes to run the servers that host these websites.
A comparison of a formerly heavily forested area north of Houston, TX in 1944 on the left and the same area in 2021 on the right, an extreme example of urban sprawl.
The Eco-logic Renaissance
With the increasing creep of the technosphere into every aspect of life over the past decades and especially over the past two years, it is uplifting to see a growing interest among the public in ecological living topics including composting, organic gardening, composting toilets and humanure, small-scale renewable energy systems, simple water filtration, holistic health modalities, and other appropriate or “nature-like” technologies.
Natural Healing Modalities as Immune System Enhancers
Instead of relying solely on vaccines and other pharmaceutical agents for solving every health problem or curing an infection, many people are turning to alternative healing modalities for solutions to their health problems that have not been adequately addressed by mainstream medicine. The following table is a brief list of simple holistic health tips to improve immune system function naturally, as an example. Tomes of more information on alternative health can be found online or in an alternative book store.
Drink pure, unpolluted water
Improve sleeping conditions
Improve nutrient intake including Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Zinc, etc.
Decrease exposure to chemical pollutants and electrosmog (non-native EMFs)
Increase time in nature including grounding with the Earth
Natural breastfeeding for babies
Herbal remedies
Wetlands as Natural Wastewater Treatment Systems
A growing number of communities around the world are turning to restoring wetlands in order to process large amounts of wastewater. Healthy wetlands contain large amounts of peat with brown lignin compounds that can absorb large amounts of organic wastes and sequester heavy metals, thereby filtering the water as it flows downstream to other water bodies. At the scale of a home or small business, many are turning to composting toilet technologies or greener septic systems to reduce the amount of wastewater that is generated and discharged to the environment.
Developing Natural Human Abilities Instead of Overreliance on Technologies
When the power goes out, the GPS signal is lost, the water stops running, and the delivery trucks run out of fuel, people in modern societies are often left helpless as we have lost ancient skills that our ancestors used to survive in natural environments. We can learn or relearn old skills and even marry new ways of thinking to old skills and technologies (e.g. developing new passive solar water heater designs). We can develop mental maps of the towns and cities we live in instead of relying on GPS all of the time. We can practice hormesis (improve our physical tolerance limits) and maintain a comfortable body temperature throughout the year without resorting to excessive use of heating fuels in the winter or air conditioning in the summer. This seems to be a wiser choice than choosing to rely on the fossil-fueled technosphere that is showing increasing signs of incoherence, disruption and outright collapse (especially obvious in the last two years). Explore Arthur Haines’s website on rewilding and relearning ancient survival techniques for more information on this.
Ecovillages as Cohesive Social Networks
Many people are fed up with the social and mental illness that results from living in anonymous mass societies, and ecovillages are one antidote to the increasing social alienation and mental illness observed in modern societies. Ecovillages and ecocentric communities can allow people to form more permanent connections with those around them and possibly lighten the load of anxiety and stress so prevalent in modern mass societies. Regarding love, Tamara ecovillage in Portugal, for example, has a radical take on love and sexual relationships and creates a space for people to freely explore alternative ways to express their romantic desires and form partnerships that are difficult to implement in anonymous and alienating mass societies.
Conclusion
All in all, the wholesale replacement of the basic functions of the biosphere (Gaia) has been going on for centuries, but we still have time to change course if we want to. It is becoming increasingly apparent to a growing number of people that attempting to solve the problems created by technology with ever more complex technologies is maybe not the best way to go about the issue.
Instead of relying on and looking to “tech-no-logic” solutions for all of our problems, maybe a shift to focusing on “eco-logic” techniques and solutions would help? Why develop a Rube-Goldberg type of device to suck carbon out of the atmosphere but breaks down every few months, for example, when you can simply plant and maintain an edible forest garden, instead?
Currently, it appears that the entire physiology of Gaia is being systematically disrupted, degraded and replaced by a technologic mechanical system for whatever host of reasons (there are different theories floating around). However, whatever the reason is, a growing minority of people are fed up with this enterprise of attempting to conquer and control nature and are seeking ways to work with and make peace with her instead.
Further Reading:
The Ascent of Humanity Charles Eisenstein (free to read on his website)
“Lockdowns, mandatory masks, social distancing and mandatory vaccinations all have serious side effects on people’s physical and mental health, and these effects (e.g. increased depression from social isolation and job loss) are the collateral damage from a total war approach. Instead of the germ warfare approach, why not improve people’s immune systems and their local environments so they can withstand viral infections much more easily? This approach would help for any number of infectious diseases including influenza. Germ warfare only solves one problem (eradicating the germ) at the expense of causing extensive collateral damage, while the environmental/immune system approach solves many problems all at the same time, though this approach will take longer to have an effect.
Another quote from The Way: An Ecological World-View sums up the problems with the germ warfare approach succinctly: ‘Unfortunately technological expedients [e.g. lockdowns, antivirals, vaccines, social distancing, etc.] only solve technological problems. They cannot reverse the disruption of natural systems [e.g. our immune systems and environments]. Alleviating the symptoms, they render the problems more tolerable and thus serve to perpetuate them.’ Consequently, this current infectious disease crisis could go on perpetually if the environmental health problems facing our society are never resolved.”
Now what happened in 2021? The experimental vaccines were rolled out which contributed to the mutation of the coronavirus into the Delta variant, which has spread across many countries including those that were heavily vaccinated. This is similar to the problem of overusing antibiotics over the past few decades leading to the mutation of bacteria into “superbugs” that resist antibiotic treatments. Indeed, it looks like the current crisis will continue on until we change course.
The chapter titled ‘The War on Germs’ in Charles Eisenstein’s book, The Ascent of Humanity, is even more eerily prescient of the current crisis as it was published over 14 years ago in 2007, here is an excerpt from it with emphasis by me:
“The new diseases of the modern era are of a different sort. Cancer, arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome, Alzheimer’s disease, Crohn’s Disease, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, AIDS, and so on defy the medicine of control, which has made almost no progress in curing them despite research outlays dwarfing those of the vaccine/antibiotic era. Significantly, most if not all of these new diseases involve a dysfunction of the immune system.
Helpless against the diseases of the 21st century, we instead take ever more extreme measures against the microbial world. One manifestation of the war on germs is the proliferation of antibacterial soaps, latex gloves for all food service workers, and strap-on mouthguards that appeared (and in some cases were legally mandated) during the Asian SARS ‘epidemic.’ These devices constitute a physical barrier between self and world, concretizing the psychological distance that separates us from each other and nature. Sometimes I have nightmare visions of a future where the very idea ofbreathing in each other’s unfiltered air is repulsive and illegal, where everyone wears a gas mask and all human contact is mediated through latex or computer terminals.
Equally frightening is the current hysteria about avian flu. Since it is supposedly spread by wild birds to poultry flocks, some officials are implementing new controls prohibiting chickens from ranging free. Yet it is the caged indoor hens with their debilitated immune systems that are themost susceptible, and it is factory methods of poultry production that actually spread the disease. A related proposal in the United States is the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), which would mandate that a digital tag be embedded under the skin of all livestock. Everywhere, the technologies of control are the same: separation, confinement, and the numbering of all things.
As long as their ideological underpinnings remain intact, none of these trends will abate. Already medical microchips are available that can be embedded under human skin to monitor various physiological states. In Asia during SARS, body temperature readings were taken as condition for entering certain public facilities. Potential epidemics offer a rationale for the quarantine of populations and control over their movements – an internal passport system justified on medical pretexts. All such measures make perfect sense from the mindset of separation and control.”
Replace the words ‘chickens’ and ‘livestock’ with “people” in the third paragraph of the excerpt above and what do you have going on here in the world in 2021? We have other options, we could be collectively embarking on a massive environmental restoration operation to improve people’s local environments and reduce the disruption and debilitation of their immune systems. Restoration of agricultural soils, growing more nutritious food, cleaning up toxic waste sites, reducing air pollution, removing cell towers from residential areas, etc. What is it going to take to get all that going instead of more and more control measures and coercion?
Around 70 years ago, the microbiologist Rene Dubos started publicly discussing his philosophy of health called the “Ecology of Health.” Here is a discussion of Dubos’ life and views: Rene Dubos and the Ecology of Health.
Rene Dubos discussed the idea of the microbiome inside of humans, its relationship to the environment, and its relationship to disease decades before this idea became a mainstream topic. The microbiome and even the virome (i.e. the community of viruses inside of an organism) resemble ecosystems with different species of microbes and different types of viruses interacting with each other inside of the bodies of larger organisms (e.g. plants and animals). Disruptions to the balance and harmony of these microecosystems can lead to disease and bad health outcomes.
Here is an excerpt from environmentalist Edward Goldsmith’s magnum opus, The Way: An Ecological World-View: “Man will always be inhabited by vast populations of microbes; indeed, according to the American microbiologist Lynn Margulis, known for her work on microbial ecology and the Gaia thesis, we harbor in our bodies as many microbial cells (prokaryotes) as animal cells (eukaryotes), most of them playing an essential role in our metabolism. [Rene] Dubos traces the source of diseases to a breakdown in the critical balance between man and his microbial populations, brought about by a range of possible factors such as old age, malnutrition [e.g. zinc deficiency, vitamin D deficiency], exposure to low-level radiation [e.g. wireless EMR, radon] or to chemical pollutants [e.g. glyphosate and/or other chemicals disrupting the gut flora, air pollution, etc.]… Louis Pasteur, who was the first to incriminate the microorganism, eventually saw the error of his ways [‘The microbe is nothing, the terrain everything’]. W.R. Day, an authority on plant diseases, also saw very clearly that blaming the parasite leads to the neglect of fundamental causes. An infectious disease may be caused by a subtle combination of factors which reduces the resistance of an organism, making it vulnerable to an attack which, under normal [e.g. pristine, healthy] conditions, it would repel with ease.”
The human body has a community of viruses (i.e. a microecosystem or virome), including rhinoviruses, coronaviruses, and influenza viruses that increase and decrease over the seasons, year after year (see this paper: Virus – Virus Dynamics in Glasgow 2005-2013, which describes how the community of viruses within the human respiratory tract and the human population as a whole changes and interacts over time). Dr. Skip Virgin gave an interesting talk at the NIH about the mammalian virome and how it resembles a microecosystem. Also, it may be that these viruses are actually conveying genetic/environmental information about environmental toxins to cells of the body using a form of horizontal gene transfer.
A graph from the Virus-Virus Dynamics research paper showing the changes in the prevalence of certain viruses (e.g. RV = Rhinovirus, IAV/IAB = Influenza, CoV = Coronavirus) in the population of Glasgow over time.
The author Charles Eisenstein and Dr. Zach Bush discuss these various virus topics in this podcast titled “Life is a Community”: https://charleseisenstein.org/podcasts/new-and-ancient-story-podcast/dr-zach-bush-life-is-a-community-e49/. Part of the discussion in this podcast is analogous to this discussion of exosome theory which theorizes that viruses are actually damaged DNA/RNA remnants (exosomes) of cells that were damaged by chemical toxins or another type of adverse environmental effect (e.g. stress and anxiety). Though, in slight contradiction to that exosome theory discussion, it is possible that exosomes could then “infect” other people to transfer the genetic/environmental information about the toxin to the next person.
Despite Rene Dubos’ work and these alternative health theories, why is our society still wedded to germ theory and germ warfare? Is it because this theory is very profitable for certain pharmaceutical companies and segments of modern medicine? Terrain theory, the theory that disease is more of a function of the environmental conditions within and around the diseased organism than the actions of the microbe, is not taught widely throughout society. However, terrain theory matches up quite well with the ecology of health philosophy (as well as exosome theory), so here is a discussion of terrain theory by a chiropractic physician to tie my discussion all together: Germ Theory vs. Terrain Theory.
What is the Best Approach?
Considering the insights provided by the ecology of health philosophy, terrain theory, and exosome theory, is declaring total war against just one of hundreds of microbes the best approach to a pandemic made worse or that is arguably caused by environmental problems? Another microbe will just take its place, leading to perpetual war if the environmental problems are not resolved. In addition, how are sick people supposed to truly heal when we turn their bodies and environments into a war zone? How are healthcare workers and environmental health specialists supposed to address the hundreds of other diseases people are suffering from if the CDC and the WHO tell them to put the majority of their focus onto just one virus? That doesn’t make much sense, honestly. Maybe if the mortality rate of the coronavirus was 5%, but it is far lower than that, approaching 0.1 to 0.2%. And the mortality rate across different areas of the world is directly correlated with environmental problems such as air pollution and malnutrition.
Lockdowns, mandatory masks, social distancing and mandatory vaccinations all have serious side effects on people’s physical and mental health, and these effects (e.g. increased depression from social isolation and job loss) are the collateral damage from a total war approach. Instead of the germ warfare approach, why not improve people’s immune systems and their local environments so they can withstand viral infections much more easily? This approach would help for any number of infectious diseases including influenza. Germ warfare only solves one problem (eradicating the germ) at the expense of causing extensive collateral damage, while the environmental/immune system approach solves many problems all at the same time, though this approach will take longer to have an effect.
Another quote from The Way: An Ecological World-View sums up the problems with the germ warfare approach succinctly: “Unfortunately technological expedients [e.g. lockdowns, antivirals, vaccines, social distancing, etc.] only solve technological problems. They cannot reverse the disruption of natural systems [e.g. our immune systems and environments]. Alleviating the symptoms, they render the problems more tolerable and thus serve to perpetuate them.” Consequently, this current infectious disease crisis could go on perpetually if the environmental health problems facing our society are never resolved.
Anything we do to strengthen our immune systems and improve the environments that surround us will help to end this crisis. We are the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, and the information we absorb. One of the silver linings to this crisis is that many people are finally waking up to the immense environmental problems our society is grappling with, and hopefully significant changes on that front will occur over the next few years. [PS, I hope these changes happen from the ground up on a individual and local level because I definitely do not have a favorable opinion of the UN’s Agenda 2030 plan].
The Soeller Panel 