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>> All in all it was a bit of a spiritual-mystical 'Earth Mother Loves You' theme My exposure to the GAIA hypothesis was that the earth is a living system, not
by itronitron 4y ago
>> All in all it was a bit of a spiritual-mystical 'Earth Mother Loves You' theme
My exposure to the GAIA hypothesis was that the earth is a living system, not that earth mother loves me. It was an unusual combination of radical thinking and concise communication.
- jhbadger 4y agoThe problem with it is that it ignores that living creatures for the most part compete, not cooperate. Even the ones that do cooperate evolve successful "cheaters" that get the benefits of cooperation without the drawbacks. There is no "system" of the Earth but millions of competing systems. The fact that they've managed not not destroy the Earth's ecosystem (yet) is simply a coincidence. In fact, there's at least one example in the past of one that did cause such a catastrophe -- cyanobacteria, which produced the large amounts of free oxygen we have today in our atmosphere. Necessary to our (and most animals) existence, but deadly to most of the life on Earth at the time (which was anaerobic).