Living in This-World
Malchut: direct experience of the world sitting at the bottom of the unifying middle pillar where the downward flow of sephirah end to become expressed in dense material forms known to the sensing body. This is where an upward ascent begins.
Callin’ Planet Earth
Callin’ Planet Earth
Welcome to Earth. This 8,000 mile wide electromagnetically charged sphere with a bulging equatorial stomach is tied to a solar center (aka the Sun) and a pockmarked gray ball (aka the Moon) through an invisible cosmic umbilical chord that provides light-energy and gravitational nutrition. Earth travels like a wayfaring stranger along an orbital path circling
the Sun, and while doing this it simultaneously spins on its axis at
23.5 degrees to produce unique circadian rhythms and our perception of time. A vast magnetic field encapsulates Earth like an enormous condom to protect it from deadly cosmic impregnation. This ethereal shield of flowing magnetism deflects harsh radiation (like the Sun’s UV rays) and allows life-giving chemicals to pass through, behaving like a planetary toll-booth if you will.
The main customer at the toll-both is sunlight jettisoned from inside the incendiary center of the sun. The light has traveled at, well, the speed of light, for eight minutes and covered ninety-three million miles to come upon our humble little dot floating aimlessly in a cosmic abyss. Once here it percolates down through the atmosphere and strips away some of its deadly baggage thanks to the magnetic field and the thermosphere-mesosphere-stratosphere layers. Only one-half of the sunlight that left its burning genesis eight minutes previously lands beneath the ten-mile high troposphere to hit the surface.
This is where it gets interesting.
Earth is dinstinct in the whole galactic community for it seems to be the only one that takes the raw energy of the cosmos and makes LIFE. The funny sagging red chin-skin of turkey’s, the tangled geometry of invasive kudzu vines, and the assholes of elderly royal families only happen HERE. “Here” being defined as the convergence of land, air, and water that rests atop the Earth’s crust and below the troposphere-stratosphere barrier.
As sunlight pierces through the chaos of the cosmic background and upper atmopshere, harmful impurites are stripped away and a balanced goldilocks zone is reached. Below this ten-mile atmospheric barrier is where all life resides -- a thin eggshell reminding us how fragile we all are. This is the biosphere, where all the earthians fight, fuck, and forage.
It's in this spot that autotrophic plants, the primary producers, reach their cholorphyl-green bodies toward the Sun. Their bodies welcome the showering photonic rays, transmute it into usable energy, generate a planet-wide food-web, and sequester atmospheric carbon as a sort of afterthought. The miracle of photosynthesis is the first step in the 10,000 mile journey of life. As they grow, heterotrophic consumers mozying about start to eat these photosynthetic beings and take in their nutrients (carbohydrates, proteins etc.). When these consumers die, fungi decomposers recycle the plant and animal structures by excreting acids to dematerialize organic matter and feed it back into the soils which replenish life.
A Brief Fungal Interlude
Around one billion years ago, fungi migrate to the land and a mere three-hundred million years later, they're already symbiotically aligned with trees and spread widely. Weaving into the topsoil that supports all life, huge swaths of one-cell wall thick mycelial mats help plants retain water and help the ecosystem regulate health. Their modus operadi is "stay open to hostile conditions, stay resilient" and it has made them incredibly adaptable life-forms. Fungi excrete acids to break down complex molecules from dead organisms that are then re-absorbed into the soil as nutrients for growth, thus cementing their role as essential mediators in the transition from life to death. They can ingest vast amounts of toxic chemicals and essentially denature them, a process known as mycoremediation.
A few hundred million years ago, a geologic deep breath, the last common ancestor of humans and fungi bifurcates and the evolutionary tree splits directions. We still owe a lot to fungal innovation. For example, the sophisticated stomach's of most animals today is the result of tweaking a more primitive stomach that itself was based off the ability of fungi to encapsulate food in cellular sacs. We are allies. Medicinal mushrooms are well known to grow in forests --- yet another reason to stop our ecocidal behaviors. Taken as a whole, fungi, and mushrooms in particular, are as Paul Stamets says, “the neurological network of nature”; a sort of sentient membrane that becomes aware and responsive to ecological conditions and helps manage the life-supporting soils.
Beneath the roots of primary producers lie an alice-in-wonderlandian rabbit hole of mystery and depth. A 25-mile oxygen-and-silicon crust lies atop an 1800 mile iron-and-magnesium mantle that itself rests atop a 2200 mile metallic-iron-and-nickle core. Inside the inner core, deep in the 12,000 degree womb of Ma’ Earth, metallic iron and radioactive decay slowly ascend through the mantle and crust to birth a protective magnetic field and give off planetary heat. On its way up, it passes by the viscousy lithosphere where the seven tectonic plates (Eurasian, North American, South American, Antarctic, Pacific, African, Indo-Australian) have a foundation. The topological structure of earth comes from these plates converging together to push land up, diverging apart to pull land down, and sliding past each other laterally.
These multi-million year cycles aid in the forming of the six major biomes most ecologists recognize: marine, freshwater, desert, forest, grassland, and tundra. The salty-water of the marine biome, which takes up 97% of all water resources, is composed of coral reefs, estuaries, and oceans (five major ones with four levels of depth -- intertidal, pelagic, benthic, and abyssal) that are home to an uncountable numbers of species. This includes the vital algae that provide lots of the world’s oxygen and take in vast amounts of atmospheric carbon-dioxide. The remaining 3% of earth’s water resources reside in the rivers, streams, ponds, and lakes of the freshwater biome (with 70% being locked in ice --- ergo the water crisis), where essential food-chain building organisms like phytoplankton and zooplankton play their role. The desert biome covers about 1/5 of all land and includes semi-arid, cold, coastal, and hot climates, all of which breed singular creatures often not found in any other environment. A vast spectrum of species and 70% of all carbon resides in the tropical, temperate, and boreal-taiga forest biomes that cover 1/3 of all land and have deciduous (leaves falling off in non-growing seasons) and coniferous (leaves never falling off) components. The grassland biome is bifurcated into temperate and savanna areas where the porous soils and quality hummus rely on droughts with intermittant fires to regulate ecological health. Some of the coldest environments on earth are the alpine and arctic tundra biomes that rely on the death of organisms to feed the soil with nutrients...harsh!
The co-mingling of land and water is not enough for the trinity of life to emerge --- biotic beings need to breath! Not until the revolutionary days of the Oxygen Catastrophe 2.7 billion years ago did organisms learn to use this previously deadly chemical, thus becoming (polyrhythmic percussion's please...) aeorobic, or oxygen-breathing, organisms. Since then, oxygen has stayed at a 21% quantity in the air, balanced by nitrogen's 78% presence, and a 1% slew of other trace chemicals. This floating tapestry of invisible, life-giving chemicals helps regulate the water cycle, form climate patterns, and slow the loss of solar energy, so the theater of life will continue. All this tends to take place on the lower levels of the atmosphere, but that doesn't mean this is where the air “ends”. It continues to rise to a height of 625 miles until it merges with the cosmic pleroma and burst through on its journey to infinity.
That Thing You Do“Just as an apple tree ‘apples’, the earth ‘peoples’” -- Alan Watts
Earth not only peoples... it spiders, earthworms, insects, killer whales, and so much more. The alchemical processes that guide inert dead matter into the living, squirming, and twitching forms we all know are so well developed that recent scientific counting places the number of distinct species (similar individuals able to interbreed) at 8.7 million. If we rewind for about 3.5 billion years all the modern taxonomic distinctions dissolve into a common ancestor poking its way through the primordial sludge. Over scales of time that mock any notion of human longevity, this genesis creature clones, expands, and reproduces into a mindboggling bounty of biotic births. The human animal with its overwhelming urge to organize has split up these births into the following scheme: Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species. The model typically starts by defining genetic and molecular similarities and then moving to more apparant physical similarities. Collectively all these categories make up Life. This unlikely property is utterly dependent upon a mosaic of unique chemicals that weave into living tissue to continually re-alive themselves. This mosaic itself is utterly dependent upon a daily flow of energetic capital from the ol’ solar bank.
To make sure there is enough of the vital chemicals going around, earth’s metabolic body coordinates its anatomy so as to carry out replenishment cycles. Three of the most important cycles are those of carbon, nitrogen, and water.
Carbon: Plants absorb carbon through photosynthesis, gain nutrients for themselves, and kickstart the food-chain. Eventually they die or work themselves into the digestive tract of consumer-animals who die, and a mass of rotting cells fall onto soils and sea floors. Microorganisms and other decomposers feast away and the carbon transforms into coal/oil (hydrocarbons) or becomes re-used for plant growth. Through burning fuel or the respiration of plants/animals, carbon gets released back into the air. And so it goes on and on...
Nitrogen: Nitrogen fixing bacteria living in the soil take in atmospheric nitrogen and reduce it to plant nutrients (nitrates, proteins, amino acids) that aid in the growth and health of structure's. Animal consumers chew this up, weaving the nutrients into their bodies where it helps create animal proteins and high level skeletal structures. As death rolls around, the skeleton vectors break down and nitrogen gets released back into the air. And so it goes on and on...
Water: A high-elevation and high-oxygen water source, typically glacial ice, melts and flows downhill through rivers or collects into lakes before ending up in the sea. Here it evaporates upwards to form clouds that migrate across the sky and dump buckets of rain inland, creating more water. And so it goes on and on...
Support System
Every society that has ever built institutions, fought for expansion, and crumbled into the scattered shards of time and memory owes it whole brief existence to the conditions described above. The whole alive, ever-morphing earth with all its productions make up a finite Natural Capital --- the earth is bounded! Societies extract resources based on their percieved needs and, hopefully, replenish the gaian metabolism through regenerative actions. The delusional claims of infinite growth enthusiasts lead to an unbalanced relationship with the conditions that lead to life here on earth. This profound misunderstanding results in some very destructive habits (ecocide, species-cide etc.), but unfortunately, it seems to be the operating system of our increasingly globalized “civilization” (with the root “civil” being taken lightly).
On the political and economic theater of planet earth, the main struggle seems to be between the process of globalization and centralized power versus the process of deglobalization and decentralized power. Couched in religious regalia, it’s akin to monotheism (one energetic, economic, and political structure) versus polytheism (many energetic, economic, and political structures).
The centralizing structures include the basic geopolitical players I wrote about before plus a cadre of other globalized entities that often take the form of centralized banks or intergovernmental military organizations. These superstructures break down into smaller nation-state and local-county size structures where a bit more malleability and accounability lies. This coupled with money and war mold the socio-cultural air most people breath. Wallowing in cynicism is too hip and easy --- especially when real problems abound, problems that need the energetic motivation forfeited to the maintenance of a cynical attitude.
Although by no means exhaustive, the Millenium Project has outlined the following issues as being of major importance in the globalized environment of the 21st century.
1. Sustainable Development and Climate Change - how do we continue to develop world economies (electrical grids, transportation systems, housing etc.), especially the "developing" countries, while staying within the limits and vulnerabilities imposed by a changing climate?
2. Clean Drinking Water - how do we share water resources in such a way that everyone on spaceship earth has clean sanitary water without causing significant conflict, both today and as population's grow and freshwater becomes more scarce?
3. Population and Resources - on a finite planet with a history of highly unequal resource distribution, how do we make sure that the 2.3 billion new humans by 2050 will have the necessities of life (land, food, shelter, energy)?
4. Democratization - how do we short-circuit the alpha male obsession with installing totalitarian forms of government and bring about more participatory forms of government across the globe?
5. Long-Term Perspectives - how to get past the "next election cycle" mentality that mires much of politics in dangerous short term "solutions" that have no regard for long-term consequences or goal-making?
6. Global Convergence of IT - as technologies develop beyond our ability to predict, become woven into most aspects of our existence, and form an intelligence of their own, how do we adapt to the changes brought about?
7. Rich - Poor Gap - how can resources and energy be redistributed in a more equitable way so that over two billion people don't have to scrape by on two dollars a day?
8. Health Issues - how do we eliminate deaths from preventable diseases, stem the force and size of outbreaks, and prepare for unknown viral infections?
9. Capacity to Decide - in a world of unimaginable complexity and oceans of superfluous information, how can people and governments work more symbiotically with computer systems to make better decisions in a timely manner?
10. Peace and Conflict - how do we remedy the conditions that lead to warfare and how do we stem the impact of new technologies of destruction (biological warfare, mass-destruction weapons etc.)?
11. Status of Women - how do we push for the empowerment of women (politically, socially, economically etc.) and promote gender equality so that the patriarchal historical trend can diminish and an egalitarian framework can emerge?
12. Transnational Organized Crime - how do we decrease the power and revenue stream of untaxed and unregulated global enterprises that profit from human and drug trafficking, money laundering, and other nefarious schemes?
13. Energy - how do we provide the energy needs of all spaceship earth without destroying its ecosystems, sucking up all the nonrenewables, and causing tremendous socio-political strife?
14. Science and Technology - as we become more dependent upon the innovations of practical science, how will it mold the world we are creating for ourselves?
15. Global Ethics - what ethical guidelines will help future decision-making as the world becomes increasingly complex, bazaar, and impossible to predict?
To steal, paraphrase, and add to the wisdom of a dead philosopher (or “the most dangerous man in America” if you’re Richard Nixon), the colors of our globe are not due to the soil being green or blue or red, it’s due to a bunch of anal-territorial primate gangsters pissing in colored ink to mark their territory. The reptilian brain is an old and powerful organizer of human consciousness, so despite the euphemistic tones of government agencies and think tanks, it’s often simple animal politics that run the show.
Robert Anton Wilson in his jaw-dropping work Prometheus Rising suggests the term “domesticated primates” to talk about humans. Humorous and insightful, it’s a powerful reminder of our ape ancestry. The individual human is probably the most fundamental component of the larger political structures described above. So what is the individual human then?
On the surface, a bag of skin stretched over a skeletal structure of some 206 bones fortified with calcium carbonate and linked by joints and cartilage. Along with the muscular, nervous, endocrine, respitory, cardio-vascular, lymph-vascular, digestive, reproductive, and excretory systems, these make up the bulk of the high-level organ network operating within our bodies. Everything from circulating oxygen to analyzing incoming sensory data, from regulating breathing cycles to producing hormones, from disseminating chemical nutrients to fighting disease, and from metabolic alchemy to baby-making, is all done more-or-less automatically by these sensitive organ networks. These networks are composed of individual organs that have at least one of the four types of tissue (epithelial, muscle, connective, nervous) and can be further subdivided into cellular communities.
Cells and the emergent intelligence of the communities they cohere into are one of the most important units of human anatomy. At about 100th of a millimeter in diameter, these self-sufficient life factories merge (meiosis) and divide (mitosis) to such a large degree that 100 million of them stretch across the terrain of the human animal and spread untold volumes of genetic and chemical information. Although they gestalt into vast ecosystems, a thin membrane defines the boundary of individual members, no matter how porous it may be. Beneath this lies a jelly-like cytoplasmic goo holding an orchestra of life-making organelles, like the energy gathering/producing mitochondria and the structure-building ribosomes. Most importantly a nucleus which holds 46 chromosomes in 23 pairs made of gene-sequences built from 5 nucleotides (adenine, guanine, cytosine, uracil, and thymine) and twisted into double helix DNA strands that store the genetic blueprint. This genetic code becomes read and transcribed into a phenotypic expression through a complicated process involving RNA, enzymes, and a host of other microscopic happenings, eventually making amino acid sequences that form into proteins and cellular structure's.
This whole process of structures within structures continues on down to the sub-atomic and quantum realms, and eventually to the conundrum of emptiness beautifully expressed in Gary Zukov's The Dancing Wu Li Master's.
Zooming out to an everyday phenomenological level, the human animal with all its inner biochemistry is stratified into two sexes, for the most part, and awash in a globalized sociopolitical-economic structure on the surface of an 8,000 mile wide earth that thrives off daily injections from a solar source 93 million miles away. If we drop the historical weight of cultural and religious codes imposed on everyone, it seems we become lone creatures in an environment devoid of meaning other than that we give it.
Essentially there are no essentials. We exist first and then any “essences” of good/bad, right/wrong, just/unjust become laid over an amoral landscape like a medieval cartographer trying to understand the world terrain. In existentialist speak it means “existence precedes essence”. We can choose to accept guidelines of meaning externally imposed or we can choose not to accept; either way we have to choose and meaning comes from these choices. We're caught inside the terrible responsibility of being "condemned to freedom" as Sarte wrote in No Exit.
This can be deeply troubling to many because the withering away of inherited meaning opens up a vast landscape of ambiguity and uncertainty, of meaningless-purposeless absurdity. Although terrifying at first and leading to the angst felt by most existentialists, this realization is a disguised blessing because it places the choosing self, with all the responsibility it entails, as the path toward freedom. No more unexamined clutching in fear to old codes, for that is acting in bad faith. As the subtleties of ambiguity and doubt become embraced, our perceptions become much more tuned to the world of direct experience.
This tuning requires an attitude of trust, for we exist inside a nest of structure's way beyond our immediate conscious awareness.
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