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Unfolding Nature Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

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InvisibledeCypher
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Registered: 02/10/08
Posts: 56,232
The Medea Hypothesis
    #18755169 - 08/25/13 01:27 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)



Quote:

The Medea hypothesis is a term coined by paleontologist Peter Ward[1] for the anti-Gaian hypothesis that multicellular life, understood as a superorganism, is suicidal; in this view microbial-triggered mass extinctions are attempts to return the Earth to the microbial dominated state it has been for most of its history.[2][3][4] It is named after the mythological Medea, who killed her own children. Medea represents the Earth, and her children are multicellular life.
Past "suicide attempts" include:
  • Methane poisoning, 3.5 billion years ago
  • The oxygen catastrophe, 2.7 billion years ago
  • Snowball earth, twice, 2.3 billion years ago and 790–630 million years ago
  • At least five putative hydrogen sulfide-induced mass extinctions, such as the Great Dying, 252.28 million years ago

The list does not include the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, since this was, as least partially, externally induced by a meteor impact.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medea_hypothesis

It's an interesting theory.  Most of our spiritual beliefs are dominated by our human-centric beliefs and ideas that we humans are the favored species on Earth; our mythologies usually have the gods or god proclaim our right and dominion over all other lifeforms, and our spiritual and metaphysical predictions tell tales of our inevitable ascension into a higher state of being--some believe there are myriads of benevolent and malevolent beings watching us and guiding our evolution because we're so important, or that God Himself, a transcendent Being, chose our planet out of all the billions upon billions of planets out there to incarnate as one of us.  The Gaia hypothesis, believed in by many who assume a fundamentally benevolent attitude to our current situation, assumes that Planet Earth's purpose is to ensure our survival by regulating the atmosphere and other factors to keep us eating, breathing, fucking, and killing each other all year-round.  Because we're special, right?  :satansmoking:

But what if we're not?  What if our situation is the same as the dinosaurs, merely an interesting footnote in the long span of evolutionary time?  We assume we're special because we have a brain and opposable thumbs, but just counting by numbers the truly dominant lifeform on this planet is bacteria, NOT humanity.  They have caused the majority of Earth's extinction-level events in the past, and they will continue living long after we nuke ourselves out of existence or die from a biological plague.  What if we're just a temporary aberration, a blip on the otherwise uninterrupted purpose of Earth as a bacteria-incubator?

Quote:

In a challenge to the Gaia hypothesis, which holds that all life functions as nurturing, super-organismal “mother”, Ward argues that life on earth has a death wish that would do Freud proud.

Ward claims that, contrary to popular images of cataclysmic asteroids and volcanoes, most mass extinctions on earth were set in motion by microbes.  2.4 billion years ago, microscopic cyanobacteria emerged newly equipped with photosynthesis and triggered the Great Oxygenation Event. While great for aerobic organisms, it was fatal news for anaerobic life, which had up until then had free reign over the planet. The sudden release of oxygen is also likely what set off the Huronian Glaciation, a deadly “snowball earth” that kept the planet locked in ice for 300 million years.

Anaerobic microbes had their revenge during subsequent extinction events. Historically, whenever atmospheric carbon has risen above 1,000 parts per million (ppm), a super-charged greenhouse effect dramatically weakens the temperature differential between the poles and the tropics. Without pronounced temperature gradients to drive ocean mixing, only the top layer of the sea remains oxygenated. Anaerobic bacteria thrive below this zone, producing enough hydrogen sulfide gas to poison the entire planet. This poisoning may be to blame for the End-Permian event, “the mother of all extinctions“, when 96% of all marine organisms disappeared.

Humans, microbes though we’re not, are an element of the earth’s self-destructive tendency. If our Co2 emissions go above the tipping point of 1,000 ppm, as predicted by some upper-end IPCC estimates for 2100, we may trip an event identical to the one that wiped out the trilobites.

Interestingly enough, in the long run, it’s a carbon shortage that may spell the end of life, long before the sun vaporizes the oceans. In 500 million years, life’s insatiable need for carbon – the basic building block of every organism – could mean that atmospheric carbon might eventually drop below 10 ppm, the amount needed to sustain grasses. In terms of total biomass, evidence indicates that earth is already in its “old age”.

Life sprung from a happy coincidence of molecules. According to Ward, it will bumble around earth for about 4 billion years, and snuff itself out just as accidentally as it arose. So much for Disney nature.



http://www.nextnature.net/2012/05/the-medea-hypothesis-is-life-on-earth-suicidal/

Thoughts?  :psychsplit:


--------------------
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.


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OfflineNastyDHL
Male User Gallery


Registered: 04/04/08
Posts: 3,586
Loc: New England
Last seen: 1 year, 1 month
Re: The Medea Hypothesis [Re: deCypher]
    #18763181 - 08/27/13 10:11 AM (10 years, 5 months ago)





I think people believe themselves to be much too important (myself included)

Sometimes I feel a deep soulful connection to nature. I wonder if that is nature's love for me or if that is my love for nature. Or both, meeting. Maybe nature has such love for me that anything I've opened up to expressing to it is immediately received and returned. Maybe that is the Disney nature.

Obviously life as known on Earth is filled with vicious, ruthless, destructive carnage. Removed from much of the dangers of Earth by society people easily forget this and become ignorant and insulated by fairy tales and romanticized ideas of life.

The Media Hypothesis is an interesting idea...I do believe in a higher orchestration and to attribute it to Earth would be pleasing and attractive but I can't do that confidently. It seems more likely orchestration flows from consciousness itself and Earth is just the material manifesting location.

Earth seems too much like a chaotic free for all while higher truths seem to come from 'elsewhere', a 'place' that I believe to be our source.


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InvisibleIcelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery
Male


Registered: 03/15/05
Posts: 95,368
Loc: underbelly
Re: The Medea Hypothesis [Re: deCypher]
    #18765294 - 08/27/13 06:41 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

Quote:

deCypher said:


Quote:

The Medea hypothesis is a term coined by paleontologist Peter Ward[1] for the anti-Gaian hypothesis that multicellular life, understood as a superorganism, is suicidal; in this view microbial-triggered mass extinctions are attempts to return the Earth to the microbial dominated state it has been for most of its history.[2][3][4] It is named after the mythological Medea, who killed her own children. Medea represents the Earth, and her children are multicellular life.
Past "suicide attempts" include:
  • Methane poisoning, 3.5 billion years ago
  • The oxygen catastrophe, 2.7 billion years ago
  • Snowball earth, twice, 2.3 billion years ago and 790–630 million years ago
  • At least five putative hydrogen sulfide-induced mass extinctions, such as the Great Dying, 252.28 million years ago

The list does not include the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, since this was, as least partially, externally induced by a meteor impact.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medea_hypothesis

It's an interesting theory.  Most of our spiritual beliefs are dominated by our human-centric beliefs and ideas that we humans are the favored species on Earth; our mythologies usually have the gods or god proclaim our right and dominion over all other lifeforms, and our spiritual and metaphysical predictions tell tales of our inevitable ascension into a higher state of being--some believe there are myriads of benevolent and malevolent beings watching us and guiding our evolution because we're so important, or that God Himself, a transcendent Being, chose our planet out of all the billions upon billions of planets out there to incarnate as one of us.  The Gaia hypothesis, believed in by many who assume a fundamentally benevolent attitude to our current situation, assumes that Planet Earth's purpose is to ensure our survival by regulating the atmosphere and other factors to keep us eating, breathing, fucking, and killing each other all year-round.  Because we're special, right?  :satansmoking:

But what if we're not?  What if our situation is the same as the dinosaurs, merely an interesting footnote in the long span of evolutionary time?  We assume we're special because we have a brain and opposable thumbs, but just counting by numbers the truly dominant lifeform on this planet is bacteria, NOT humanity.  They have caused the majority of Earth's extinction-level events in the past, and they will continue living long after we nuke ourselves out of existence or die from a biological plague.  What if we're just a temporary aberration, a blip on the otherwise uninterrupted purpose of Earth as a bacteria-incubator?

Quote:

In a challenge to the Gaia hypothesis, which holds that all life functions as nurturing, super-organismal “mother”, Ward argues that life on earth has a death wish that would do Freud proud.

Ward claims that, contrary to popular images of cataclysmic asteroids and volcanoes, most mass extinctions on earth were set in motion by microbes.  2.4 billion years ago, microscopic cyanobacteria emerged newly equipped with photosynthesis and triggered the Great Oxygenation Event. While great for aerobic organisms, it was fatal news for anaerobic life, which had up until then had free reign over the planet. The sudden release of oxygen is also likely what set off the Huronian Glaciation, a deadly “snowball earth” that kept the planet locked in ice for 300 million years.

Anaerobic microbes had their revenge during subsequent extinction events. Historically, whenever atmospheric carbon has risen above 1,000 parts per million (ppm), a super-charged greenhouse effect dramatically weakens the temperature differential between the poles and the tropics. Without pronounced temperature gradients to drive ocean mixing, only the top layer of the sea remains oxygenated. Anaerobic bacteria thrive below this zone, producing enough hydrogen sulfide gas to poison the entire planet. This poisoning may be to blame for the End-Permian event, “the mother of all extinctions“, when 96% of all marine organisms disappeared.

Humans, microbes though we’re not, are an element of the earth’s self-destructive tendency. If our Co2 emissions go above the tipping point of 1,000 ppm, as predicted by some upper-end IPCC estimates for 2100, we may trip an event identical to the one that wiped out the trilobites.

Interestingly enough, in the long run, it’s a carbon shortage that may spell the end of life, long before the sun vaporizes the oceans. In 500 million years, life’s insatiable need for carbon – the basic building block of every organism – could mean that atmospheric carbon might eventually drop below 10 ppm, the amount needed to sustain grasses. In terms of total biomass, evidence indicates that earth is already in its “old age”.

Life sprung from a happy coincidence of molecules. According to Ward, it will bumble around earth for about 4 billion years, and snuff itself out just as accidentally as it arose. So much for Disney nature.



http://www.nextnature.net/2012/05/the-medea-hypothesis-is-life-on-earth-suicidal/

Thoughts?  :psychsplit:




OK by me.


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC


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InvisiblePenelope_Tree
Shamanic Panic
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Registered: 07/31/09
Posts: 8,535
Loc: magic sugarcastle
Re: The Medea Hypothesis [Re: Icelander]
    #18765346 - 08/27/13 06:52 PM (10 years, 5 months ago)

Just as valid as the other POV. It doesn't make me want to quit living an environmentally-friendly lifestyle, but for some reason it does make me want to make changes to my personal relationships... perhaps I'm using doom as an excuse.


--------------------
full blown human


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Unfolding Nature Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order


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