SolSeed book introduction
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- Life is precious.
- It has always been precious,
- it will always be precious.
- -- from the SolSeedCreed
The SolSeed movement is about supporting each other in living beautiful, vibrant lives. More broadly it is about supporting and nurturing all of Life, helping it to flourish and thrive. We count as kindred all who embrace science and cherish Life. We commit ourselves to the upward spiral of Life and actively seek out the means to live that commitment. We bring Life!
Contents |
The upward spiral of life
In our vast empty universe, things are running down. The second law of thermodynamics tells us that possibility will gradually diminish until the entire universe is the same lukewarm temperature and there are no energy gradients to drive the flows of matter and energy that make life possible. Taking the universe as a whole, this arrow toward decreasing complexity and opportunity is an absolute. Things ARE running down.
And yet, there is another arrow that points back upstream. This second arrow is in the direction of life. In the cosmic perspective that encompasses all time and space, this arrow of life is simply an eddy in a vast current streaming toward the heat death of the universe. But this eddy, this upward spiral of life, is the most precious thing in all existence.
Life creates the conditions for more life in an upward spiral of ever greater possibilities. And we are agents of life! Wherever we go, whatever we do, our sacred duty is to bring life with us. As we pursue the work of our life, we must create around ourselves the conditions that support us being fully alive, that help us flourish and thrive "Happy in the sun!" When we walk into a room of people, our task is to increase the freedom, expression, and possibility those people feel -- to help the group itself flourish and thrive "Happy in the sun!". As we live in our local and global ecosystem, our charge is give back more than we take -- to help the body of all life flourish and thrive "Happy in the sun!"
This book introduces the "Happy in the sun" journey that the members of the SolSeed Movement are taking together. We hope that reading this book will help you become clearer about your own answers and your own path.
What is SolSeed anyway?
"SolSeed," like James Lovelock's "Gaia," is a word we can use to describe the concept of "the body of all life on Earth." SolSeed is also the name of a small movement that began online in 2005. The SolSeed Movement is composed of members and friends whose respect for the body of all life serves as a deep organizing principle for their lives. We include members from across the United States, though most of us live in or near Portland, Oregon.
The word "SolSeed" is derived from the fictional religion of "Earthseed" described by Octavia E. Butler in her near-future dystopian novels, Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. Butler's heroine and founder of the Earthseed faith, Lauren Olamina, paints a picture of humanity as the seeds of a planetary organism--seeds that would one day be capable of "taking root among the stars." But before we could do that, the human race would have to rise from the hardest of times, the economic collapses triggered by our own abuse of Mother Earth (among other factors). That's also what this book is about, even if it mostly steers clear of such negative visions: healing our own living world, of which humans and our communities are an inextricable part, and going out into the wider universe to make new living worlds.
The SolSeed Movement is not a religion like Earthseed, but like Earthseed it hopes to incorporate some of the incredible persistence and durability that such institutions have demonstrated. It is in our nature to be impatient, to want to see a thing finished in our lifetimes, but a headlong rush into the future is far more likely to bring catastrophe than a well-founded realization of the SolSeed vision.
A favorite financial aphorism of my father in law conveys the appropriate kind of expectation: "Grow rich slowly."
Why we think this vision is great!
The intended audience for this book is people who already resonate with this vision of spreading life to the stars, but maybe you're not sure if it makes sense to you. After all, most people who value life are squarely focused on improving life on Earth, so that the idea of spending substantial effort on leaving Earth strikes many such people as deeply misguided. But in fact, there are many reasons to go to space for the sake of life.
One reason is that by going into orbit, we can learn much about life on Earth and how to better care for it. NASA's "mission to planet Earth" programs, as well as equivalent efforts by the European Space Agency and others, have already provided invaluable data in many scientific fields, from ecology to climate science to the study of nutrient flows in the oceans, just to name a few.
In the same vein, there are many future possibilities for eliminating life-threatening pollution sources on Earth by transitioning to space-based industry. Despite the expense (which will decrease over time), many manufacturers may be lured into orbit by the promise of zero gravity and unlimited solar energy. Some of that energy might be beamed back to Earth in the form of a miles-wide, low-intensity microwave beam, providing a constant, reliable base-load power source, which ground-based solar and wind energy can't do.
Then there's the question of what to do if we experience a true planetary catastrophe, whether natural or man-made, that threatens humans and other species with extinction. Building other self-sufficient homes for life, in orbit and on other worlds, would provide a form of insurance if we're unable to prevent such catastrophes, allowing life and civilization to continue even if Earth is utterly lost.
But none of these reasons is central to SolSeed's vision, though they are all important. The central reason is simply that if we value life, we should help it flourish as much as we can. If one living world is wondrous and precious, many living worlds would be better still (even if most of those worlds are small enclosed bubbles that use rotation in place of gravity, as described in chapter 4). If Earth's biosphere is really something like a vast organism, as James Lovelock asserts, then why shouldn't it reproduce, like any other organism, and perpetuate its species far into the future, even beyond the death of the Sun? More than anything else, the SolSeed Movement wants to play a small role in beginning to make this grand vision possible.
Who we are
Members of the SolSeed movement comprise a small subset of the general population, at the intersection between the world of environmental activists and eco-villagers, on one hand, and the world of rocket-builders and would-be space colonists, on the other. We look at images of Earth taken from orbit and see two wonderful things: the living Earth in all its fragile glory, and the amazing technology that enables us to look down at it from the hostile emptiness above. We see the potential to use this ability in the service of life, by carrying whole ecosystems outward from Earth to take root on other worlds, where nature and technology can work together to gradually shape these harsh new environments into true homes for life.
This mindset includes a strong basis in science and critical thinking, but that alone is not enough. Combine critical thinking with an appreciation for the mystery of life and valuing certain spiritual experiences that lead to better lives (the oneness of all, mindfulness). Spiritual practice (mindfulness, empathy, ...)
SolSeed encourages each of us to take deeper root and to flower wherever we find ourselves. This includes the pursuit of enlightenment both individual and collective. We value deep insight into the meaning and purpose of all things and pursue practice that leads to a fundamentally changed level of existence where one's self is experienced as a nonchanging field of pure consciousness. a state of freedom from suffering, desire and ignorance ... "awakening" or "understanding" ... one realizes the non-duality of the observer and the observed ... a state of complete emptiness, a passage beyond the material world into a thought-transcending realm of non-duality and unconditionedness. It is a state where the ego and self have been transcended. [Do we really need to emphasize meditative enlightenment this much?]
