Let's speak of Gaia

[burythehatchet]

My understanding of the philosophy of Gaia is rather limited, but that won't stop me from commenting on it.

As I understand, Gaia is a concept that states the Earth is one living organism. I happen to agree with that. Maybe my logic is strained, but all life depends upon the chemical and biological cycles that accompany life, death and rebirth. Those processes can take place only with the physical Mother Earth as the host, the catalyst, the energy provider, and the designer.

I believe that there are many many earth-like planets out there, in a dimension that is beyond contemporary understanding. Although string theory comes as close to that realization than ever before.

All that is upon Earth in its natural form is a perfectly self-correcting and self-healing entity. Plate shifts, hurricanes, avalanches, floods, fires, are all events that accompany earth on the path towards equilibrium.

If you allow yourself to agree in principle with this belief, where does that leave the human race? What role do we play? Are we a parasitic infection, a tumor that could kill earth? Or are we a superior life form placed here to exercise dominion upon the natural universe? Or something else?