Infested Gaia Theory – Infected Mother Earth

Almost two decades ago as I sat with a good friend of mine looking towards a particularly beautiful jungle covered volcano near a white sandy beach, he asked me if I had ever heard the theory of a living Earth. I replied “No, what is it?” so over the next few minutes he outlined it to me. Although I doubt the theory is true, there are aspects of it that have been bouncing around in my head for many years now, so I thought I should share it here with you.

When I think about earth in my head, I usually think of images of green pastures, flowers, trees, blue skies with fluffy white clouds, flying birds and a sun. These images are probably influenced by many artistic and photographic images I have seen that depict this, as well the environment I grew up in in Canada that occasionally would look almost exactly like this. Depending on what you are used to, you may think of other things, I imagine a child that grows up in a city, does not travel out of it, and does not watch much TV or take art classes may imagine things very differently.

But this is not an image of a pasture, or jungle, or city, but an entirely different way to think about our magnetically shielded planet spinning through the galaxy with it’s shifting plates, moving oceans, and erupting volcanoes.

Infested Gaia Theory:

Earth is not a simple rock, but is actually a very large living organism, and like all living organisms it experiences phases of heath, and sickness. Grass, and trees are similar to our hairs, volcanoes are similar to blemishes, and just like any other living organism, it does gradually shift and change appearance over the years, but since it is such a long living and huge organism, it shifts very slowly as it feels no great rush to move any faster.  This is hardly detectable by us shorter lived animals that inhabit her.

Like all living organisms it is covered in other creatures, most of them are parasites, by definition a parasite is a species who benefits at the expense of its host. Obviously since we use materials from earth to build everything we use, from computers to cities, space ships and nuclear bombs, we easily fit the definition of a parasite.

Mother Earth can heal herself quite quickly against small disturbances, but humans in particular are a very high breeding, and destructive parasite, who have become experts at cutting down forests, destroying foliage, as well as burrowing and blasting right into the earth.  Where there was once beautiful green wild ares of life, we create massive, sterile “Dead Spaces”, mostly only inhabited by us, and then work very hard to maintain it’s sterility as we expand.

This is our nature, being the parasites that we are.

What do you do if you drag some soil into the house? You take it back out.

If the road or sidewalk cracks and some grass comes up, we usually kill the grass, and pave it back over.

I mean who doesn’t enjoy sitting around a fire at night and throwing bits of trees into it?

Like all living organisms, mother earth does have an immune system, and one day the immune system might kick into high gear and it could kill off most of us parasites through rains, volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis, hopefully I won’t be around to see it.

Planetary Infection

Planetary Infection of Organism Earth

Have a listen to Gerorge Carlin’s Thoughts on Our Planet:

11 Responses to Infested Gaia Theory – Infected Mother Earth

  1. That theory reminds me of The Matrix when Agent Smith calls the human race a virus. I remember watching it ajd thinking, “Yep. That’s us.” I wish more people looked at the world as a whole organism. If I were mother earth, I’d want to get rid of us, too!

  2. @Janene
    Hi Janene, glad you liked the post.

    I think I am one of the few people on earth who disliked the Matrix movies, though I did enjoy the actual story contained in them, my problem with the films is that I felt all of the important parts of the three films, including all the best action sequences could have been done in under two hours. Also as a long time martial artist, I found myself choking at time about how badly SOME of the moves, and physics of fighting were in the movies, I blame them for the silly idea that hitting the ground from a fall with a fist and knee somehow was cool, and would not in fact end with a broken fist and kneecap, or at least severe pain, also I swore if i heard “you are The One” one more time I was going to grab a stick and try and poke my own eardrums out.

    However movie review aside. What I loved about the Matrix was that for many people it really gave them the idea to take a look outside of all they think is reality, this is something that my English teacher, and History teacher in my High School had already put in my head in my teen years, and I have never forgotten it. What we actually know of everything is served up to us on a silver platter by the schools and media, and most people just take that as the absolute bare facts, so it is good to question everything.

    I would really like people to question consumerism and capitalism, our monetary systems and our society and our general lifestyle, they are far from perfect and everyone just accepts them then they will never improve. We do not need to give up our computers or our electricity, we just need to keep them much longer than we do and turn to alternate power such as thermal or solar power. It is corruption and greed that is really destroying the earth, both the average citizens as well as the corporations and governments, that needs to change or we may all be in trouble, whether the air becomes unbreathable or Gaia tries to get rid of us, we should fix things before what might be the turning point, if it not too late already.

    The destruction of the world is already beyond ridiculous, and each year more tractors, caterpillars and chainsaws are sold around the world, many to places that never had them before and each year the destruction goes faster and faster, people sitting looking out their windows where the development was done a long time ago, never realize that places like Borneo are becoming a desert these days, and the Black Sea is almost dead.

    I know I am doing my part, I waste and pollute as little as possible, and I really wish everyone else would do the same.

  3. I don’t view the human race as parasites, although we certainly do exhibit some careless behavior with regard to our environment. I think many of the problems we’re having with global warming and pollution are reversible, but it’s going to have to be a collective effort.

  4. @Helena fortissima
    I believe we can reverse the effects also, but when do we start? We haven’t started yet, just today I heard it was good news that Caterpillar sales had gone up in developing countries. Is that really such a good thing?

    I mean is it good to “Develop Countries” and sell more Caterpillars?

    Don’t Caterpillars like to eat trees, and more of them eat trees faster?

    Farming trees is a good thing, but in Developing Countries those trees are old growth, and pretty much never replanted, it all turns to sand, and it is really hard to get life back in that sand.

  5. It makes sense that when things hang in a fine balance, then any changes to that balance will have an effect on the whole. The earth is a large mass, so following the analogy a little, it would seem that it would be resilient to quite a lot of change, but at some point the scales would tip.

  6. @Mulled Vine
    I hope I am not here when the scales tip. Though the earth is large, we have done an excellent job of ravaging it.

    There really is not that much forest left
    https://www.greenfacts.org/en/forests/images/figure-2-2.jpg

  7. Mother Earth Theory? What you’re describing is the Gaia Hypothesis, named after the Greek goddess of the Earth, which has been around since the 1960s and postulates the Earth as a self-regulating super-organism. It isn’t necessarily true (hence “hypothesis” rather than “theory”), and a counter-theory has emerged recently. Palaeontologists studying mass extinctions in the Palaeozoic era have noted that in the run-up to the extinction event, the dominant life-forms progressively bespoiled their environments, until, within a relatively short period, complete ecosystems collapsed. They have therefore proposed the Medea Hypothesis. In Greek mythology, Medea ate her own children. You can see where this is leading.

  8. @Dennis Hodgson
    The Gaia Hypothesis is also knows as the Gaia Theory, look it up. Also the Gaia Theory/Principle/Hypothesis does not contain any mention of Parasites which was over halve of the “Living Earth Theory” the author was talking about. Nothing here is called the “Mother Earth Theory”.

    @PBscott
    I liked the post Scott, its an interesting idea, and I will mull it over for a while, if the earth is alive we defiantly are parasites. I don’t feel it holds any water however, Earth is just a big lifeless magnetic piece of iron.

  9. @Dennis Hodgson
    @Shizster

    This article is not meant to be taken seriously, and I did not carefully choose the name of the theory, I guess in hindsight I should have put more thought into it, I am familiar with the Gaia theory, someone brought it up with me before when I mentioned this once over beers, it is similar, but it is not quite the same as I see it. My main point in writing the article was only to give people something to think about.

    Though the URL for the post does say “Mother Earth Theory” in it, I only put that there for SEO purposes, since I highly doubted anyone would search for “Living Earth Theory”, who knows if it might help or not, maybe a better name would have been “The Infested Gaia Theory” or similar…I may end up changing it.

    and…I changed the name…now it has a couple of better names 😉

    Thank you both for your comments and your visit.

  10. Pretty interesting theory. Have you ever seen the movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. In it, a meteor from another planet with part of its Gaia hits Earth, and truly infects the Earth’s Gaia. Pretty amazing stuff, and a GREAT movie.

  11. @Dan Bonser
    Hi Dan,

    Glad you liked it, I did see Final Fantasy: Spirits Within, and found it to be quite an original in interesting film. Thanks for the visit and comment.

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