0:00

Welcome to the sense-making in a changing

0:02

world podcast where we explore the kind of

0:04

thinking we need to navigate a positive

0:06

way forward. I’m your host Morag Gamble.. Permaculture Educator, and Global Ambassador, Filmmaker, Eco villager, Food Forester, Mother, Practivist and all around lover of thinking, communicating and acting regeneratively. For a long time it's been clear to me that to shift trajectory to a thriving one planet way of life we first need to shift our thinking, the way we perceive ourselves in relation to nature, self, and community is the core. So this is true now more than ever. And even the way change is changing, is changing. Unprecedented changes are happening all around us at a rapid pace. So how do we make sense of this? To know which way to turn, to know what action to focus on? So our efforts are worthwile and nourishing and are working towards resilience, regeneration, and reconnection. What better way to make sense than to join together with others in open generative conversation..

0:56

In this podcast, I'll share conversations with my friends and colleagues, people who inspire and challenge me in their ways of thinking, connecting and acting. These wonderful people thinkers, doers, activists, scholars, writers, leaders, farmers, educators, people whose work informs permaculture and spark the imagination of what a post-COVID, climate-resilient, socially just future could look like. Their ideas and projects help us to make sense in this changing world to compost and digest the ideas and to nurture the fertile ground for new ideas, connections and actions. Together we'll open up conversations in the world of permaculture design, regenerative thinking community action, earth repair, eco-literacy, and much more. I can't wait to share these conversations with you.

0:56

Over the last three decades of personally making sense of the multiple crises we face I always returned to the practical and positive world of permaculture with its ethics of earth care, people care and fair share. I've seen firsthand how adaptable and responsive it can be in all contexts from urban to rural, from refugee camps to suburbs. It helps people make sense of what's happening around them and to learn accessible design tools, to shape their habitat positively and to contribute to cultural and ecological regeneration. This is why I've created the Permaculture Educators Program to help thousands of people to become permaculture teachers everywhere through an interactive online dual certificate of permaculture design and teaching. We sponsor global Permayouth programs, women's self help groups in the global South and teens in refugee camps. So anyway, this podcast is sponsored by the Permaculture Education Institute and our Permaculture Educators Program. If you'd like to find more about permaculture, I've created a four-part permaculture video series to explain what permaculture is and, and also how you can make it, your livelihood as well as your way of life.

1:54

We'd love

2:57

to invite you to join our wonderfully inspiring

2:59

and supportive global learning community. So

3:02

I welcome you to share each of these conversations,

3:04

and I'd also like to suggest you create

3:07

a local conversation circle to explore

3:09

the ideas shared in each show and discuss

3:11

together how this makes sense in your local

3:13

community and environment. I'd

3:16

like to acknowledge the traditional custodians

3:18

of the land on which I meet and speak

3:20

with you today. The Gubbi Gubbi people and

3:23

pay my respects to their elders

3:25

past, present and emerging.

3:28

It's my great pleasure to welcome to the show

3:30

today my dear friend, Dr. Stephan Harding

3:33

from Schumacher college. He's

3:35

a Gaian Ecologist. He

3:37

has a doctorate of ecology

3:39

from Oxford university. He's a musician,

3:42

author, father, co-

3:44

founder too of the Masters of Holistic Science Program at Schumacher College co-founded with Professor Brian Goodwin. He's also

3:52

the research fellow of Deep ecology at

3:54

the college and the Dartington Estate

3:57

Ecologist. He has two books.

4:00

The first is Animate Earth: Science,

4:02

Intuition and Gaia. And his

4:04

recent book is called Gaia Alchemy.

4:07

He's worked closely with James Lovelock over

4:09

the decades on the Ga

4:11

theory. James is now 101,

4:15

but back in 1992 is when I first

4:18

met Stephan. When I was a resident at

4:20

Schumacher college, beginning with a course

4:22

that's Stephan has co-taught with Fritjof

4:24

Capra and with his wife,

4:26

Julia Ponsonby, who's the author

4:28

of two books, The Gaia cookbooks

4:31

and head of food at Schumacher College.

4:33

We traveled up to Ladakh in the Himalayas

4:37

to volunteer with Helena Norberg Hodge. And

4:39

so our friendship goes

4:42

a long way back. And this is a brief

4:44

recording of our conversation when

4:46

I was teaching at Schumacher college last

4:48

year. It's pre-COVID times,

4:50

and we woul d enj o y a w alk through

4:52

the Dartington Estate, exploring

4:55

the work of James

4:58

Lovelock, and also Step han's wor k with

5:00

the Gaia Theory. So I hope you enjoy

5:02

this conversation.

5:06

I'm out here in the Woodlands behind Schumacher College at

5:08

the moment with Stephan Harding. I

5:11

met Stephan about 27 years ago.

5:13

Yeah.

5:13

And you , how would you describe

5:15

yourself? The Head Ecologist? The

5:18

leader of.. The master of holistic

5:20

science? What else?

5:22

Well, I'm a resident ecologist. Yeah.

5:25

As you said, MSC and holistic

5:27

science. And I've been

5:29

here from the very beginning of the college. So I'm one of the founders

5:31

of the college. My background is in science

5:33

and ecology.

5:35

Yeah.. Should we walk back down this way? A lot

5:38

of the people who come and do the permaculture

5:40

courses with me are fascinated

5:42

about Gaia and

5:45

I thought it'd be really good person. You.. The perfect

5:48

person to ask because that is.. has been

5:51

your focus for a long time. And particularly

5:53

because you spend a lot of time with

5:55

James Lovelock.

5:57

I did very lucky to spend time with him.

5:58

So what is Gaia? Hang on

6:01

. I just noticed this..

6:02

Oh yeah, we'll go this way.

6:02

Alright.

6:02

So Gaia has

6:05

got various levels. So

6:07

there's the mythological

6:09

depth psychology level

6:11

to Gaia . And then there's

6:13

the scientific level. So

6:16

you can talk about both of those, if you like. On the

6:19

scientific level, Gaia

6:23

is about all the feedback relationships

6:25

between all the organisms on the planet, the

6:28

microbes, the fungi , the

6:31

animals, the plants, etc. Between

6:34

themselves and with the rocks, the atmosphere and the water.

6:36

And the idea in Gaia is that they all interact

6:39

with each other through feedbacks

6:41

and what emerges from all those interactions it's

6:43

something completely unexpected. And

6:46

that is the ability of the planet as one great

6:48

whole to regulate it's surface

6:51

condition centers, that temperature. So the idea

6:53

is that Gaia is a for me anyway,

6:56

a great living planetary organism constituted

6:59

by all the relationships between all

7:01

living organisms on the one hand

7:04

and the atmosphere, rocks and water on the

7:06

other. So there's like a sort of tight feedback.

7:09

So the difference between Gaia

7:11

and say science that's taught in schools

7:13

is that it's about the interconnectedness

7:15

between all parts. Isn't it? That it's

7:17

not just the rock . So it's not just the plants or it's

7:19

not just the climate. It's how

7:22

all of those.. interconnect.

7:22

Yeah. This is

7:25

Lovelock's Gaia theory. It has revolutionized

7:27

our understanding. So before Lovelock,

7:29

the idea was that the earth was just a hunk

7:31

of rock floating around in space

7:34

with a little thin smear of life on the surface,

7:37

which had no influence on the surface temperature

7:39

or other factors or the surface at all. Life

7:42

was just like a passive passenger. That's what

7:44

people thought. And

7:49

so Lovelock had a pretty interesting

7:51

background, too. Can you tell us a little bit.. Well,

7:54

he's an absolute genius. He's

7:58

a brilliant inventor of scientific instruments.

8:01

He's got a great knowledge of science, across

8:03

all kinds of science and

8:05

he's.. but the main thing about him is that he is phenomenally

8:08

original and creative. Yeah . I

8:10

mean, I'm very brave because

8:12

when he came up with the idea of Gaia, even just

8:15

to call it Gaia is incredibly

8:17

brave because

8:19

he was jokingly thinking of calling his theory

8:21

The biocybernetic universal system

8:24

tendency.

8:24

Oh that would have done really well wouldn't it! [laughter]

8:26

The bus hypothesis.

8:27

Oh, I see. I didn't

8:29

get that. Sorry. I missed that! [laughter]

8:31

So that was the idea. It was a joke but anyway,

8:34

that would have gone down very well with the scientists. Biocybernetic.

8:37

Cybernetics is the science of feedback and the truck

8:40

universal system tends to be pretty good, but

8:42

he didn't like it. And he saw, no , it's not right. I've got, I

8:44

need some really good... And his friend,

8:46

the novelist, William Golding told

8:49

him to call it Gaia. And he'd

8:51

never heard of Gaia. Now this brings

8:53

us to the mythological dimension. Gaia

8:56

is the ancient Greek divinity of

8:59

the earth. She's even

9:02

more primordial than a goddess. Cause

9:04

in the ancient myth from Hesiod which has

9:06

Hesiod wrote down about 600 BC, there

9:08

was, first of all, before anything existed, there

9:11

was this chaos, vast and dark and

9:14

out of this chaos. Well , sorry,

9:16

this chaos wanted to become something. It

9:18

felt a bit lonely. So it formed

9:20

itself into the Earth. And

9:23

that was the first thing that came

9:25

out of primordial chaos. It was Gaia. Fully

9:28

formed.

9:28

I don't think I've heard this story before.

9:28

Yeah you

9:32

see this very deep. And

9:34

so Golding said to Lovelock no, don't

9:36

call it tbiocybernetic universal system tendency call it Gaia.

9:42

This huge sacred name came

9:44

out of Golding's mouth and Lovelock to his

9:47

credit eventually understood it. To

9:49

begin with Lovelock thought Golding had said

9:51

ja-ya, you know, there's big swirling

9:53

. So Lovelock said, no, not Ja-ya.

9:55

Can't call it a jaya-phere. And I like to

9:57

think in my crazy way , but

10:00

the whole biosphere that had been for waiting

10:02

for 2000 years for Gaia

10:04

to come back into the Western culture gave

10:06

up. But

10:08

Golding said, no, not Jaya.. Gaia!

10:11

Then whole thing started again. And

10:13

this time Lovelock heard it to

10:16

his credit he

10:18

really liked the name. It resonated. I

10:21

mean, for a scientist to adopt such

10:23

a deeply mythological poetic name

10:25

for his theory is phenomenal. Yeah

10:28

. So we got Gaia back into

10:30

our culture through Science.

10:31

And so what, so

10:33

how do people respond to it in the early days?

10:35

Well, the new age and the hippies love it,

10:38

of course, and that was right. But

10:41

the scientist hated it. Because

10:43

Gaia for them suggested that something

10:45

about the earth was sort of knew what

10:47

the temperature should be, or it knew what, what

10:50

the amount of phosphorus should be. In other words,

10:52

there was what we coincides with a teleology

10:55

teleological implying that there's

10:57

purpose in nature. And

10:59

that is not allowed in science. Such a big

11:01

taboo. I mean, I was brought

11:03

up in science. The last thing you're allowed

11:05

to say is that there is purpose. It's

11:07

all meaningless, purposeful purposeless.

11:10

It's one great dead machine. The whole column

11:13

was , is one great dead machine to be observed and

11:15

to be manipulated and used for our purposes.

11:18

So, Gaia smacked

11:21

of teleology of purposefulness

11:23

in nature. So they hated it

11:26

and they gave it a really bad time.

11:30

How did he managed to get it heard?

11:33

Well, he's only got it heard a certain

11:35

amount. Hello. This is my dog friend. It's

11:46

all right. So , well

11:49

what you did was to make

11:51

a mathematical model. He knew how to make a mathematical

11:54

model to get around this problem. And

11:57

so he created a model called Daisyworld, which

12:00

is actually, he described it as his finest

12:02

invention, He's created many brilliant

12:04

scientific instruments. And so

12:06

that showed that in principle, you could get Gaia

12:09

in self regulation emerging from

12:11

selfish individuals and selfish

12:13

organisms that interact with each

12:15

other, but also affect the climate at the same

12:17

time. No one had ever made

12:19

a model that put physics and biology together,

12:22

and it was amazing how you get.. It's

12:24

amazing how the Daisyworld, you get

12:26

a self regulation emerging

12:29

without building it into the equations. It just

12:31

emerges from all the interactions.

12:32

And so you worked with

12:34

him. Was that part of..

12:35

What I did . I worked with, I did that for five

12:37

years until I got really tired

12:40

of sitting in front of computers. Gaia

12:45

theory has transformed our understanding of the

12:47

Earth and it's become rebranded in science.

12:50

So it's now called earth system

12:53

science.

12:54

So what's happening now with climate

12:56

change and how is Gaia

12:58

theory informing what's

13:01

going on in?

13:02

Yeah, well now, now the very best climate

13:04

modelers have been influenced by Lovelock

13:07

very heavily. Some of them here at Exeter in England.. Tim

13:10

Lenton and Richard Betts, Peter Cox some of the really

13:12

top people and they're making

13:14

new supercomputer models of the climate

13:17

based on Gaia theory in which the organisms

13:19

interact with the climate. And

13:22

of course it makes things infinitely more complex, but

13:25

that's one thing that's happening. Another

13:28

thing that's happening on a more theoretical level is

13:31

that people are beginning to realize that there's another

13:33

level of natural selection, which

13:36

operates at the level of Gaia and feedbacks.

13:38

There's selection amongst Gaia and feedbacks. So,

13:41

and it sounds a bit technical, but it's actually

13:43

breaking open our understanding of evolution

13:46

and how it works. And we're beginning to realize that

13:48

evolution can also happen

13:50

at the level of planetary feedbacks. So

13:52

I think it's a very exciting time when the paradigm

13:54

is starting to shift all because of Lovelock's work.

13:57

And so Lovelock is now turning a hundred

14:00

this year . Wow. When about?

14:02

July the 23rd?

14:03

And you're going to his birthday part?

14:05

Yeah in Blenheim palace and he's as sharp as a button. He's written

14:08

a new book.

14:08

Oh what's it called?

14:09

I can't remember now actually,

14:12

but he's only just been, it

14:14

hasn't been published yet.

14:15

So how does he..see what's happened

14:18

with, with Gaia since it's started. Has he shifted his perception, has he

14:23

had change of thinking about it or

14:25

just kept on evolving.

14:28

Um, I think he's kept on evolving and

14:30

I think he's quite happy that it's been more

14:32

or less accepted in science, at least

14:34

certain aspects of it have been accepted. And

14:37

I think he's very happy that gradually

14:39

even evolutionary theory is realizing

14:41

that there's a GAIAn dimension that

14:44

has been ignored in natural

14:46

selection.

14:47

And so has Gaia been now taught in

14:49

schools yet ?

14:50

Not enough.

14:50

Because you know there's too much

14:53

of the old science.

14:54

Too much of the old science. You see for me,

14:57

Gaia is both mythological

14:59

and scientific.

14:59

What was

15:02

your book?

15:02

My book is called Animate Earth.

15:04

What I try to do in my work...so I'm trying to put together

15:06

the science, but in a way.. that is in

15:08

a poetic way, so we can use

15:10

the science to awaken our poetic relationship

15:13

with nature, because unless we have a poetic

15:15

relationship, a love r elationship with

15:17

nature. We're not g oing t o do anything about it. With crisis

15:20

our understanding wi ll b e too theoretical. I

15:22

think we need, I mean, I' m a s c ientist, so I need the science,

15:25

but I want to use it to help myself fall in

15:27

love in n ature much more. So that's what my book is about.

15:29

That was wonderful! In love with nature, everyone

15:32

to fall in love with nature, I think you're absolutely right.

15:35

Until we care until we

15:37

love. We're not going to have

15:39

that.

15:39

No, we have to fall in love with nature. And

15:42

because we're a scientific culture, I

15:44

think we can use the science of Gaia , particularly

15:46

the science of microbes, earth

15:49

worms , fungi, forest, clouds, mountains,

15:51

rocks, all of that as one integrated

15:54

living, being told mythologically with

15:56

the science, I think that can help

15:58

us fall in love with nature. And I mean, that's what

16:00

I've been doing at Schumacher college for 27

16:02

years. And it works. I mean, I tell

16:05

that some of the science as a fairy story. Like love

16:08

affairs between carbon prints and calcium

16:10

princess. And it works. It works. It

16:13

really does .

16:13

Hearing that again. I remember hearing that 27

16:15

years ago, and I remember you had your guitar

16:18

or ukulele or something, right.

16:24

Yeah, singing. So it's a mixture. For me,

16:27

it's integrated. Four functions,

16:30

thinking, feeling, sensing, intuition, put

16:32

them all together. And then in the middle

16:34

is Gaia. We integrate

16:38

our psyches in that way, then we can

16:40

really fall in love with this amazing

16:42

cosmos of ours and then we'll spontaneously

16:45

act to save it.

16:48

I think that's a beautiful thing. And you're now

16:50

writing another book based on that .

16:52

I'm writing another book. This time

16:54

I'm trying to put together alchemy and Gaia. So

16:57

I'm calling it Gaia Alchemy, but

16:59

it's very difficult. I'm not sure

17:01

if I'll manage to do it.

17:02

Well , I hope you do. I really hope you do. There

17:05

was also, there's also a

17:07

film based on your works.

17:09

There's a film called Animate Earth and

17:11

there's an app that you know about the deep time walk

17:13

app.

17:13

Yeah , yeah. So , what I might

17:16

do underneath is put links to all these leads

17:18

so people can see.

17:19

Please do. Yeah, that'd be great. And of course,

17:21

Morag it's so good that you are one of our first students

17:23

at the college and look what you've done as a result.

17:26

It's..let's turn around

17:28

so we can see the college behind

17:30

us there. That's part of

17:32

it. Well, it did. It transformed

17:34

my life. The thinking

17:36

that I got, I

17:39

think experience it, wasn't just the thinking. It was

17:41

the whole experience. It was

17:43

a learning community. The way we ate

17:46

and how we shared and the knowledge and

17:48

the people that came here, too. There

17:50

was you, there was Fritjof Capra,

17:52

Vandana Shiva, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Annie ,

17:56

all of those different things together, you

17:58

know, pour those in there's

18:00

a mix of this beautiful learning community

18:01

of young people. And

18:04

you create, I

18:06

t hink, incredible opportunities

18:09

for people to head out into their life and do

18:12

incredible things.

18:13

And people who've been here, like you have gone on to

18:15

do incredible things like you've done all

18:17

over the planet. So it's a small place.

18:20

It's a center of deep Gaia learning.

18:23

Absolutely.

18:23

It's as if there's something, some deep

18:25

energy coming out of the Earth which inspires us all very deeply.

18:29

And draws us back. Like, I mean, this is, how many times I've back. I

18:32

wish I'd been back more, but this is yeah... As

18:35

I came around the corner just a

18:37

week ago and I saw it and I felt

18:40

it, I was like, ah , I'm home. You

18:43

know, I have just a few points around

18:46

that I feel that deep sense of connection and this is definitely one of them.

18:47

Yeah. You know, that saying in

18:50

Latin 'Alma Mater' which means mother

18:52

of your soul. This really for me

18:54

is also the mother of my soul this college for

18:56

the reasons you've said. Incredibly important

18:59

place. Thank you so much for

19:02

sharing. Thank you.

19:10

Thanks for tuning in to the sense-making in

19:13

a changing world podcast today, it's been

19:15

a real pleasure to have your company. I

19:17

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with more wonderful stories, ideas,

19:25

inspiration, and common sense

19:27

for living and working regenerative

19:29

and core positive permaculture thinking

19:31

of design interaction in this

19:33

changing world. I'm including

19:36

a transcript below and a link also

19:38

to my four-part permaculture series,

19:40

really looking at what is permaculture

19:43

and how to make it your livelihood too. So,

19:46

join me again in the next episode

19:48

where we talk with another fascinating guest,

19:51

I look forward to seeing you there.