Gaia Gaja Google Gaea Gaga – No 5G for Me, But We're ALL Connected
- Josh Jones
- Jun 13, 2022
- 14 min read
Gaja Sperss, Nostalga: What does Gaia mean? It means everything. And a lot of interesting things. Collectives, linkages and parallels in a single system. Its all Greek to me.
Well, first off Gaia today is an amazingly data-rich galactic vacuum spaceship orbiting our planet giving us new insights into the galaxy while sucking in reams of information. There’s also the principle of our connectedness in the physical and metaphysical spaces to go along with the interstellar meanings. And then there is wine, always wine.
Gaia - The Greek goddess of Earth, mother of all life. Gaia and the Sun god Tawa created Earth and all of its creatures, sorry bible-thumpers, there is another theory here vs. the super 6-day work week. As I recall the story, the seventh day was for wine made from water right (that must have been a handy trick turning water into wine)? And Gaia was busy, her family tree looks more like a Fortune 500 company's executive team organizational chart – giving birth to all of our world takes a lot of effort, and a lot of partners apparently. Mother Earth birthed giants, cyclops, titans, mountains, the sea, the sky and other deities. And with a lot of fertility, came a large family, and naturally, organically a lot of conflict between them, but that is already well-documented in the Greek tablet equivalent of the National Enquirer.
So Gaia in Greek mythology is the mother of earth, the creator and offers insights into our beginnings, where we are going in the galactic sense. But that’s just the start for me. Gaia is an important theory of connection in more modern days, that all the living and non-living things on earth function as a single system (and when you create the appropriate system boundary, you become enlightened, or at least you have a chance of overcoming disorder, or mental entropy as I like to call it).
Greenpeace also gives us interesting insights around GAIA and the connectedness of our earth: from 2019 in an article by Rex Weyler that sheds light on the beliefs of James Lovelock (a tremendous article in my opinion, so thought provoking for me anyways, and Lovelock is a tremendous name, I wonder if he ever went by Jimmy Love or J. Lovelock it down?)
Many of our thoughts around global warming and environmental responsibility, came to the front of our attention from James Lovelock, the British scientist, environmentalist and future-seer soon to turn 103 years old on July 26th). His book Gaia, published over years ago (in partnership with Biologist Lynn Margulis – who deserves much credit also as nobody evey does anything of significance alone), highlighted a hypothesis that life on earth self-regulates is environment to create optimum conditions for the additional advancement of life. The Gaia Hypothesis of 1972 stated that all living things on our planet are part of a single, synergetic system with the inorganic environment, all connected in a delicate balance and feeding off of one another in one form or another. And that is what makes life on Earth possible, not a Greek goddess.
Living organisms concentrate useful elements, compounds and nutrients, and redistribute them into the water, soil, and atmosphere where they stabilize climate, feed other life forms, and influence the environment in which they evolved.
Lovelock is also famous for inventing the fundamental technology behind the microwave (the electron capture detector. I haven’t read anything about his connection to the air-fryer but I wouldn’t be surprised as I am locked in love with that little gadget too. I can’t even imagine how good a Hot Pocket in an air fryer tastes, yummy. So some would argue that Lovelock threw our entire society out of balance with the invention of the microwave. Ok so I aside again, lets get back to Gaia and the connectivity of all things on this planet. I believe we will also arrive here to the parallels with mental health, eventually, as all things in our life are connected in our heads, our minds eye, just as they are in our physical world in front of us. And the use of ‘our’ here is deliberate, we are part of many collectives.
Sounds a little sketchy and skepticism is my head’s orbit – everything is in perfect balance and connection with one another – we give off carbon dioxide so plants can grow and provide us food so we can give off more carbon dioxide and keep the cycle going kind of thing – so why is the planet getting warmer then? Oh yeah, because of things like microwaves and diesel engines and air conditioners and heaters overwhelming the balance.
Or, a little more optimistically thinking (but unlikely), maybe because with more heat you get faster reaction times, needed to deliver more food, nutrients, energy to a growing appetite and more mouths to feed in our human and non-human living creature civilizations? So is the warmer temperature the output of our actions or the input to our needs. Again, I see difficulties in establishing relationships and cause and effect. Maybe we need more water, so the ice needs to melt? A new view of cause and effect or input and output is realized, perhaps, if we take a different view of our system boundaries and an approach of light vs. dark.
This is just one of many theories out there of our planetary existence on earth – evolution also comes from chance or chaos (asteroids, volcanic eruptions, DNA mutations, etc.). Life’s influence has no chance of truly controlling the environment, we simply participate in it, some large co-op. And sarcastically, how can life manage our environment when we struggle to manage ourselves on the inside and keep simple things in our lives in order? Seems as we need to walk before we can run, or walk coherently before we fly a rocket ship.
Whether we control or not, the importance of understanding that our existence is not singular, we are all on one boat and have a role in the journey and destination we reach, is a big one. Tree, soil and atmosphere are all linked hand in hand.
Continuing more with science here from the Greenpeace article:
In 1945, the physicist Erwin Schrodinger pointed out that, from an energy transformation perspective, any life form functions as “a system in steady-state thermodynamic disequilibrium that maintains its distance from equilibrium (death) by feeding on low entropy from its environment, emitting high-entropy outputs.” Translation: Living organisms consume concentrated energy and nutrients, and emit dissipated energy and waste.
Economist Herman Daly reminds us that, “the same statement would hold verbatim as a physical description of our economic process. A corollary of this statement is that an organism cannot live in a medium of its own waste products.” All organisms require other organisms to metabolize their waste. Trees breathe in carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen; we breathe oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide. The system survives together. Ultimately, all divisions prove arbitrary.
I can’t help but go back to the ever-present Caribbean algae bloom of the last 15 years, known as sargasso or sargassum – it doesn’t seem like we are anywhere in balance or control when those huge plumes of seaweed wash up on shore day after day and the stench is overwhelming in the summer months. Many of the eastern part of the Caribbeans beaches have been devastated from this. And what direction will this take us down the road? What good comes out of the sargassum – maybe out at sea it provides a safe haven for more small plankton and fishes to grow and feed an ever more demanding aquatic ecosystem that is pushed to the brink? I don’t know, but I have seen in Mexico where they are making bricks and homes out of the sargassum, presumably to then electrify more homes and put more carbon in the air ultimately, or maybe it’s an example of evolution and ingenuity in the homebuilding business. Only time will tell. I sure would like a sargassum reef off the coast to keep the waters and beach nice as I remember them from 2004 when I first set sight on the eastern shore of Puerto Rico.
Ok, so I asided again, now back more to the scientific perspective here, then the connection to transformation and transcendence. And of course more thermodynamics, entropy and mass and energy balance.
In the 1970s, Russian chemist, Ilya Prigogine, won the Nobel Prize for his description of the connection among evolution, organic chemistry, thermodynamics, and “dissipative structures,” living or non-living systems that transform energy. The larger meta-system, Prigogine concluded, does not sustain species, but rather sustains relationships. Everything co-evolves, and no part of the system can “manage” or “control” the myriad layers of embedded systems and sub-systems.
From Prigogine: Everything is connected, that is the over-arching structure and first principle. Control is another argument or thought process for another day. And now I am circling back to the galactic theme.
Then I think to the soil of our minds? Soil changes, that must be representing our experiences – you can touch soil, you can touch and see an event or action. Soil is the basis for sprouting life and growth, mentally and physically. Soil if misused will no longer support life physically and mentally.
The atmosphere of our minds? Atmosphere is all around us and ever-changing, we take it in – that must be how experiences make us think and feel, delivering our emotions. That also works for me, as you can’t touch a thought, but in our atmosphere you can see clouds or the sun, and you can see our feelings and emotions expressed just as a sunrise or sunset, a bright cloud or dark storm.
The gravity of our minds? Gravity is constant, that must be our DNA, our biological makeup which is a fact or a law (although we are seeing gene therapies and gene/genome editing as a way to change the gravity of our DNA, a fascinating scientific advancement. That is akin to how we create zero-gravity spaces on earth to test life on the moon or space exploration). Yes the gravity and our DNA or traits are something we live with and are ever constant, like our family and predispositions.
The overall environment of our minds?
The actions of our mind, the evolution of our system – the evolution comes from the soil and atmosphere (the learning from things, lessons, thoughts, narratives, truths and lies), the life we create, what we put our time and effort into advancing, what we move away from, the life we extinguish or nurture and birth.
Ok now with a nice glass of wine, back to GAIA – the metaphor and mother of all life.
We must cooperate to endure. We must form an alliance to advance and sustain. Nothing is exempt from this realization (as Lovelock wrote 31 years ago in Ages of Gaia). And in 2006, just 16 years ago, The Revenge of Gaia – Lovelock stated that we have gone too far, not respecting the connectedness, we have broken environmental relationships from which there is no way back and civilization as we know it will collapse. Just as if we improperly select or incorrectly assume, change our system boundary in our mental or physical life, we can die from the entropy that ever-increases and consumes us like a black hole. Or we can process this correctly and collectively find the energy needed to continue forward stronger and better.
But perhaps there is no tragic ending, even Lovelock changed his stance and three years after The Revenge, he published The Vanishing Face of Gaia, suggesting that we have not yet reached the point of no return. And in 2014 he followed that with The Rough Ride to the Future – we have to do more, a call to action. Seems very oscillating with variable light and darkness, brightness and despair, like the many stars above.
And you can go to another interpretation of GAIA for your physical/mental – wait, complete wellness: gaia.com
Their principle [or business model] is that you can subscribe to this wellness and educational service to address all questions and aspects of life. Sounds pretty good! Yoga, meditation, documentaries, a media network and comprehensive plan to expand your consciousness. The Netflix of spirituality. Watch. Transform. Evolve. There is that word evolution again 😊
But I go back to a topic of more interest to me than Netflix, much more interest - wine. Gaja, that is a top-notch producer in Europe and even there you find connectivity. The wine label we know as Gaja started in 1859 when Gionanni Gaja began making wine in the Piedmont region of Italy. They went against the grain, evolving from the norm, when Barolo was the wine of choice, when land in Barolo was considered the most fruitful for developing structured, potent wines. Instead of going with the flow, the Gaja family went another route, to Barbaresco. And the Gaja family first sold wine near the docks by the Tanaro river, a place for derelicts, drunks and gamblers at a small tavern Osteria del Vapore (the steam bistro or tavern in my mind, some combination of Bennigans and Red Lobster with wine perhaps). This was sensible since the family’s other business was transport and at that time the Tanaro river was a bustling port, unrecognizable today. Their collective of businesses in one spot along a river that now is a shell of what it once was. The story winds along from seeking a frontier, going against the grain, adapting, learning and evolving, now looking into the future for the next chapters, that is the Gaja story. Or that is how Gaia Gaja, yes a double gaia, the current face of the family and fifth-generation winemaker, speaks of her family’s origins in the wine business. Gaia Gaja is now the clear queen of the Gaja wine-making family and of the Barbaresco region in totality, born in 1979.
Gaia Gaja’s father Angelo, was the one who exploded the family name in the winemaking business, for a number of reasons where he took their journey in yet another direction, continued the evolution – through the use of barriques (barrels, which can dramatically change the qualities of wine in a spectrum of ways due to the qualities of the wood) and entering the American market. The Gaja bottle labels are simple, in black and white, yet the wine contained within are anything but, known throughout the world as representing top-level Piedmont wine. Many say still underrated and not given its due. Angelo also believed in vinifying grapes solely from their own vineyard, not the common practice of supplementation and mixing grapes from multiple places. Angelo had the pure estate wine mindset early on – to let their land speak in a single tune played by the grapes and their care in the winemaking process. Simple and elegant, the highest form of beauty.
“The characteristic that makes me fall in love with a wine is not its perfection, but its fleeting, mesmerizing, delicate personality. That’s what I prefer more than a specific region or variety,” she says, which is a good way of summing up Gaia’s philosophy on wine.
In life we seek the balance that Gaia understands so perfectly – learn from the past and build upon it, innovate carefully; and without change of heart and mind, nothing truly changes. And family over all, loyalty and closeness, tradition and respect for what the prior generations have done to put you in this current moment and place. Yet sometimes change without careful consideration for our connectedness, observation of direct and indirect impacts, results in losing our identity and our way:
And what about sustainability? “Natural wines are in conflict with conventional practices, just as the modern style was in conflict with Piedmont 40 years ago. Any break with the past brings with it extremes and errors. It’s risky but also very useful, because it requires the conventional winemakers in each historical period to examine and go past their own limits. Wine and viticulture need good examples and innovation”.
“Sometimes, though, with natural wines, the variety or the territory is not recognizable – only the style of vinification. Those wines are all about method used, but don’t express who they are”. So what does Gaja do? “We work to protect the proliferation of the life in the soil, among the rows of vines, around the vineyards. Our objective is to favor the resilience of the vines to changes and to adversity that has become unpredictable. We move ahead through observation and constant experimentation with new practices such as different management of grass-growing and of the canopy, of how to time pruning, for example. The philosophical inspiration is in some ways biodynamic, but we don’t follow any specific protocol because it would be limiting. We look for the best path possible for the needs of our vineyards. Since 2004, we have been producing our own compost, an injection of life for the soil”.
For here is how the soil must be cared for if we truly care for the product which is literally and figuratively connected to it. How we must care for our thoughts and feelings, cultivate and learn to grow our mental capabilities to move forward and progress. And we can’t do it alone.
The new generation of Gaja – Gaia and her sister Rossana, are in-tune with connection and how we can be influenced by the environment and vice versa. They understand the concept of complete wellness in their business:
convinced their father to invest in collaboration with botanists, entomologists and various universities. “Every monoculture (like vines in this part of the world) impoverishes the soil. We went to Alta Langa to select flowers and plants that we don’t have anymore. We planted this mix in our vineyards”, Gaia told us. The latest experiment is with bees, which have precious yeasts inside their bodies. “They are our warning light for the health of the vineyard”, added Rossana. “As defense against insects and disease we use plant extracts: propolis, cinnamon, mint, seaweed extracts, rosemary”.The result is that in the 2014 harvest, only copper and sulfur were used. “We don’t have precise roles in our family, or bosses. Everyone sticks his or her nose into everything”, Gaia commented.
Italian wines, underappreciated greatly – they are part of my future wine journey. From Paso to Piedmont. That is my next area of focus in the subject of wine.
And back to where we started, an article I read this morning. Gaia in the astronomical sense, refers to the European Space Agency’s spacecraft launched in 2013 that orbits our planet collecting data on millions and billions of stars in our milky way galaxy. This effort is also responsible for creating the most detailed map of our galaxy, also has now increased our understanding of the stars and asteroids up in the sky by over 13-fold. And recently, the astronomy world is abuzz, literally quaking at data indicating thousands of earthquakes in the stars, vibrations of intergalactic gas and star brightness, perhaps signaling an unsettled nature of the sky. We are also seeing stars make similar signals here on earth in the mental health arena. Maybe we are all a bit unsettled and just learning about what’s out there in our galaxy and inside our minds. I wish we had a means of collecting so much rich data on our minds as a precursor to better understanding what makes us all tick.
"Blinking stars do offer astronomers a very powerful tool to study their internal physics and chemistry," said Aerts. "It's like earthquakes on Earth. Seismologists love earthquakes if they're not too violent, because these allow us to understand what is happening inside our planet. And astroseismologists do the same, but for stars."
Lets not blink too much when it comes to learning and appreciating mental health please.
Food and wine are an essential part of the culture of a place. They represent its history, express its taste and affect the relationships and lifestyle of the inhabitants. Not paying attention to local products means losing the opportunity to really understand an area. You can see that connection realization in Gaia’s newest project as well, as she takes her place as godmother of Silver Moon (A Silversea cruise ship) with the hopes of providing experiences that connect tourists to the food and drink and heart and soul and culture of a region. SALT: Sea And Land Taste. Capitalism, it connects everything.
“When someone cooks for you, they are saying something. They are telling you about themselves: where they come from, who they are, what makes them happy.”
– Anthony Bourdain
“But I do think the idea that basic cooking skills are a virtue, that the ability to feed yourself and a few others with proficiency should be taught to every young man and woman as a fundamental skill, should become as vital to growing up as learning to wipe one’s own ass, cross the street by oneself, or be trusted with money.”
– Anthony Bourdain
“Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Get the cream sauce. Have a cold pint at 4 o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an oyster. Have a negroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next to you, but have a drink with them anyways. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride.”
– Anthony Bourdain
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