In the symbiotic foundation for the Symbiocene, ghehds become the replacement for rights. I proposed:
Instead of a hierarchy of competing rights, assuming autonomous individuals or entities in a contested domain, ghehds respect entitlements of coalescence, vagility, passage, movement and flow within organically and symbiotically unified wholes. Rights assume division, competition and exclusion; ghehds assume unity, cooperation and inclusion.
The emphasis in this definition is on conceptual and material protection or defense of the passage or vagility of life (the biocomunen) within and between the coalitions of life forms and the assessment of the way different life forms manage to symbiotically coalesce and form larger overlapping entities.
Ghehds are the equivalent of a ‘lore’ or a body of culturally mediated knowledge that helps humans determine ‘the good thing to do’ with respect to the human-nature relationship. They help us distinguish between associative and dissociative ways of living.
A rejection of rights-based jurisprudence and governance would be a good first step in the creative application of foundational ghehds for governance and law at continental and global scale. Starting afresh with ghehds will certainly get rid of the ongoing toxic colonial legacy of rights, sovereignty, borders, the crown, nations, and nationalism, etc., that currently rule the Earth. On all colonized places on Earth, such a conceptual metamorphosis is urgently needed.
At the same time, damaged places on Earth require active and urgent repair and human ‘investment’ (to clothe) in seeing the biocomunen restored to full health. Where the damage has already seen the extinction of life, human creativity and work to put into place emergent, hybrid symbioments will cumulatively re-establish planetary-scale interconnections in life, but from the microbiome up.
The idea of ghehds also encourages fresh approaches to issues of injustice where, for example, indigenous land was seized and then must be fought to be returned in Western legal systems based on rival claims about land ‘rights.’ Decolonization and a restoration of indigenous people to a living, symbiotic bond to their own land is potentially ghehds-based radical justice.
Along with rights, other colonialist terms such as “sovereignty” need to be expunged from our dictionaries. Sovereignty, from “soverain,” comes from the Vulgar Latin superānus and Latin “super,” which means to be above all others. As we have seen with symbiosis, there is no higher or lower, no ruled and ruler, and no house and tenant.
We are all denizens (within) of a united nisedom (nested layers of life). It is beyond time we got rid of terms that relate to a mistaken, externalized worldview. A good Indigenous motto is “The land does not belong to us; we belong to the land.” The same logic of the commons applies to the ghehds of the seas, rivers, the atmosphere, and the cryosphere.
Material from my new book: The Symbiocene: Our Only Future (CUP 2027)
Along with the material collapse of life and its vitality, there is also the collapse of what we once would have called a spiritual dimension. As each shared intersection in the ghedeist of life is extinguished, as each holobiont biocomunen is wiped out, we experience a diminishment in our personal and collective identity. As the sixth great extinction proceeds, we sense that we are getting closer to the seventh great extinction … ourselves. I feel this loss in my integrity when the last West African Black Rhinoceros is shot for its horn, or when the body of a little boy, Alan Kurdi, a refugee, washes up alone on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The ghedeist connects us all.
Organized religion has never had a mortgage on spirituality but it has been a powerful broker of its meaning in the past. Belatedly, as many forms of non-human life disappear from the face of the Earth, the leaders of many faiths have called for greater efforts to conserve and protect what we have left of ‘creation’. Pope Francis (was) a great leader of the Catholic Church in this respect.
However, in my view, spirituality, as the human search for meaning, has already left the big tree, the big church and the ‘big man’ view of life. It has returned to where it all started … collaboration and association among the smallest possible units of life. That life can grow and evolve from such ‘humble’ beginnings, to now have its human form discover how it all happened, is itself … spiritual. It gives generously of meaning as to how humans ought to live.
The symbiotic turn in our thinking takes us out of formal religion, out of reductionism, out of patriarchy, out of economic liberalism, out of autopoiesis and out of the idea of the autonomous individual. Finally, we are liberated from the dominant ideas that have cajoled us into thinking that we are separate, or must separate from, the rest of individual life forms. We can no longer excuse or justify that separation. Life is a cooperative enterprise held together by associations of diverse life forms that have co-evolved over millions of years. Humans are simply a recent example of large-scale symbiosis in action, as we walk this Earth, courtesy of our gut bacteria.
To have spirituality without religion might come as a relief to many. I feel it is long overdue, as doctrinal spirit in the realm of the other-worldly has now been replaced by the ghedeist within this world … in every nook and cranny. The ghedeist is in every living thing and, if you are open to it, you can feel it everywhere and within yourself. It is about time we loved what and who we are.
Given that the world’s population is now well over 8 billion, it seems absurd to think that we could create a more intensive form of face-to-face democracy to give expression to the multitude of human voices competing for a hearing in the public arena. Town Hall meetings might have worked as an inclusive form of democratic decision-making in some parts of the world in the 1950s, but in the 2020s, such an idea seems arcadian. It is also utopian to think that well-meaning human ‘representatives’ could collect non-human voices and then present them to contemporary parliamentary decision-making bodies.
Despite these obviously formidable logistical difficulties, what must be challenged is the notion that humans can be or act as autonomous individuals, the bearers of individual or corporate rights, wielding power over others in the public domain while at the same time destroying what remains of the once symbiotically united global commons.
In the light of the contemporary science of symbiosis and the philosophy of sumbioism, a new starting point to achieve the major aims or goals of a symbiotically animated society must change from an alienating digital model of lifeless algorithms driving parasiticism of past knowledge – to life-affirming decision-making that drives the conservation of extant life and the creation of knowledge required for successful living in the Symbiocene.
The closest we might get to such a biological model of decision-making in social life is by the use of autoinducer signaling relationships, simbiorithms, simbiotic intelligence (SI) and the holistic information needed to create the Symbiocene. The ‘sim’ in simbiorithms comes from ‘simulation’ (from Latin simulāre to copy, from similis like, and, the Spanish and Italian spelling of symbiosis as simbiosis).
The incorporation of biological models of autoinduction into the silicon-based digital world that will use biofeedback loops, homeostasis, threshold limits, autorepair, monitoring, and biostatic regulation can all be re-imagined using the conceptual tool of simbiorithms. Cybernetics (from the Greek “kubernētēs,” steersman, from “kubernan,” to steer, control) then becomes a biogovernance model based on simbiorithms, simulating homeostatic control within human societies.
The use of simbiorithms entails the retaking of responsibility and control over the digital world and our lives in dead digital spaces. It also means challenging the technological hegemony of the oligarchs and oligopolies who currently own and control those spaces. If all these conditions are met, it is possible that connections between SI, its simbiorithms, and holistic communication processes will help us enter the Symbiocene.
* Draft material in preparation for my new book: The Symbiocene: Our Only Future.
On a foundation of Symbiocene life law based on ghehds, we need to develop a replacement concept for economics, one immersed in symbiosis. As was argued in chapter 4, the term ‘economy’ is based on ‘oikos,’ or the Greek word for the household. The general meaning relates to the (male) management of the household. The new term, ‘sumbonomy’ (sum-bon-o-mee), in addition to the ‘sumbios’ (living together) and ‘nomia’ (to manage), has echoes of the ‘summum bonum,’ a Latin expression for the highest or ultimate good. The French word ‘bon’ also means good. The ‘economy’ of the Anthropocene is replaced by the sumbonomy of the Symbiocene.
As such a social structure does not yet exist, I can only offer speculative thoughts on what form it might take. The sumbonomy is the highest form of practical living humans can undertake for a good life. The sumbonomy is the material foundation for humans living in nature, and we can now create the new conceptual domain of sumbonomics. It has a transdisciplinary partner in sumbiology, or the study of humans living together with each other and other forms of life.
Contrary to the degrowth movement, this conceptual domain can align human enterprise with the symbiotically generated growth that can be found in life. To generate this type of growth, we will need new, creative forms of design and technology based on symbioactive production and benign symbiomimicry. It is from the microcosm—the fungi, algae, bacteria, and archaea, the building blocks of complex life—that the human sumbonomy can be created.
The sumbonomy will be the result of sumbiocentric thinking and, because of the potential for mersis in the Anthropocene, will require the most intense period of genuine growth since the Industrial Revolution. I wish to see the pro-parasitic or terraphthoric (earth destroying) ‘economy’ of the Anthropocene totally replaced by the terranascient (earth-creating) ‘sumbonomy’ of the Symbiocene.
Fossil fuels are finite reserves of energy that can be used only once and are not able to be regenerated in meaningful geological time frames, and similar considerations apply to an insane economy that becomes dependent on “rare” earth elements and compounds. Fossil fuels, because of their finitude, can be owned and traded for wealth maximization. Rare earths are like diamonds. While the current technologies we use to generate renewable energy can be privately owned, the source of that energy, the sun, cannot.[i]
In switching from private property ownership and extraction rights to symbiotically produced resources respectful of the ghehds (intersecting life interests) of free-living microorganisms, we metamorphose from the Anthropocene to the Symbiocene. In doing this, we give microorganisms the space and resources to do what they would want to do anyway, such as reproduce and grow. That is how we shift from the scarcity of fossil fuel energy and materials to the abundance of life forms powered by the sun, plants, and microorganisms, from morbid dead carbon to vital living carbon.
[i] Ralph Nader is supposed to have said “The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun.” The other way of putting this quote would be to argue that if the oil industry owned the sun, we would have had sun powered renewable energy for everything by now. The good news is that nobody can own the sun as it is an inviolable common with an inviolable ghehd that is more powerful by quantum leaps than all the corporations and despots of the world combined.
*Draft material from The Symbiocene: Our Only Future (2027), Cornell University Press.
AI generated image of a solar shrine where humans once again pay homage to our energy common, the Sun.
While many see the current growth in renewable energy as a long-term bonus for humanity in the fight against climate warming, I see the current technologies based on wind and solar as emergency, temporary, and risky fixes for the urgent climate problem. Importantly, they reduce CO₂ emissions but are still based on symbiocide, toxic extraction, and gross exploitation of people and places. The use of rare earth elements is necessary in renewable energy systems, particularly in the magnets of wind turbine generators and the electric motors of hybrid and fully electric vehicles. There is improved efficiency, but because they are rare and difficult to mine, such ‘expensive’ minerals are highly sought after the world over.
The current system of extraction for rare earth elements, limited minerals, and botanical resources for green energy can be highly damaging. The damage also includes human exploitation, particularly affecting the miners who extract rare earths and elements from their geological locations. Extracting cobalt by artisanal mining, for example, currently involves the exploitation of children in the Congo. Lithium mining for battery production involves similar-scale sacrifice zones as those proliferated by mining for coal or bauxite. Converting British Columbia’s old-growth forests into wood pellets for a British power station (Drax) will soon be phased out; however, forest wood pellets continue to be used as biomass for power.
In Earth Emotions (2019) I made my limited support for the current forms of ‘renewable energy’ abundantly clear:
Critics of renewable energy are quick to point out that solar panels, wind turbines, and lithium-ion batteries are produced using fossil fuels, massive pollution, ecosystem disruption and human exploitation. They are, however, a transition to something far better … Despite how evacuated solar tubes, solar panels and lithium-ion batteries are made, there is absolutely no doubt that, once up and running, they use freely available, non-polluting and safe forms of usable energy. However, if they are merely being used to expand growth within the old parasitic industrial system, the Earth will still be subject to major desolation; it will just take that bit longer than it would have if we stayed using fossil fuel as the foundation of that economy.
The ongoing desolation highlighted above is exacerbated by the trend towards mega-industrial wind turbine complexes, which are proposed and permitted to be built in areas that are located on or near highly biodiverse remnant rainforests in the high country of Eastern Australia. Reasonable questions must be raised about the point of renewable energy if the rare and endangered species you hope to save from climate warming, are the very species now being threatened by industrial wind projects. Such consideration is especially pertinent when species, under the pressure of a heating world, are moving higher in landscapes to remain within their symbio-evolutionary preferences for habitat and extantion.
Massive wind turbine installation in over-the-horizon deep ocean locations solves some of the land-based problems with wind; however, impacts on seabirds and whales continue to make wind power less desirable than large-scale solar power located in places such as ex-mining land that has been irreversibly sterilized of endemic flora and fauna by gross symbiocide …
The urgency of global warming as an existential threat to all life on Earth means that we must use renewable, zero-carbon forms of energy production to counter the immediate threat. But that does not mean current modes of renewable energy are viable into the future. As a first step to symbio-compatible energy, we need to avoid placing industrial scale energy ‘farms’ in hugely sensitive locations. Putting them on ex-open cut mining land would be a good start since it has been sterilized for any other purpose.
A sound second step would be to make wind and solar as bioactive as is possible. The replacement of finite (rare), non-recyclable, and polluting components in wind turbines and solar panels with biologically produced replacements is compelling. Starting with the wind farm towers, laminated wood is now being used as a substitute for steel, and it has a carbon-neutral rating.Turbine blades are now fully recyclable, and those at the leading edge are also made out of laminated timber, which is non-toxic and fully recyclable. The next step is to make whole blades from plant-based material, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the USA has created a new substance for wind turbine blade construction that “is made from inedible sugar extracted from wood, plant remains, used cooking oil and agricultural waste.”
New ways of using ‘life-tech’ to bioactively store energy are also no longer science fiction. Bacteria infused in concrete are helping to store “living energy” for later use. As summarized by Petersen et al.:
A research team at Aarhus University has demonstrated how the world’s most widely used building material can be transformed into a living energy device. By embedding energy-producing bacteria in cement, they have created a biohybrid supercapacitor with surprisingly high performance and a remarkable ability to regenerate itself over time.
The next step toward truly symbiotic energy will be to generate electricity directly from biologically active sources. The use of microalgae within bioreactors to produce biofuel is certainly a lot better than burning forest biomass for energy, as was mentioned with the Drax case. However, the ultimate aim of burning biomass, despite potential carbon neutrality, is polluting in other ways because the combustion process emits particulate matter (PM 2.5 or less), nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), sulfur dioxide (SO₂), lead, mercury, and other hazardous air pollutants (HAPs).
Bioelectrochemical systems are a more desirable source of power for the Symbiocene because they allow living, symbiotically unified organisms to produce harmless renewable energy simply by living their normal life cycle. Microbial-based fuel cells can produce electricity and clean water from human urine. Indeed, having domestic-scale microbial fuel cells allows contemporary humans to re-engage with life processes where, for example, urinating into a fuel cell powered by algae or bacteria can contribute to the energy needs of a house. This new form of domestic symbiosis between humans and algae I call “sumbalere,” or actively nurturing our life-support systems.
Sumbalere is more than caring for, for example, pets; it instils care for all life because it enables humans of all ages to directly participate in the vitality and the cycles of life. In the Symbiocene, instead of ignorant button-pushing to send our bodily “wastes” away, humans perform daily bodily ceremonies to re-energize their houses, produce fertilizer for their gardens, and keep the lights on. Composting toilets convert our excretion into humus that can then be used to grow nutritious food in organic gardens.These are ways to reanimate our current lifeless lifestyles. In the Symbiocene, non-indigenous humans bring their lives closer to those of Indigenous humans who still hold traditional animistic beliefs. Symbolic animism is supported by symbiotic animism.
In Earth Emotions, I made the suggestion that in a future Symbiocene, new forms of energy and light could come from biological sources such as bioluminescence. I suggested that our “lights will shine like fireflies”; however, since I wrote those words, experimental and artistic efforts have been made to bring bioluminescence into greater prominence. A light source that is self-generating from life with zero pollution is an area that deserves greater research support, and in 2022, Rambouillet, a town in France, used this method of lighting in an artistic way.
The use of AI also needs consideration in energy analysis. As it currently stands, AI uses enormous amounts of energy, usually fossil fuel-based, to run and cool the data centers and power networks needed for information storage, computation, and dissemination. AI can be used for calculating energy efficiency, hence generating a reduction of energy waste in systems; however, decentralization of multi-scale biologically based energy sources and more efficient use of energy, e.g., switching from AC to DC current plus advances in QuEra neutral atom quantum computing, will lead to significantly less energy consumption than the conventional servers.
The scale of energy production and use can even be reduced to that of the human body and its own ability to produce and dissipate energy. Zou et al. summarize the potential of harvesting human body-generated bioelectricity for practical purposes:
Finally, the concept of a self-powered closed-loop bioelectronic system (SCBS) is put forward for the first time, which organically combines portable electronic devices, implantable electronic medical devices, energy harvesting devices, and the human body. The prospect of symbiosis between the SCBS and the human body is provided.
The use of our own bodies to ‘power’ symbioactive technologies is no longer science fiction. There is a space opening in biotechnology that just might meet some of the scientifically sound definitions of symbiosis. If we can think of mitochondria as the power stations of the cell, imagining the whole human body as an organic power station that drives nano-symbiotechnology is an exciting possibility for the Symbiocene.
However, as with Elon Musk’s claim that there can be symbiosis between humans and technology (see chapter 4), due caution on the veracity and ethics of these claims for new domains of symbiosis needs to be carefully evaluated. Bioenergy innovation is in its infancy and, like other symbioactive technologies, will need research, innovation, ethics, and public subsidies to put such technology into the Symbiocene.
* Draft material from my book The Symbiocene: Our Only Future. (CUP 2027 in publication).
I am of the view that the abstractions we call ‘ecosystems’ arise out of a limited view of symbiotic relationships in particular places on Earth. If you are a ground orchid, for example, the symbiotic association you have with unique mycorrhizal fungi and a species-specific pollinator determines the limits of your symbiotic distribution on specific parts of the planet.
The story of the Western Australian underground orchid and its three-way symbiotic relationships between termites, fungi, and a particular tree is instructive here.[i] It takes detailed biological investigation to find the vital ‘components’ of symbiotic interconnection. The question is, are those identified components the limits of a form of symbiotic life that sets the territorial limits of an orchid’s symbio-system?
It was an amateur botanist in Australia in the 1920s who, I would like to think had a profound influence on the development of modern French symbiotic realist philosophy. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, in A Thousand Plateaus (1987), relied, to some extent, on the discovery by Edith Coleman (1874–1951) of a non-obligate symbiotic relationship between certain types of native wasps and ground orchids.[ii]
Coleman was the first to observe that the orchid creates an organic structure that so successfully imitates the shape of the external reproductive organ of a female wasp that the male wasp, in copulating with this fake ‘organ,’ ensures that the orchid’s pollen is transferred via its body to another orchid. Coleman’s publication, ‘Pseudocopulation of orchids by wasps,’ published in 1928-9, became the inspiration for a philosophical school of thought based on the symbiotic relationships that underpin the spaces of possibilities in life. As Deleuze and Guattari put it:
How could movements of deterritorialization and processes of reterritorialization not be relative, always connected, caught up in one another? The orchid deterritorializes by forming an image, a tracing of a wasp; but the wasp reterritorializes on that image. The wasp is nevertheless deterritorialized, becoming a piece in the orchid’s reproductive apparatus. But it reterritorializes the orchid by transporting its pollen. Wasp and orchid, as heterogeneous elements, form a rhizome.[iii]
I shall argue in greater detail throughout this book that I refuse to accept a terraphthoran conclusion as an end point of discussion about the future of humanity and the beings we are fortunate enough to share life with on this magnificent planet. I refuse to accept that the best we can do is ‘adapt’ to this new world disorder and properly look after each other as our planet and societies collapse. Such care for each other as we all die is clearly maladaptive because the more we adapt to relentless conditions that are deteriorating, the more adaptation is required. And, if you think you can be a minimalist and that your organic vegetable patch will survive in 50-degree Celsius heat, forget it.
Solidarity and mutual support are good and virtuous up to a point, but as the planet continues to collapse while we all hold hands, there will be a moment reminiscent of a Hollywood disaster movie when our clasped hands are torn apart as the tempest defeats our love, strength, and will. The sea level is rising at a record rate, so it becomes impossible, in the absence of urgent mitigation of the causes of global warming, to predict how high our coastal defenses should be to protect life and property. As hurricanes and cyclones become more intense, cities and dense population centers in their path will fail as all forces (wind speed and storm surges) exceed past engineering tolerances in the human-enhanced unnatural disasters we face.
Our love for and obligations to our children cannot be expressed if we are in denial or lost in a fog of positive, adaptive, escapist, and therapeutic psychology, which causes us to collectively ‘give up’ advocating for and achieving a viable future. Our children will lose all respect for us if we give up. “What did you do to prevent this collapse, Mummy and Daddy? Granny and Grandpa?” As the conditions of mass suffering and death escalate, hugely negative emotions will erupt, and there will be massive intergenerational settling of the score as young victims revolt against the old perpetrators. Senicide, the culturally sanctioned killing of the ‘elderly’ responsible for the death spiral, is set to become the most important ‘cide’ in human history.
In the spirit of the subtitle of Earth Emotions … “new words for a new world” (good or bad), it is now imperative for me to briefly explore the negative end of the psychoterratic spectrum and see what comes after the ‘age of solastalgia.’ If my assessment is accurate, a re-examination of the negative end of the psychoterratic spectrum is urgent. We need to prepare for the possibility that the Symbiocene will remain a utopian (no place) vision in a boiling sea of despair.
Despite the clear possibility of such an outcome, I obviously don’t want the “new world” to be apocalyptic for 8.3 billion humans. I think sane people worldwide also want to avoid war, the apocalypse, and collapse. They will choose life over death. They will want ‘eutopia’ (a good place) for themselves and their descendants. They will choose the Symbiocene over the Anthropocene.
Case studies, such as the granting of personhood and so-called rights of the Whanganui River in New Zealand, also expose the failure of the rights approach to the protection of life in nature. While aspects of traditional Māori culture and its stewardship practices are respected in the Te Awa Tupua legislation protecting the river, surprisingly the use of water by other rights holders from the river is not subject to the treaty and the rights of the river. Pre-existing water rights, including water extraction for hydroelectric power, are not extinguished by Te Awa Tupua and as summarized by Erin O’Donnell and Elizabeth Macpherson:
Te Awa Tupua of New Zealand directly grants legal rights to the river, combined with statutory river values and a clear voice for the river, in the form of the guardians. However, Te Awa Tupua is the only example in which the legal person does not hold rights to use water in the river. Although Te Awa Tupua has a clear voice, it lacks the power to use it effectively, which limits its ability to achieve environmental outcomes.[i]
A river that has its use of water excised from the protection of Te Awa Tupua is a river in name only, and the aim of reconceptualizing the river as an “indivisible and living whole, comprising the Whanganui River from the mountains to the sea, incorporating all its physical and meta-physical elements”[ii] becomes a cruel farce.
The voice of a river must include its water; otherwise, it is rendered mute. River water guardians without an active voice and a place where it can be heard remain in a state of colonialism where British capitalist rights rule and extractive ‘wrongs’ are ‘legally’ committed. Just some of those ongoing ‘wrongs’ and threats include the extraction of water for hydropower, nitrate pollution of the water from dairy herds, the extraction of water for an ever-increasing dairy herd, riverbed gravel extraction for roads and railways, and mining the riverbed and the discharge seabed for rare earths and minerals.
Multinational dairy companies like Fonterra Oceania [iii] have a strong lobby voice, and their pressure has seen a conservative national government, in the name of expansion of extractive industries, attempt to rescind aspects of environmental protection of freshwater. [iv] International demand for rare earths and minerals has seen the USA government put pressure on NZ to be a world supplier of these highly valued extractive ‘resources.’ [v] As we saw above with Roman law, atomistic rights can be given and such rights can be capriciously taken away.
The Whanganui River is not alive, but life forms (fish, birds, humans, plants, and microorganisms) inhabit every ‘abstracted’ element, such as the water in the river channel, the hyporheic zone, the riverbed, the floodplain, the estuary, and wetlands. [vi] These abstracted ‘parts’ can be considered as the nested entities I call nisedoms. Noongar people called it a wagyl. Within those nisedoms, there are now humans [vii]. Each abstracted entity has a voice, expressed in culture and science, that collectively constitutes an inviolate ghehd for the water of the Whanganui River. Unite these voices, and the ghehd protecting the Whanganui can become powerful. It needs to be powerful because the inherent injustice of the deliberately complex rights-based system of law and protection is exposed the world over, but particularly in NZ. [viii]
Ghehds, once acknowledged, can never be fragmented or rescinded, as they express and represent voices of a whole and, if including a human presence, a new public symbiosis. In the existential reality of rivers, the ghehd must ultimately rest with the totality of its unsullied water as it enters, unites, and ‘touches’ all levels of life in the nisedom.
We now know why the voice of water was silenced by Pakeha [ix] in the case of the Whanganui, as it is the very thing that unites the whole. Unless we shift from isolating rights to unifying ghehds, the voices that associate will continue to be silenced by the voices that violate symbiotically unified entities for selfish gain. Alienated selfishness is better described as ‘symbiocide‘.
Beyond human polycentric decision-making attempting to reconcile competing rights, ghehds-based law will place priority on the integrity of the whole entity, for example, a river, forest, ocean, or the atmosphere. All abstracted nisedoms will be returned to the commons and treated as such by their human guardians. If someone wishes to ‘develop’ an entity protected by a ghehd, they will have to convince all voices of a nested system that they will do no harm to the integrity and health of the whole. That should put a brake on ignorant Anthropocene extraction, dysbiosis and symbiocide..
We have no specific word in English to convey the idea of intricately nested entities where life forms exist within other life forms, within other life forms … at various scales. Perhaps such nested ontologies can be more adequately understood and defined as existing within a ‘nisedom.’ [i]
The wisdom needed to comprehend such nisedoms has yet to be created in science-based policy. It is this type of ignorance that leads to the failure of development impact assessment to consider the interests of symbionts such as those affected by fracking the Earth for gas and petroleum. As stated within Earth Emotions (2019):
“Now that we know that there is a deep Earth microbiome, it suggests that we must take extra care when drilling into the Earth. Pushing water and chemicals into the Earth in search of gas (fracking) and the subsequent release of huge amounts of waste water involves major disturbance of this realm of life. Where is the section, in the current environmental impact statements for fracking, on the impact on deep symbiotic microbes? Breaking symbiotic bonds is beyond an ‘impact’: it is an assault on a deep foundation for life.”
Rudely awakening ‘resting’ residents within a nisedom can be a traumatic experience and lead to unexpected consequences. The Noongar people of South Western Australia have great respect for the Wagyl or great serpent of the Dreaming. The Wagyl not only created surface fluvial geomorphology such as river channels, but it also was responsible for underground springs and water sources (aquifers). Disturb the surface and you just might disturb the depths.
The nisedom and the Dreaming have many connections and they meet where fracking of river catchments is proposed.
[i] {Defined as Babushka (Russian Doll) or nested ontologies. Nisedom: Etymology, From *ni (“down”or ‘in’ ) + the root *sed- (“sit”) + (d)om, house. A variation on nisdos: from *ni (“down”) + the root *sed- (“sit”) + *-ós. Literally “where [the bird] sits down”.(TFD)
Glenn A. Albrecht is an Honorary Associate in the School of Geo-sciences, The University of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He retired as Professor of Sustainability, Walter Murdoch University, in mid-2014. He continues to work as an environmental philosopher and published a book, Earth Emotions, with Cornell University Press in 2019. Earth Emotions was published in French and Spanish in 2020 and in Dutch in 2024.
In numerous publications and public talks over the last two decades, Dr Albrecht has developed the theme of the psychoterratic (psyche-earth), or negative and positive emotional states connected to the state of the Earth. New concepts, developed by him, are now becoming well established in the international scholarly literature, new research theses and as inspiration for many creative people in the arts and music.
While he is best known for creating the concept of solastalgia, or the lived experience of negative environmental change, his most recent work develops the mega-meme of the ‘Symbiocene’, a future state where humans symbiotically re-integrate with the rest of life in nature.
In anticipation of the book, ‘The Symbiocene: Our Only Future’ (2025), Glenn is contributing to national and international public debate on key issues connected to the human-nature relationship. As the concept of the Symbiocene is now in ‘take-off’ phase, he is in regular demand for both in-person and on-line talks as a keynote speaker at international forums. For example, in April 2024, he gave the prestigious annual Frederik van Eeden Lecture, ‘Transformation to The Symbiocene’, at the International School for Philosophy (ISVW) in the Netherlands.
The Symbiocene is now an inspiration for architects and designers as the task of transitioning from the Anthropocene to the Symbiocene becomes a practical necessity. Glenn is actively collaborating with key innovators in this transition and his own creative contributions are being acknowledged as inspirational by those at the leading edge of their fields.
Dr Glenn Albrecht is now in regular demand for interviews by futurists and social media leaders to explain to international audiences how his psychoterratic approach to the key issues of the early twenty-first century will assist in our transition from an ecocidal form of society to genuinely symbiotic forms of human living.
Glenn currently lives at Blackheath on Gundungurra land in the Blue Mountains of NSW, Australia. He describes himself as a ‘sumbiologist‘, the transdisciplinary study of humans ‘living together’ (sumbios) with the totality of life.
Perhaps many of us are in a state we could call “morusity” or a sense of impending doom (the Greek morus = doom). Most of “us” have yet to experience grief as it will come within a cascade of death in life forms as the Earth can no longer support complex life.
In April 2011, I wrote about this form of “ethical dieback” when living in Jarrahdale, right in the middle of a huge dieback event in the Darling Ranges of SW Western Australia.
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While gamers and sports fans might like slow motion action scenes where you can watch every move in minute detail, I doubt if anybody would like to watch the slow motion disaster that is unfolding before our very eyes in the Perth region.
I live in the hills at Jarrahdale and well into April I am watching whole sections of the forest slowly die. It is not just Jarrah and Marri that are turning yellow and dying, the whole ecosystem is in deep distress, so much so that, tragically, it looks like a Northern Hemisphere autumn is taking place right here, right now.
If we could watch what is going on in fast forward we would see vast tracts of bushland dying of thirst in the grip of this permanent drought. If you take the time to look, you will notice that the native ecosystems on the coastal plain are also in the deep distress of various forms of ‘dieback’. What is happening is a ‘tipping point’ in the process of ‘tipping’ … a rare but hugely important event.
The Perth Region, including the Hills, has had a 20% decline in rainfall over the last 30 years and a much larger, 60% decline in runoff into the streams and our dams. Gooralong Brook, once a year-round running stream, has disappeared and most of its deeper pools are now bone dry. The climate of the SW of WA has already changed for the worse and if it gets even warmer and dryer, the Perth region will be in perpetual ecosystem distress.
This distress is not only about trees, frogs, jilgies and thirsty kangaroos; it is also a crisis of the human spirit and the mind. Our identity as people of the Perth region is at stake. All that is endemic to this special part of the world is at risk of slow death by desiccation. Our iconic trees such as Banksia and Jarrah are already dying and the wildflowers, the exquisite ground orchids and kangaroo paws, will not reappear in a dry, colourless Spring.
Even the bikies that roar their Harleys up the Jarrahdale Road, heading for the hills, are part of endemic Perth, for although they might find it hard to admit, they love the beautiful bush vistas and the stress release that green, open spaces invite. That you can enjoy the roos, the jarrah forest and a thirst-quenching beer at the Jarrahdale Tavern is a quintessentially West Australian freedom. But it is a freedom, like the water in Serpentine Dam, which is in danger of disappearing.
We are a people in denial about the huge, negative changes to our climate and landscape that have taken place during my lifetime (I am a baby boomer). Since 1975, in SW WA, we have experienced most of the driest years on record. Last year (2010) was the driest year for the SW since 1900 and we are now breaking records for night and day time heat. The summer of 2010 -11 had the highest average minimum and maximum temperatures on record. Our dams are right now at less than a quarter of their total capacity and the chance of record rains that would return them to the spectacular overflows I witnessed as a child seems a very remote possibility.
We, in Perth, are in the front line of human induced global warming and its negative impacts and unless we confront that reality, our environment will either wither or simply pack up and move away from us. Sure, at huge expense, we can produce potable water from the sea and pump more ground water to keep Perth ‘green’, but these ‘solutions’ are a sign that we have got our relationship to the earth completely wrong. Go and have a good look at the (former) Lake Gnangara and think about the trade-off between ecosystem health and green lawns.
We are now living in a time of solastalgia, the homesickness you have when you are still at home. We have a lived experience of an environment that is changing all around us in ways that are distressing. Some people still think there is not a problem, that the problem is not serious, that we are not responsible for the problem, that we should do nothing … but these responses are a sign of deep denial and ethical dieback.
———————-
The dieback is now visible from space. Yet the causes of this dieback are the very things that are at the foundation of the economy. Somebody and something has to give.
Glenn A. Albrecht is an Honorary Associate in the School of Geo-sciences, The University of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He retired as Professor of Sustainability, Walter Murdoch University, in mid-2014. He continues to work as an environmental philosopher and published a book, Earth Emotions, with Cornell University Press in 2019. Earth Emotions was published in French and Spanish in 2020 and in Dutch in 2024.
In numerous publications and public talks over the last two decades, Dr Albrecht has developed the theme of the psychoterratic (psyche-earth), or negative and positive emotional states connected to the state of the Earth. New concepts, developed by him, are now becoming well established in the international scholarly literature, new research theses and as inspiration for many creative people in the arts and music.
While he is best known for creating the concept of solastalgia, or the lived experience of negative environmental change, his most recent work develops the mega-meme of the ‘Symbiocene’, a future state where humans symbiotically re-integrate with the rest of life in nature.
In anticipation of the book, ‘The Symbiocene: Our Only Future’ (2025), Glenn is contributing to national and international public debate on key issues connected to the human-nature relationship. As the concept of the Symbiocene is now in ‘take-off’ phase, he is in regular demand for both in-person and on-line talks as a keynote speaker at international forums. For example, in April 2024, he gave the prestigious annual Frederik van Eeden Lecture, ‘Transformation to The Symbiocene’, at the International School for Philosophy (ISVW) in the Netherlands.
The Symbiocene is now an inspiration for architects and designers as the task of transitioning from the Anthropocene to the Symbiocene becomes a practical necessity. Glenn is actively collaborating with key innovators in this transition and his own creative contributions are being acknowledged as inspirational by those at the leading edge of their fields.
Dr Glenn Albrecht is now in regular demand for interviews by futurists and social media leaders to explain to international audiences how his psychoterratic approach to the key issues of the early twenty-first century will assist in our transition from an ecocidal form of society to genuinely symbiotic forms of human living.
Glenn currently lives at Blackheath on Gundungurra land in the Blue Mountains of NSW, Australia. He describes himself as a ‘sumbiologist‘, the transdisciplinary study of humans ‘living together’ (sumbios) with the totality of life.
Perhaps many of us are in a state we could call “morusity” or a sense of impending doom (the Greek morus = doom). Most of “us” have yet to experience grief as it will come within a cascade of death in life forms as the Earth can no longer support complex life.
In April 2011, I wrote about this form of “ethical dieback” when living in Jarrahdale, right in the middle of a huge dieback event in the Darling Ranges of SW Western Australia.
—————————————————————————–
While gamers and sports fans might like slow motion action scenes where you can watch every move in minute detail, I doubt if anybody would like to watch the slow motion disaster that is unfolding before our very eyes in the Perth region.
I live in the hills at Jarrahdale and well into April I am watching whole sections of the forest slowly die. It is not just Jarrah and Marri that are turning yellow and dying, the whole ecosystem is in deep distress, so much so that, tragically, it looks like a Northern Hemisphere autumn is taking place right here, right now.
If we could watch what is going on in fast forward we would see vast tracts of bushland dying of thirst in the grip of this permanent drought. If you take the time to look, you will notice that the native ecosystems on the coastal plain are also in the deep distress of various forms of ‘dieback’. What is happening is a ‘tipping point’ in the process of ‘tipping’ … a rare but hugely important event.
The Perth Region, including the Hills, has had a 20% decline in rainfall over the last 30 years and a much larger, 60% decline in runoff into the streams and our dams. Gooralong Brook, once a year-round running stream, has disappeared and most of its deeper pools are now bone dry. The climate of the SW of WA has already changed for the worse and if it gets even warmer and dryer, the Perth region will be in perpetual ecosystem distress.
This distress is not only about trees, frogs, jilgies and thirsty kangaroos; it is also a crisis of the human spirit and the mind. Our identity as people of the Perth region is at stake. All that is endemic to this special part of the world is at risk of slow death by desiccation. Our iconic trees such as Banksia and Jarrah are already dying and the wildflowers, the exquisite ground orchids and kangaroo paws, will not reappear in a dry, colourless Spring.
Even the bikies that roar their Harleys up the Jarrahdale Road, heading for the hills, are part of endemic Perth, for although they might find it hard to admit, they love the beautiful bush vistas and the stress release that green, open spaces invite. That you can enjoy the roos, the jarrah forest and a thirst-quenching beer at the Jarrahdale Tavern is a quintessentially West Australian freedom. But it is a freedom, like the water in Serpentine Dam, which is in danger of disappearing.
We are a people in denial about the huge, negative changes to our climate and landscape that have taken place during my lifetime (I am a baby boomer). Since 1975, in SW WA, we have experienced most of the driest years on record. Last year (2010) was the driest year for the SW since 1900 and we are now breaking records for night and day time heat. The summer of 2010 -11 had the highest average minimum and maximum temperatures on record. Our dams are right now at less than a quarter of their total capacity and the chance of record rains that would return them to the spectacular overflows I witnessed as a child seems a very remote possibility.
We, in Perth, are in the front line of human induced global warming and its negative impacts and unless we confront that reality, our environment will either wither or simply pack up and move away from us. Sure, at huge expense, we can produce potable water from the sea and pump more ground water to keep Perth ‘green’, but these ‘solutions’ are a sign that we have got our relationship to the earth completely wrong. Go and have a good look at the (former) Lake Gnangara and think about the trade-off between ecosystem health and green lawns.
We are now living in a time of solastalgia, the homesickness you have when you are still at home. We have a lived experience of an environment that is changing all around us in ways that are distressing. Some people still think there is not a problem, that the problem is not serious, that we are not responsible for the problem, that we should do nothing … but these responses are a sign of deep denial and ethical dieback.
———————-
The dieback is now visible from space. Yet the causes of this dieback are the very things that are at the foundation of the economy. Somebody and something has to give.
