The Quest for Gaia: A Book of Changes
Kit Pedler
Language: English
Pages: 240
ISBN: B0081RLFFS
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Kit Pedler, the scientist who co-created the 'Doomwatch' television series to warn us of the dangers of technology, presents his vision of a totally different way of being in the world. Mankind, Pedler believes, stands at a critical point in history and has to reassess its relationship and the web of interactions that make up the total life-form of the planet. Pedler calls this life-form Gaia, after the Greek earth mother goddess, a being whose sole concern is the survival of the planet itself. Mankind is provoking the wrath of the life-form by its high technology, accelerating entropy and production of planetary disorder. Can we halt the technological Behemoth and live in harmony with the planet again? Kit Pedler says 'yes, we can, indeed, that we have no choice but to do so'. He outlines highly practical ways every individual can change his or her way of life to reduce our personal entropy debt. Do we need to eat factory-farm beef rather than, the sun-product, grain? Must be build homes from steel and concrete rather than, the renewable earth-product, timber? Is there an alternative to expensive, and ecologically destructive, drugs? From experiments with his own lifestyle Kit Pedler comes to some profoundly optimistic conclusions. He demonstrates how low-entropy living can have unexpected rewards, from restoring our respect for the creatures with which we share the earth, greater independence and freedom through learning abandoned skills and, above all, by the recovery of a lost vision, once possessed by our forefathers, which enables us to see and feel in ways forgotten by industrial man. The Quest for Gaia is an exhilarating and optimistic book, and a challenge to capture a rewarding and sustainable future for ourselves and our earth. It is a blueprint for the Age of Gaia.
a year, and accounts for one ninth of the entire packaging industry. In 1975 just over 3,000,000,000 separate glass containers were made. Glass is made from 50 percent silica sand, 20 percent cullet (recycled glass), 16 percent soda ash, 12 percent, limestone and 2 percent of other materials such as pigmenting agents and fluxes. Sodium and Calcium oxide may also be added to the mix as it enters the melting furnace. The glass furnaces consume huge quantities of energy, which accounts for about
nickel are all relatively rare metals and large quantities of electrical energy are necessary to bond them onto the steel surface. The now glittering bumper is then fixed to the body of the car. This is often done in such a way that it is in direct contact with the bodywork, so when the bumper is hit and bent, the bodywork is also damaged—negating the apparent purpose of the whole operation. The car owner is now trained to clean, polish and protect the shining bumper—washing it with special car
told are ‘elementary particles’, and that these have names which distinguish each one from another and cannot under any circumstances be seen. Each atom has a nucleus and the nucleus is made up of particles called nucleons. There are two varieties of nucleon: the proton and the neutron. Then I find that there are other particles called electrons which are circling the nucleus at very high speeds. I also find that these particles have qualities of mass, spin, electric charge and resonance. Not
surrounded by a strange glowing halo, much like the aura of the ancients. These outlandish results were immediately attacked by physicists, who complained that they were nothing more than a ‘corona discharge’, a description which is certainly part of the truth. Opinion became violently divided. Believers said: ‘The Kirlian Light is the light of the spirit.’ Sceptics said: ‘I see nothing remarkable, photographic emulsion is exposed by many effects.’ No one is certain what these strange images
everything connected to everything else, but everything was everything else, and to see this very simple truth did not mean a rejection of reason, but, as Laurens van der Post has put it, a rejection of the tyranny of reason. Just as in the ‘bootstrap hypothesis’ each elementary particle only exists because of its interaction with the forces of another, so do I exist only by the interaction of my physical body with the molecules of the sky, the ground and the water. From then on any pretence of