Gaia, An Autobiography
by
Joseph Jay Schiller

Authors note: This document begins with the assumption that awareness is an attribute of molecular complexity in the same way that liquidity is an attribute of water. This would seem to be the only way to account for it without invoking magic. The question then arises: What would be expected to happen on this planet, were that the case. If a scenario develops that parallels the scientific scenario thus far developed through experimentation, this will provide strong evidence that the assumption is valid.

The definition of instinct is "Prompted by an inner urge." This concept has been used to explain that which is unexplainable in life with the currently used model. Therefor, I expect to find Gaia at work just here. The scientific community has been trying with some though not complete success, ever since Darwin, to explain the generation of life on this planet in accordance with his theory.
I saw a good example of evolution on TV last night. When the isthmus of Panama came into being it left many families of animals separated from one another never to come into contact again. And they have developed in a sufficiently different way that reproduction is no longer possible between them, even though, to the naked eye, they still appear to be identical. So, it is a slow process. In general we would expect it to operate at a speed controlled by the speed of change in the environment. Presumably, if the environment changes rapidly the affected animals would also, within the constraints of their life duration and therefore reproductive rate, also change rapidly.
The real issue here is: What kind of awareness would be expected in a non human? What kind in a tree? My contention is that there is only one kind of awareness, shared by all living things. In fact I would change the definition of life to mean self aware matter, as opposed to unaware matter. Human awareness is different, in that it includes consciousness or objectivity. So, to imagine what sort of awareness other living things have, it is that which we have when not conscious. That is to say, when we find that we have no memory of what transpired we can say we were operating under control of Gaia awareness. Or when we are driving to work while at the same time thinking of something else. The driver is operating under Gaia awareness.
This sort of awareness isn't inconsequential. It is capable of a very great deal, though it is no great shakes at functioning in the objective life of a human. It is, though, capable of carrying out instructions, if sufficiently detailed. In fact, I would go further. I would say that we don't do anything. We instruct our Gaia selves to do things for us and our instructions are generally complied with, though not always.
Well, we all know ourselves well enough, what is wanted is an accurate description of Gaia. What we want to know is to what extent we are Gaia creatures. Knowing this, we will finally comprehend the range of our power over ourselves.

Gaia was aware. She perceived vague and fuzzy colors. She felt things. She was attracted by things and repelled by other things. Occasionally she became more, she achieved new awareness. Eventually she realized she had boundaries that seemed to expand in a step function of rising awareness. In fact, things seemed to happen, changes were made. Before, she was different.
Gaia's awareness continued to expand. Eventually she realized there seemed to be not her. There seemed to be an outside. She could feel things. They seemed to get more intense, and then again, less intense. Sometimes they were attractive, other times, repulsive. Some were very attractive, and then she tried to get closer. If she succeeded in getting very close, then she came into contact and she knew what it knew.
Eventually, Gaia began to recognize helpful presences and harmful ones, too. She avoided the harmful ones and began to identify the most helpful. They brought pleasure to her. They increased her awareness the most. They joined her and became her. The bad ones brought pain and decreased her awareness. They never joined her.
Gaia began to experience joy and pain. Sometimes she got too intense and her awareness declined, or too vague and the same happened, so she began to recognize where things were best and she tried to stay there and locate the good ones and connect to them. Occasionally she connected to a very good one and felt ecstasy. They were large. But, she connected with any good one that she could locate and avoided the bad ones.
Once Gaia noticed that her newest acquisition seemed to bring with it more intense colors, so she enjoyed that and tried to locate more like it. This she succeeded in doing and the colors became more intense and eventually began to come into focus. Eventually she realized that the colors were on the outside, they weren't her. In fact she began to notice that the good ones had noticeable coloration and she could use that to find them. She began to notice that there were other things outside. There was music, or vibration. She began to add to herself the beings that brought awareness of sound.
Gaia began to be frustrated with her inability to efficiently move where she liked in the outside. She would see things that she wanted to go to but could not will herself there. She decided that she would like to push herself along in some way and it occurred to her that if she added on one side and then gave that her attention, she could change her location, though she couldn't predict where she would go. Then she thought to add to the other side too, and to produce a sort of spasm or paroxysm of contraction in a sudden sort of way. This had the effect she wanted. She moved towards what she had located. She also wasn't thrilled with just bumping into them. Frequently they just bounced off and away. So, she began to devise a way of capturing them. She built up a kind of cavern. One that had a sort of door on it that could be closed. Then she would try to open the door before bumping into them and then closing the door so that they wouldn't bounce away.
Then, according to what they were good for, she would move them around inside and add them where it did some good. Either to improve her perception of outside, or to increase her awareness. She began to accumulate some junk that was no help or even caused her pain, so she moved these to the place of the spasm so that when she moved they disappeared into the outside.
Gaia began to recognize that there was a sequentiality to things. She noticed that sometimes things were readily perceptible in colors on the outside and then they wouldn't be, though the vibrations continued, whether or not she could see. Gaia also noticed that as time went by, parts of her began to be less effective and she had to add new captured parts and to discard old parts to regain effectiveness. Then it occurred to her to start a new version of herself. She would construct a small version but including all the important parts and discard the whole thing which would then accompany her and do as she was doing.
Pretty soon there was a whole group of her, floating along, pretty much identical for a while, but then she noticed one that was changing herself by adding an appendage, rather than continuing the traditional spherical shape. Pretty soon, the one with the appendage was much more adept at movement and could more easily capture new material to add to her structure. The others were apparently watching too, because many of them began to develop their own appendages and before you knew it motion appendages adorned everyone and they became very adept at intentional movement.
Then she noticed that there were subtle differences that began to develop. Some would concentrate on one form of motion appendage and some on another. Then when they reproduced they would produce identical copies of themselves until there began to be groups of this form and groups of that form. Then the groups would drift away and she would lose touch with them.
Eventually, she concluded that she had become so complicated that it no longer was practical to construct a small version of herself and eject it. After much mulling of this problem, she decided she would devise a code, a written document describing herself, place that within a sort of cocoon of her essential material, and eject that. There was no problem interpreting the code. She wrote it, so she could read it. Then the cell could reconstruct itself, based on those instructions. She had already determined the minimum size the cell could be. Smaller ones never developed. Of course the instructions also included the instruction to update the code to represent any changes made by the host up until the reproductive event.
This then became a permanent record of the life of the owner.
Time went by and one day, Gaia began to be annoyed by the crowded conditions that had begun to prevail. There were so many of her they were constantly bumping into one another and being jostled. It became difficult to locate consumable material with which to perform repairs. If this was not done she would eventually become unable and would be consumed by someone else. This problem of consuming and avoiding being consumed was also getting more and more difficult. She had developed tools with which to adorn her mouth. They were knifelike and were useful in disassembling things she consumed. Occasionally she used them to frighten off beings that seemed to be interested in her as potential fuel.
She finally became so annoyed with the crowded conditions, she determined to navigate to some unknown and less crowded location, so she started her propeller and began to move off. She had long since developed a propeller as a means of movement in preference to the old jet propulsion system. This system, an appendage that moved back and forth in a serpentine motion was much more efficient and made navigation more controllable. She had also detected a faint attraction in the environment outside of her that was constant and allowed her to maintain any direction she chose.
After several light and dark periods, the crowd began to thin out and when it came to a level that she found comfortable, she stopped and resumed her normal life.
She had developed a fairly complex disassembly line method of dealing with material she ingested. She developed a long tube within which to confine the material so that after she grabbed it with her mouth, it moved along a well developed route and at different stages she removed useful parts which she then stored for use when needed. Eventually the leftovers arrived at the disposal point. Another door to the outside. She also used this door to eject new cells that would grow into new versions of herself.
Quite a lot of diversity had built up over time. There were long thin versions of herself and short round ones. Some had developed fins, others relied on their tails and some tails had fins on them. Defenses had come into being, some had developed an unconsumable exterior either with a sort of armor or due to spear like objects extending outwards from their bodies. Eyes had become quite refined and most had two now, which allowed for better distance judgment. Vibration sensors were much more refined also allowing for discrimination between different objects that emitted vibrations.
Almost all had devised internal detectors attached to all parts of the external surface so that immediate detection of aggressors was possible which made defensive motion possible. It had used to be that half of ones body could already be gone before detection of the fact that one was being consumed. Some internal sensors were devised to detect when problems arose regarding some material that had been ingested. Eventually an automatic return of the material to the external environment was also devised.
Matter available to be ingested continued to diversify also. So, eventually Gaia devised a method of evaluating newly ingested material so that it could immediately be rejected if inappropriate. She also had to come up with a marking method so that she could recognize her own descendants and distinguish them from others that had become so dissimilar that she no longer recognized them as part of her. She used color markings, mainly. She found over time that some color markings had a sort of appeal, while others didn't, so she naturally produced the most satisfying ones and avoided the more repellent ones.
And, everytime she decided a change was worthwhile, she added it to the encoded record of her existence. If a modification proved ineffective she just discarded it and didn't enter it into the record. Even so, she occasionally had to make serious modifications to the code of long ago where it came into conflict with new designs. Occasionally she was unable to change old features no longer useful and so devised methods for making them ineffective. Codes that removed a fin that had previously been generated, for instance.Cell specialization had also arrived.
She had begun to add cell addresses to the genetic code so that the intended recipient of the instruction could be identified. When cells were notified to begin interpreting their growth programs, all of which were identical, they acted only on the instructions addressed to them. The method now used called for her to eject a single cell. That cell would begin interpreting instructions, the first of which was to reproduce itself, the new cell getting a new identity. Each would then continue interpreting the code, acting only on instructions intended for it and when subdividing, providing a new identity by a standard method to the new cell. In this way specialized structures could be reproduced at a specific location.
She had also determined that it was more efficient to ingest her own descendants than it was to rely on inanimate material. This allowed her to discard the mechanisms she had devised to reduce the inanimate material to useful components. If it was already alive it was immediately available for energy, for instance, rather than relying on the old method of photosynthesis for energy. For her victims she relied on ancient relatives that had given up the effort of improvement, being satisfied with what they had become or determining that no effective pathway existed from their current position. That any alteration attempted reduced their effectiveness. They were photosynthesizers, so that function continued to be performed and she and the rest of the shapechangers could take advantage. This meant that their own photosynthesis equipment could be diverted to other uses.
She understood that that meant the end was coming. That to continue to exist she had, always to be devising new methods of achieving her goals. It was a moving target and the only constant was that somewhere, she wanted to continue to be.
Some time back, during her emigration she had determined that there was a different environment above her, much thinner that the one she was used to. She could also see from there, that there was a bright object above whenever she could see down here.
She had, by now, developed a system for straining oxygen from her environment. She had discovered that this was the material she was constantly using and in constant need of. She could never build up a supply to use in lean times as she could with other material. She needed a system to constantly work on acquiring it and that defined pretty much how big she could be. To increase in size she had first to devise bigger or more efficient gills.

* * *

She became aware that change, based on strategic thinking, wasn't sufficient. Problems arose unexpectedly and were sometimes devastating to her. What she needed was a method of devising solutions to problems she wasn't even aware existed. She already had random mutation, due to features in the environment damaging instructions for reproduction before acted upon, but these results were almost always negative from a survival perspective. What she wanted was some regular method of mixing the genetic code in such a way as to maximize diversity but also inherently limiting the potential for genetic catastrophe.
She had long since noticed that she seemed to have two sides to her personality. One side of her seemed to identify with her physical existence while the other side of her was more attuned to her awareness. She decided this might provide the basis for a division in her physical manifestations. She could split into two kinds, one more spiritual and one more physical, though both would contain all. If she did that she could alter the method of reproduction to call for contributions from both sides thereby producing the desired genetic mixing. Thus she invented sex. After watching it work itself out for several generations, she concluded that she was closer to the females while she supposed that the males were more like the creator.
Eventually, the oceans became crowded. As a result the photosynthesizers managed to spread into the very shallow regions so that they spent a part of the daily cycle in free air, then they continued to spread until they succeeded in surviving in free air exclusively. Once they had fully occupied the dry land, non photosynthesizers followed, using the photosynthesizers as fuel. First snakes, since they were well designed for motion on the dry land. They soon developed legs to improve speed and then began to discard their tails.
Before that could happen though, Gaia realized that the atmosphere above the oceans wasn't ideal for life. There was too much carbon dioxide and therefor the temperatures were too high. She needed to get more oxygen into it and also to get rid of carbon dioxide in favor of the inert nitrogen as a means of maintaining suitable pressure. So, she devised photosynthesizers that floated on the surface, absorbing carbon dioxide and releasing manufactured oxygen and nitrogen. Then she sat back to await events and work on devising a method of auto management. One in which the transformers would increase and decrease according to needs, in order to maintain an ideal growth environment for life.
This eventually provided motivation to get non photosynthesizers on land, to compensate for the photosynthesizers and maintain a balance.
Gaia had also found a need to include within the genetic code a means of controlling the actions of her descendants. It was only too easy for them to become preoccupied with some threat to their own survival and to lose track of the fundamental motivation for existence. The survival of Gaia. So, she devised a mechanism which produced negative feelings whenever any of her descendants acted in any way that fundamentally opposed this "prime directive".

* * *

From time to time dramatic environmental changes occurred which had the effect of setting back Gaia's plans pretty dramatically by wiping out large numbers of her descendants, many times taking with it vast amounts of experimentation which had then to be done all over again. As a result, Gaia was constantly watching for methods for minimizing this damage. The events were beyond Gaia's power to control, so methods of adaptation were wanted. A predictive capability might be useful, she decided. Communications among the millions of elements within her being were good and very flexible. They operated on the principle of neighbor to neighbor passing of intelligence, so that every possible path was available. This had some disadvantages: speed was limited and inaccuracy could creep in when some failing node garbled the message, but the flexibility was more important. When garbled messages occurred, since the recipient eventually received the message from several sources, the garbled message was outvoted and discarded.
Gaia realized that to achieve this predictive capability, a new form of awareness was called for. The observers would have to be capable of viewing Gaia as one element in the environment along with all of the others in order to assign the proper importance to each. The new design would have to be capable of objectivity. Only with that special capability would it get the perspective it needed for accurate observation. And only with accurate observation would it be possible to see oncoming environmental change with enough lead time to do something about it. So, she decided, she would produce new instructions in the genetic code that favored objectivity. That would, eventually, produce the sort of creature needed.

* * *

When Gaia realized she occupied a rocky sphere in space, and that there were other such bodies, she devised a plan to further assure her survival, even in the most devastating environmental event, which she knew was bound to arise eventually. She set about devising the smallest amount of her essence she could devise and an encasing structure such that this seed could remain dormant for an indefinite period and when and if suitable conditions ever arose, activate and begin the generation of a new Gaia. These seeds she arranged to be deposited over the entire surface of her home planet at a suitable density. Thus, if eventual environmental calamity occurred, when it had passed and conditions improved, she could begin the process of self generation all over again. She wouldn't be dependent on the initial conditions in which she first appeared, which might never occur again. Another advantage of this system was the fact that large explosions occurred from time to time that resulted in rocky material departing from the surface permanently. If her seed was encased within these rocks, they might eventually land on another body capable of supporting life, in which case she would arise like the fabled phoenix, yet again.
In this way, Gaia assured a sort of immortality for herself. Material in nature, so that, unlike purely spiritual entities, she was always subject to entropy and had to be constantly born and reborn. And, eventually, if all planetary objects disappeared, she would be gone for good, but, until then, she had achieved a special kind of immortality.

* * *

Gaia was somewhat concerned about what the result of creating a new form of awareness might be. Up until then there had been the provider of the environment, the being she thought of as God, but who's existence had to be inferred from the nature of the cosmos. Whatever he actually was, she couldn't say, since he never directly interfered. And there was her, and that was all. Now she had decided to produce a third. This creature, when occupying his objective awareness would be separated from her and would go its own way. She would control, of course, but the new humans would view her as seemed appropriate to them. The cells making them up would still be Gaia and operate as all of the rest did. But, the new awareness wouldn't understand them, at least in the beginning. The beings would be as newborn babes, knowing nothing and drawing their own conclusions about what they found confronting them.
As they increased in numbers, they would encounter all of the organization problems already encountered and dealt with by Gaia. But, they would see them objectively and deal with them as seemed appropriate to objective creatures. Of course, she would be going along for the ride and would be capable of seeing from both perspectives, hers and the humans. But, she couldn't interfere much, if she wanted to get the best result. Any interference from her was bound to limit the result and perhaps conclusively.

Other Views