I am with you entirely on this, Daniel. These are ideas I too have mulled over since 1970, when Stewart Brand first published the Whole Earth Catalog, introducing whole systems thinking to a wider public, especially to idealistic college students like myself. Ten years later, in 1980, when I was teaching English at an American college in Greece (and living in a geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller himself), I discovered Gregory Bateson and James Lovelock, who both became my intellectual guiding lights throughout my academic career. I also read Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics and Gary Zukov’s The Dancing Wu Li Masters at that time. In short, I became, and still remain, a deeply committed Gaian.

However, there was something missing. While Gaian theory — by which I refer to everything you are talking about here — is an essential intellectual foundation for overcoming the pathologies of industrial civilization that are destroying our planet — it is not sufficient. It needs, that is, to be paired with Gaian praxis.

And I know of no better path to Gaian praxis than the worldwide Permaculture movement, established by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in the late 70s. All the theory in the world will not take a single step toward healing our planet, or healing our dysfunctional relationship with the source of our lives. But planting a permaculture garden — even starting with something as simple as an herb spiral — brings immediate rewards, both inner and outer — to anyone, whether or not they have ever heard of systems thinking, autopoiesis, life-as-cognition, homeorhetic systems, or anything else…