Shifting: Nature's Way of Change

by Paul Krafel

For thousands of years our culture has been surrounded by land that is responding to our culture's presence. Our cultural assumptions about nature are based on what we see around us, but what we often see is the influence our culture is having on the world. Over the centuries, this mistake has created false assumption about nature that are now deeply rooted within our culture. Because of these mistaken assumptions, our actions often produce results we do not intend. The goal of this book is to shift these assumptions by describing a different way to understand the world around us. This different way is the Gaia Hypothesis, a scientific hypothesis about the Earth and its life formulated by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis. Learning about their hypothesis had such a profound effect upon me that it led me to a new work and a new relationship with this Earth. This work and the lessons it taught me are the heart of this book; they are described in the third sections, Shifting Balances. The Gaia Hypothesis struck me as an obvious truth upon first reading. I understand it because the hypothesis depends on seeing the world in a way that I had been practicing for years. After graduating from college, I had immersed myself in wilderness. These wilderness years led to eight more years as a naturalist with the National Ark Service. Climbing mountains, floating down rivers, roaming tundra and desert, watching deer decay, and sitting in silent cliff dwellings changed the way I saw the world. This different way of seeing will help you understand the Gaia Hypothesis so I describe some of my vision-changing experiences in the second section, Tools For Seeing. But first let me tell you some stories about cultural assumptions so you can better understand the goal of this book which is to shift assumptions within out culture.

208 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1999