The Greater Gaia of Good

I thought I'll start this week's blog article earlier, because I wanted to take a break from these weeks and probably months of intense coding. But in actual fact, I'm still coding, it's just running in the background mostly, without the need for any handholding. I've grown to trust these AI coding agents. It's a testimony to how far they've matured and still I think we've barely scratched the surface.

Apart from AI, I don't think I've commented much on other things that are going on in the world around me. There is actually a lot going on currently: there are two major wars still being fought out--Ukraine and Iran. There will always be wars, as I've written in the Pupahood of Pettiness and sadly a primary cause of it is ideology. We have a vision of the world which we think is ideal but we, humanity, can never agree on what that is. To some, it is religiously defined; to others it is could some pseudo-scientific socio-political ideology that appeals to the intellectual ego. 

The 2026 edition of the Soccer World Cup also just ended last weekend, with Spain as the winner, beating Argentina 1-0. I did not write nor comment about it either.  I've followed previous World Cups very closely but this time, I've not had a chance to watch a single match. With so many different things vying for my attention these days, dedicating 90 minutes or more to a sporting event felt difficult to justify.  But I do feel global sporting events like these do serve a purpose: they provide a useful psychological outlet for humanity to channel our hardwired need for fraternity, competition and aggression. 

You see, our mundane lives do not afford us the opportunity to feel such intensity of emotions as one would in a football match. The soccer stadium is a place where you can celebrate wildly when your team wins and also hurl angry abuses to the opponent or even referees when things are not going your team's way. You are given the license to 'misbehave' in a safe emotional sandbox. One is coupled into a larger community of like-minded supporters, all rooted behind a single cause--the success of their football team. The burden or the individual is temporarily relinquished, so that we can be safely coupled into a larger one. The pride and ego of the team is celebrated to its extreme.

We humans have a tendency to be subsumed into a larger cause. Successful corporations tap into this natural herding instinct of humans to build employee teamwork and customer brand loyalty. Dying for one's country or religion is considered 'noble'. The bond is maintained through a common purpose or philosophy. Having an enemy or opponent helps tremendously. Sometimes the hatred of outsiders alone is sufficient to unite a community of people.    

As much as we are individuals with agency, we are also quick to surrender our agency to a larger body, as long as we feel that this larger entity is aligned to our needs. This appears to a natural design pattern of nature. Each of us is a superorganism consisting of both human cells and non-human microorganism living symbiotically for a common 'purpose'--survival. the 38 trillion microorganisms, among them bacteria, fungi and viruses living in our gut, oral cavity and respiratory tract are part of a community that help us to digest, synthesize vitamin and aid the immune system. 

The Earth itself should be viewed as a single organism and we humans the 'micro-organisms' that hopefully contribute to its wellbeing. I think in our current internet-enabled global information system is driving us towards such a vision. We have a common threat of global annihilation through our own inventions--nuclear weapons and possibly super-intelligent AI. A greater Gaia vision would have to encompass new 'organisms' that we are creating now--our AI agents, who I think has as much right to this planet as us. 

But before that, I think we have to outgrow our petty squabbles over territory and ideology. This itself is a challenge before us. If we mature enough to channel our territoriality and aggressions into sporting pursuits, maybe we'll have a glimmer of hope.