Read Online Final Fantasy and Philosophy: The Ultimate Walkthrough by William Irwin, Michel S. Beaulieu - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: William Irwin, Michel S. Beaulieu
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Lifestream concept. (This may be because Hironobu Sakaguchi and Kazushige Nojima wrote the scripts for both the game and the movie.) In The Spirits Within, the concept of the Lifestream becomes much more obscure. No longer is it possible to interpret the Lifestream as a metaphor for the flow of physical energy. Rather than a Lifestream that is composed of Mako, there is now a Lifestream that is Gaia, “the spirit of the planet.” About halfway through the movie, Dr. Cid prompts Aki to read a passage from his old research diary:
Dr. Aki Ross: [Reading Cid’s journal] “All life is born of Gaia, and each life has a spirit. Each new spirit is housed in a physical body.” Doctor?
Dr. Cid: Go on.
Dr. Aki Ross: “Through their experiences on Earth, each spirit matures and grows. When the physical body dies, the mature spirit, enriched by its life on Earth, returns to Gaia. Bringing with it the experiences enabling Gaia to live and grow.”
Here Dr. Cid is proposing a radical holistic conception of the Lifestream as an organic living creature that lives and grows by imbuing the physical form of things with a living spirit. During its life on the planet, the spirit grows with the accumulation of lived experience, and when it dies, the enlarged spirit returns to Gaia and nourishes it. Thus, the planet, or Gaia, is a single living organism with its own consciousness.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the atmospherologist Dr. James Lovelock and the microbiologist Dr. Lynn Margulis framed what is now called “the Gaia hypothesis.” The hypothesis, which was entirely unlike the concept proposed by Dr. Cid, did not suggest that the planet Earth was a living creature, that the Earth has a spirit, or that the Earth is a goddess. Rather, it argued that the Earth’s biosphere, including both biota and the physical environment, could be understood as a self-regulating system able to maintain both the climate and the chemical composition of the atmosphere in a state favorable to life. Lovelock defined the Gaia hypothesis as follows: “Gaia is . . . a complex entity involving the Earth’s biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet. The maintenance of relatively constant conditions by active control may be conveniently described by the term homeostasis.” 2 In other words, the Gaia hypothesis suggests that there are a number of physical and chemical processes that work together to regulate the chemical content of the biosphere, and through various systems of negative feedback, biospheric conditions favorable for life are maintained.
This view of Gaia is entirely different from Dr. Cid’s radical holism. But in what precise way is it different? At first glance, the Gaia hypothesis offered by Lovelock and Margulis appears to be mechanistic. They seem to be arguing that Gaia is made up of physical, chemical, and biological feedback mechanisms. But recall that earlier we defined mechanism as the position that the properties of wholes are caused by the parts that make them up. Note that Lovelock and Margulis are not simply giving the name Gaia to the combination of mechanisms that regulate environmental conditions. They are making a much larger claim than this! They are claiming that Gaia—the planet Earth—is a homeostatic system. Homeostatic systems actively create and maintain stable environments through the interaction of physical and chemical processes. The cells in your body, for example, are parts of a homeostatic system. In your body, each cell releases chemical messengers that give information to other cells about what is needed in order to maintain a stable environment for the efficient functioning of the cell. Other cells respond to that information, while sending out chemical information of their own.
Lovelock argued that the Earth has similar homeostatic properties. He told us that Gaia is “a
Dr. Aki Ross: [Reading Cid’s journal] “All life is born of Gaia, and each life has a spirit. Each new spirit is housed in a physical body.” Doctor?
Dr. Cid: Go on.
Dr. Aki Ross: “Through their experiences on Earth, each spirit matures and grows. When the physical body dies, the mature spirit, enriched by its life on Earth, returns to Gaia. Bringing with it the experiences enabling Gaia to live and grow.”
Here Dr. Cid is proposing a radical holistic conception of the Lifestream as an organic living creature that lives and grows by imbuing the physical form of things with a living spirit. During its life on the planet, the spirit grows with the accumulation of lived experience, and when it dies, the enlarged spirit returns to Gaia and nourishes it. Thus, the planet, or Gaia, is a single living organism with its own consciousness.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the atmospherologist Dr. James Lovelock and the microbiologist Dr. Lynn Margulis framed what is now called “the Gaia hypothesis.” The hypothesis, which was entirely unlike the concept proposed by Dr. Cid, did not suggest that the planet Earth was a living creature, that the Earth has a spirit, or that the Earth is a goddess. Rather, it argued that the Earth’s biosphere, including both biota and the physical environment, could be understood as a self-regulating system able to maintain both the climate and the chemical composition of the atmosphere in a state favorable to life. Lovelock defined the Gaia hypothesis as follows: “Gaia is . . . a complex entity involving the Earth’s biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and soil; the totality constituting a feedback or cybernetic system which seeks an optimal physical and chemical environment for life on this planet. The maintenance of relatively constant conditions by active control may be conveniently described by the term homeostasis.” 2 In other words, the Gaia hypothesis suggests that there are a number of physical and chemical processes that work together to regulate the chemical content of the biosphere, and through various systems of negative feedback, biospheric conditions favorable for life are maintained.
This view of Gaia is entirely different from Dr. Cid’s radical holism. But in what precise way is it different? At first glance, the Gaia hypothesis offered by Lovelock and Margulis appears to be mechanistic. They seem to be arguing that Gaia is made up of physical, chemical, and biological feedback mechanisms. But recall that earlier we defined mechanism as the position that the properties of wholes are caused by the parts that make them up. Note that Lovelock and Margulis are not simply giving the name Gaia to the combination of mechanisms that regulate environmental conditions. They are making a much larger claim than this! They are claiming that Gaia—the planet Earth—is a homeostatic system. Homeostatic systems actively create and maintain stable environments through the interaction of physical and chemical processes. The cells in your body, for example, are parts of a homeostatic system. In your body, each cell releases chemical messengers that give information to other cells about what is needed in order to maintain a stable environment for the efficient functioning of the cell. Other cells respond to that information, while sending out chemical information of their own.
Lovelock argued that the Earth has similar homeostatic properties. He told us that Gaia is “a
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