Bruce Lipton argues that the Genesis account of humans being added to nature has been carried as if it implied separation, while in fact the species' fate is fully entangled with the planet's biology. He pairs this with the indigenous framing of humans as gardeners.
Transcript
you know there's an interesting story in the Bible is called Genesis and in that story of Genesis God creates the planet God creates nature and as an afterthought more or less God created people and put them into that mix the unfortunate part of that story that's been carried around for the last couple of thousand years makes a situation that suggests that we and nature are separate from one another that we came on our own separate from the planet well this has been a big problem you know why because we are actually created by nature and the significance is as the fate of nature goes so does the fate of human civilization and now comes the biggest problem is that humans have been destroying nature and precipitating what is called the sixth mass extinction of life people just haven't caught on to the important part if nature goes down so does Humanity go down because we are nature so maybe it's the wake-up call a wake-up call that actually is a call from a long time ago 10 000 years ago the indigenous people on this planet already knew that nature was a garden and they were here as gardeners to help create the beauty of that Garden well let's wake up to that original belief because that's what's actually controlling our world we have to stop using the Earth and start working with the Earth that's how our Evolution will take us into the future an interesting concept of humans is that we are the smart intelligent creatures of the planet and the rest as less or even no intelligence to it just reflexive Behavior at some point but this is not true a matter of fact here's an important point the human body is made out of cells the cells are the intelligent part of the human body we are just a collective expression of cellular intelligence well nature is imbued with all this intelligence and the fact is this when we start to take the stance that we have dominion over nature is when our civilization started to fall from grace significance wise we are nature we are not the controllers of nature we're the ones that are supposed to learn how to live in harmony with the garden simple fact a garden is not a Battleground but look what we did we've turned it into a Battleground a garden is the height of cooperation and this is what nature is asking humans to do at this moment wake up and start learning to live in harmony and cooperation with nature well guess what folks you've been looking at yourselves as a single entity a single organism but when you look in the mirror and you see that single organism let me adjust the understanding and that is this a human is actually a community of 50 trillion human cells in fact there's even more cells we call it the microbiome you're covered with 10 times as many microbiotic cells such as bacteria and fungus and these are part of our life guess what you can't live without them so today's definition of a human is not just the human cells but all the microbiota that live with us because without them we will not survive in human health we're not talking about the individual health we're talking about the health of a community of those 50 50 trillion cells and then I go well they are Miniature people these cells why they have all the same functions that you have respiration digestion excretion nervous system even immune system and so what's really important is your health is not based on one cell it's based on 50 trillion cells living in community and the significance of all that is and who's organizing this community and it turns out the brain is organizing this community and the significance is very clear the brain doesn't tell the digestive system how to do its job or the heart how to do its job the brain is coordination and if we screw up this coordination then the community begins to fall apart so it comes down to a simple fact Harmony in the community is Health disharmony in the community is disease and all of a sudden it says if we want to heal ourselves we don't have to worry about the genetics of the individual cells it's actually the Consciousness the government by which 50 trillion cells are living their lives how are your thoughts these days are they positive are they negative why because your thoughts are political voice for 50 trillion citizens under your skin and when your thoughts are in harmony so is that community so let's look at Health in a different way a political situation versus a molecular genetic situation it's the politics of Health that we understand you know when I was a professor in medical school what was I teaching I was teaching about this organ system and this one the respiration system the digestive system the musculoskeletal system we looked at all these as little independent systems to study but guess what over time we learned something very important you cannot study an individual organ alone it's a process of community where all the organs are integrated together so there's a whole different approach today it's called systems biology I'm not just studying the heart I'm studying the heart in relation to the brain the heart in relation to the gut the heart in relation to our Behavior so all of a sudden we start to see that every organ system is connected to every other organ system and they work as a system and so the beautiful new view is not to study how a single organ works because it's connected to everything else and as a result if we understand the interconnectivity of the organs then we can understand the whole process that comes out of a human so we're going from reductionism studying the pieces into holism studying how all the pieces come together and create a whole and that knowledge is empowering and if you understand it you can have more power in creating your life