Designing Ecological Habitats - Gaia Education

“ecology of consciousness” 277
which we live. Once we have integrated this understanding, it becomes clear
that the most important thing we can do, as a species, is to design holistic
environments that actually enhance consciousness – places where the people
moving through them experience a sudden flash of their latent possibilities,
a palpable intuition that they are part of a larger and more perfect whole.
The ecovillages of the world have taken the first step in grounding this ideal
into reality. We, as students of Ecovillage Design in the 21 st century, have
the opportunity to advance their precedent to the next level by educating
ourselves to be proficient designers of human habitation systems, systems
that can bring out the very best in human potential. This kind of yoga would
be an expression of the ‘ecology of consciousness’ that was introduced as
subject matter in this essay. What kind of work could be more, shall we say,
regenerative?
Further exploration of this theme could include a review of Bateson’s
Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972), seeking to understand the ‘difference that
makes a difference’ between an ‘ecology of consciousness’ and an ‘ecology of
mind’, and Goonatilake’s more recent “Knowledge as an Ecology” (2006).
Also vitally important would be understanding the effects of ‘wilderness’
– a theoretically undisturbed ecology – on consciousness.
References
Baruss, I. (1987) “Meta-analysis of definitions of consciousness.” Imagination, Cognition and Personality,
Vol. 6, pp. 321-329
Bateson, G. (1972) Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Ballantine Books; New York
Cotterill, R.M.J. (2000) “Did consciousness evolve from self-paced probing of the environment and not
from reflexes?” Brain and Mind, Vol. 1, pp. 283-298, Kluwer Academic Publishers; Netherlands
Dubos, R. (1968) So Human an Animal. Charles Scribner’s Sons; New York
Gilman, R., et al. (1991) Ecovillages and Sustainable Communities. A Report for Gaia Trust by Context
Institute; Bainbridge Island, WA
Goonatilake, S. (2006) “Knowledge as an ecology”. Theory, Culture & Society, Vol. 23, pp. 170-172
Jantsch, E. (1975) Design for Evolution: Self-Organization and Planning in the Life of Human Systems. George
Braziller; New York
Odum, E. (1959) Fundamentals of Ecology. W.B. Saunders Company; Philadelphia and London
Shepard, P. and D. McKinley, editors (1969) The Subversive Science: Essays Toward an Ecology of Man.
Houghton Mifflin Company; Boston
Varela, et al. (1991) The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. MIT Press; Cambridge,
MA
E. Christopher Mare has been a full-time student since 1994. He has been given the luxury
of self-designed programs in which he gets to organize his own studies. The general
progression of interest over the years has been: Permaculture to Ecovillage to Urban Village
to Traditional Village to Design for Consciousness. In 2002, Mare founded an educational
non-profit – Village Design Institute – which will one day secure a land-base for the purpose
of setting up a combination 1) research, training, and demonstration site; 2) Academy of
Village Design; and 3) community of contemplative scholars. This project most likely will be
called an ‘ecovillage’.