What is our function?

Hello fellow human,

First and foremost, thank you for signing up to this newsletter. I don’t know just yet what it will become, but for now, I will just say it is an attempt to explore thoughts and feelings about our relationship with, and understanding of, the natural world. By sharing it with others, I am hoping to enable a conversation around our interaction with life, in all its forms and contents.

The same life that flows in our blood flows in every other life form as a different type of water, and, in every case, it emerged to fulfill a specific function within a larger structure: a macroorganism that behaves intelligently through the meanders of biological evolution, people have called it different things through time: Gaia, Pachamama, Mother Earth. Novel forms of life come to be as their function is being fulfilled, and through the fulfillment of that function is new life defined, function and form arise mutually.

We, the ‘wise’ humans, emerged in parallel with an immeasurable number of other large mammals, most of which have now gone extinct. Although, for millions of years, we, our closest ancestors and our closest relative species (namely all the other species from the genus Homo and, more broadly, all great apes, Hominidae) have lived on this planet in harmony, fulfilling beautifully our function within the ecosystems of which we were a part of - to interact, with intelligence, with other life forms, moved by inner pleasure and unconditional love, intrinsically enabling them to flourish, to optimize the satisfaction of our own metabolic needs.

Somehow, in our wisdom, we have forgotten our role, believing evermore that we are the intelligent species and not that we are a part of an intelligent system. Our fear, greed, and ignorance led us to simplify it, destroy it, and explore it, over and over again, creating desert after desert.

The picture above was taken in our Quinta in Évora, a Montado Alentejano. Despite the vibrant green this ecosystem is in imminent danger due to climate change, ecological simplification, and loss of biodiversity, it is a savannah turning into a desert.

The Forest Residencies, which I intend to host on an ongoing basis there, will be an attempt to collectively rediscover and redefine our place and function. The Forest Residencies will not be workshops or courses, they are a space for collective learning that intends to allow for the exploration of regenerative forms of interaction with ourselves and with the ecosystems that give us life.

The first Forest Residency will take place leading to February’s New Moon, from the 17th to the 19th. It will be an experiment, I hope, nurtured by the energy of presence. Unfortunately, for now, spots are rather limited - 4-6 people - and I understand that this will be too short notice for many of you. There will be other opportunities for everyone that would like to participate but will not be able this time.

Please access this link if you would like to know more about participation and sign-up.

I leave you with a question: How can we redefine our function to dissipate entropy?

Thank you for reading! Talk soon.

Photo by @catarinafontoura