Gaiia and the Art of Gaiiology

Konstantin Iskra-Mogilnik Producer, screenwriter

Nothing contributes to the creation of the future like daring dreams. Today is a utopia, and tomorrow is flesh and blood. Victor Hugo

Genre

The novel Gaiia is a science-fiction vision of the transformation of human society. The title of the book Gaiia alludes to the ancient Greek goddess of the Earth named Γαῖα, who gave birth to all living things.

Author

Poet, thinker, entrepreneur and public figure Hares Youssef has lived several lives in very different cultures. He was born and raised in Syria, a country with a traditional way of life. He was educated in the final years of the USSR, at the time of the collapse of the Soviet utopian experiment. He established himself as a personality and entrepreneur in Ukraine during the years of "jungle capitalism", after which he moved to Western Europe. The author of Gaiia has firsthand experience of numerous models of society, the friction between which forms the main currents in the societal ocean of our planet:

• the rich North - the poor South,
• the Muslim world - the Christian world,
• traditional way of life - progressive society,
• the Brownian movement of jungle capitalism - a Western European sanatorium-type society,
• consumer society - the world of planetary awareness.

Gaia's hypothesis vs. Medea's hypothesis

The novel Xenocide by Orson Scott Card is the first to use the concept of gaialogy: the science of the self-regulation of planetary ecosystems. According to the widespread eco-utopian "Gaian hypothesis" and the philosophy of Gaianism [1], Earth, or Gaia, is a super-organism that supports life on the planet.

However, the opposite view is also widespread: the Earth's biosphere does not possess "intelligent self-regulation". And more fitting as a figurative description of the Earth is not Gaia, but another ancient heroine - Medea [2], who killed her own sons. For the causes of most of the mass extinctions on Earth were not external, but internal.

Hares Youssef synthesises both approaches: the only biological species capable of controlling and saving the biosphere from destruction is the human, as a rational being, and who has accumulated enough opportunities to influence the planet globally.

In the book by Hares Youssef, our planet cannot get by without human help: the inhabitants of Gaiia lend a hand to Earth's inhabitants. To restore harmony, the now-separated worlds need to be synchronised. In the utopian novel, the author seeks to implement what he personally has already realised in life: he has synchronised himself, a native and pupil of the traditional Muslim world, with the open and forward-looking world of Western Europe, in which he lives and writes at the present time.

Gaiia is "pregnant" with many new works destined for social and commercial success, as it draws on the tradition of gaialogy, which has long lived securely on several markets of modern culture.

Books:

• Foundation, Isaac Asimov
• Xenocide, Orson Scott Card
• Deathworld, Harry Harrison
• Vaster Than Empires and More Slow, Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

Films:

• Final Fantasy: Spirits Within
• Avatar
• Kingsman: The Secret Service

Computer games:

• Type-Moon
• Final Fantasy

[1] Gaia hypothesis: James Lovelock & Lynn Margulis.

[2] Medea hypothesis: Peter Douglas Ward.