The Three Identities (Article)

Foundations of the Ecocentric Self

Introduction

In our last article, we left off just beginning to introduce some of the core SEEDS frameworks that guide our ecocentric design processes in theory and praxis. Foundational to our design framework is what we call The Three Pillars of Ecocentric Evolution, which are the design modalities that guide ecocentric participation within and across the three primary domains of being. Before getting into The Three Pillar design framework, we must first articulate the general but foundational domains that shape all human experience and participation within the world. We have decided to use the term “Identity,” which at its root means a kind of relative likeness or sameness, to categorically frame these three irreducible domains shared by all humans. These three identities are as follows: the unique individual self, the human cultural self, and the more-than-human ecological self. Each of these interlocking identities are foundational to the development and continuity of all members of our species, which makes them keystone facets to include in all design considerations that hope to scaffold a holistic infrastructure toward the growing of a life-sustaining future world that includes humans.

It should be noted that all design roots itself in desire; essentially the desire for a certain quality of being. The effectiveness of any design is therefore dependent upon the accuracy of one's perception of what actually is (i.e. the nature of being). Without an accurate accounting of the nature of what is, whatever is designed will inevitably collapse back on itself for it was grown/built upon faulty presuppositions. In future articles, we will be highlighting our Three Pillar design framework as a process-relational pathway toward growing an ecocentric world but before we do so, it is imperative that we propose a metaphysically sound, self-evident, and generalized understanding of the core identities (domains) of who and what we are as human beings. We see such an articulation of the core facets of our human identity as the prerequisite accounting of what is (i.e. fertile soil) from which ecocentric design applications can be firmly rooted and grown out of over time. Our hope is to posit a framework of identity that is generalized enough to be radically inclusive while distinct enough to afford healthy differentiation across and between the core facets of “ourselves” in order to support conscious participation, innovation, and stabilization at all scales of our being and future becoming over time.

Identity Matters

How we understand ourselves fundamentally informs how we experience life, which in turn influences how we direct our creative life energy within the world. Identity, as a construct, is a story of being and becoming; it is a vehicle for holding and translating who we are, how we came into being, and the purpose/place we occupy within the larger context of the world/life. Identity is not static but inherently dynamic; it is a complex ever-evolving synthesis between what actually is and what is understood about what is. The question, Who am I? is an infinitely complex one that inherently changes in every moment as the context and the multiplicity of potential vantage points shift over time. Because actuality is infinitely complex, its totality necessarily remains at least partially obscured from full comprehension at any given moment. Thus, as we expand and deepen our understanding of what is, we necessarily broaden our identification to include more while simultaneously distinguishing with greater subtlety the spaces between. This expansion and differentiation of identity is essentially a maturation or developmental process of incorporating more complexity into our previous concept of who and what we are. This is a developmentally appropriate process of “self” maturation, which occurs at both the individual and collective scales of experience.

The exploration of self identity is an innate component of human nature. The intricate complexity of our neurobiology, the evolutionary development of our prefrontal cortex and mysterious desires of the soul generate a kind of self-reflective consciousness that instinctually ponders the mysteries of existence and our place within the unfolding web of all things. However, the vast mystery and complexity of being is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to navigate without some sense of ground, identity, or center from which to locate the inquiring self. Thus, across time and culture, humans have instinctively and necessarily generated stories of self and relative otherness to provide a locus of identity that affords some psycho-spiritual ground to stand upon in order to conceptually and pragmatically participate within the ever changing and shifting context of the unfolding world. Identity, then, provides the necessary containment/vehicle for humans to locate themselves within the surrounding context of life in a way that allows creative energy to be directed within the world.

The Pitfalls of Fragmented (Limited) Identity

Throughout our process of becoming, humans have all too often defined ourselves and the world around us too narrowly in an attempt to stabilize, simplify, and bring structure to the chaotic mystery at the heart of all being and becoming. This narrowly defined sense of self then acts upon the world from its fragmented self-concept. At a certain scale of interaction and perception, this limited self-understanding may have no noticeable conflicts or rippling repercussions and may even be developmentally useful and appropriate to afford a kind of liberation of creativity that gives direction to action within the world, albeit naively. Yet at increased scales of impact and with greater power, the fragmented self-concept inevitably begins to reflect and reveal itself in increasingly noticeable and destabilizing ways over time.

If not properly recognized, integrated or understood for what it is, this fragmented self understanding will unavoidably generate continual recurring crises as a forcing function for maturation (integration). The evolutionary invitation when this is the case (as it currently is collectively) is for the identity to realize through escalating crises that the self is far more complex and interwoven within a larger field of relationships than previously comprehended. Through a process of potentially painful self-encounters, the limited self is invited to surrender its previous naivety, relative freedoms, and self-imposed constraints (externalized authorities) in exchange for a more mature meta-awareness of the intricate complexities and inherent responsibilities of conscious existence within a delicate web of human and more-than-human life.

This death-rebirth process of identity disillusionment and reconstruction is essential for conscious evolution into a meta-stable future. Without a shared understanding of the irreducible components of our species-level identity, we will remain unable to effectively navigate the collective developmental phase-shift we are currently facing from a predominant egocentric separate-self worldview into an ecocentric life-sustaining one. Thus, we at SEEDS believe that a (re)evaluation of “ourselves” is an essential prerequisite for the maturational process of the collective human being into an ecocentric self who can meaningfully participate in growing a world that honors and sustains more facets of our essential nature. Essentially, we must articulate and actualize a universal meta-stable identity framework that can continually facilitate individual and collective maturation across time without naively dissolving complexity for the sake of an illusional or temporary sense of fragmented stability.

Metacrisis (aka Collective Identity Crisis)

We live in a time of great epochal change. Ecological, cultural, and technological forces are colliding in a dynamic and seemingly irreconcilable tension. The existential challenges facing humanity are so vast that many thinkers are beginning to identify this moment as a kind of “metacrisis.” We view this metacrisis as a collective crisis of identity arising out of an immature, incomplete, and dangerously outdated self-concept. Predominant modern human culture has split off, forgotten, or never fully integrated essential facets of who we are, which has inevitably degraded our holistic well-being over time. In other words, we are currently identifying and designing from a too narrowly defined self understanding that perpetually results in self-generated crises as a reflection of our underlying fragmentation. As mentioned above, when an identity (of any scale) becomes hyper-fragmented, rigid, and unable to surrender its previous limitations, it will continuously misidentify the root of its own self-generated crises by only seeing through the lens of its own self-limited fragmentation. This results in ever-deepening fractures that require continually more complicated, reactive, and partial solutions to try to hold together an actively disintegrating system whose underlying vulnerability continues to go unrecognized and therefore unresolved.

Although theoretical explorations that seek to trace back the root cause of The Fragmentation can be cognitively stimulating, SEEDS is not at this point particularly interested, nor do we find it particularly useful, to try to dissect the past in an attempt to arrive at a discrete cause or specific inflection point from which The Fragmentation stems. Nor are we particularly interested in attempting to isolate The Fragmentation within specific instances of the present. Based on consistent observations, we view such attempts as generally naive oversimplifications seeking ad nauseam to excavate the past and surgically fix the present, often through the very same lens and unconscious operation of the underlying fragmentation itself. Rather than taking a process-relational approach to integrating this collective trauma, these cognitive exercises often exacerbate division, magnify specificity, and employ overly rationalistic approaches. At SEEDS, we are more interested in the work of transmuting collective fragmentation toward increased wholeness and wellness through holistic frameworks that serve as psycho-spiritual building blocks for remembering/establishing a story of our inherent belonging and interdependence as human beings.

To facilitate meaningful collective healing, we find it far more useful to begin by simply naming the existence of fragmentation within our field of self understanding, in order to shed light upon and catalyze increased collective awareness of this experiential phenomena. Through this invitation for collective self-encounter that is mediated through each of our own unique ways of understanding and experiencing it, a shared acknowledgement can begin to grow that feels true and relevant to each of us. In simplest terms, we can begin to acknowledge that throughout our historical process of becoming modern humans, self-identification has been too narrow, time and time again. As such, predominant humans have continually self-manufactured crises and grown an external world based upon a limited understanding of who and what we truly are.

Fragmentation inevitably amplifies suffering through a patterned response of increased isolation, vulnerability, and fragility. Although this response arises as an attempt to protect the fragile self from further challenge to its already depleted resilience, the response invariably leads to greater crises and further fragmentation if not integrated over time. While an acknowledgment of the underlying fragmentation remains unrecognized, the fractured self continually turns against itself through acting in reactive, defensive, limited ways that ultimately undermine its own long-term viability. Like an autoimmune condition that continually reacts against itself through misidentifying friend versus foe, our fragmented collective self is contributing to self-destructive and potentially self-terminating outcomes through continually destabilizing the shared conditions needed for planetary well-being over time.

We believe that it is only through articulating and then consciously designing from a more expanded/inclusive self understanding that this pattern of repeated self-injury can become illuminated and incorporated by the collective consciousness. Through maturing our self understanding to include more domains of life as part of how we understand ourselves as human beings, we will be more able to tend to the holistic needs of our planetary conditions. Broadening and complexifying our identification is a pivotal step toward reversing the cascading harms of our current metacrisis that arise out of a fragmented/limited self identity. Through this broadened identification with life, as life, we are then able to more effectively design whole system solutions that align with our core ontological desire for a more beautiful, harmonized, and life-sustaining way of being.

Thus, we see collective maturation toward a greater, fuller, more complex self understanding across The Three Identities as the only true resolution to address the cascading metacrisis of our collective times. In a sense, remembering and centering these three essential facets of who we are (i.e. self, culture, and ecology) can serve as a holistic and integrated symbol of transcendent wholeness through which the fragmentations of our previous self-understandings can dissolve, redeem themselves, and find greater connection. Through this revelation of choice in the present moment to surrender and collaborate within a wider web of remembrance and co-creation, the reverberating patterns and perpetuating harms of the previous fragmentations can find more common ground to compost themselves into the fertile conditions from which new iterations of expression can sprout over time.

Introducing the Identities

We are attempting to articulate a set of common identities that all members of our species share and are informed by. To do so, this identity framework must be intentionally generalized (so as to be radically inclusive) and entirely self-evident (so as to build consensus). Although the results of those two conditions may make this model appear almost elementary to some, we believe that profound transformations arise out of making basic truths conscious. Thus, this article introduces our current understanding of what we call The Three Primary Identities:

1) The Unique Individual Self

2) The Human Cultural Self

3) The More-Than-Human Ecological Self

The integration of these three irreducible identities make up the totality of the True Self, aka The Ecocentric Self. The birthright of this True Self is to take their place within the family of life as an ecocentric architect of life-sustaining worlds, for they remember and are interwoven within a more whole, accurate, mature, radically complex yet delightfully simple understanding of who and what they are. Through centering their unique individual self within the human and ecological contexts that have given rise to their very existence and are inherently part of who they know themselves to be, they are inherently in service to the health and well-being of all three interlocking scales of human and more-than-human experience. As explored below, each of The Three Identities are simultaneously distinct, covalent, and mutually dependent upon the other two. While there is a distinct quality of identity within each, there are no explicit boundaries between them; instead they are inherently entangled and mutually-informative.

Honoring the differentiation between the three domains maintains the necessary tensions needed for creative, synergistic, and generative possibilities to continuously emerge within and between them. Denying any one of the domains entirely, invariably results in entropic energy loss from the system over time through the gradual dissolution of experiential-relational aliveness emergent from the catalytic interaction between the three. For instance, a human culture that denies all individual uniqueness will eventually undermine itself through eliminating its potential for innovation, which fundamentally emerges from individual creativity and diversity of perspective. This innovative force that arises from unique individual selves, offers essential ingredients for human and more-than-human adaptability, resilience, and evolution over time. Conversely, a human culture that values hyper-individuality over the development of generative cultural values and ecological well-being, will inevitably result in socio-cultural fragmentation and ecological destruction. Human culture would, in this case, lose all sense of coherence and continuity of being required for ongoing evolutionary becoming at the communal or ecological scales of experience. Thus, all three domains of the self must be valued and included in any true ecocentric design science that includes humans.

When we recognize and accept the three generalized domains of identity as foundational to our very existence, as well as our continued well-being, each domain becomes essential to what we include in every design consideration. The harmonization and latent potential within, across, and between the three primary domains is an eternal process with infinite variations and possibilities to explore and experiment with over the evolutionary trajectory of human becoming. Thus, this article focuses on the Three Primary Identities as foundational prima materia for all future explorations of the ecocentric design frameworks that inform our work.

It must be acknowledged that this article is only a brief introduction to this topic, given that each of these primary domains are extraordinarily broad, containing within them infinite sub-layers, facets, complexities, nuances, and qualities to be experienced, explored, and developed further over time. Therefore, this article is a relatively infinitesimal and considerably broad explanation of these three categories, intended only to offer the reader a generalized overview of The Three Primary Identities as a starting place for all subsequent discussions, refinements, and continued understandings to build upon and evolve over time.

The Three Primary Identities:

The human being is essentially three-fold in nature, comprising the Individual “I", the Cultural “We” and the More-Than-Human Ecological “Us”/“All”. Each domain is mutually co-arising, interdependent, and irreducible for the human being and conscious human experience to exist and continue to become. As a note to the reader, throughout our exploration of these three domains of being, we will continually employ the ecocentric metaphor of the seed growing into a tree within its larger ecological context because we feel that this developmental process reflects generalized principles that are infinitely scalable without losing accuracy or significance across scale. This maturational process of the seed growing into the tree rests upon solid metaphysical ground through honoring whole parts (actual occasions) nested within whole systems that are innately and infinitely interconnected. Below, we will explore each of these three domains of self with more specificity, in an effort to articulate a shared understanding of the Ecocentric Self that arises out of a synthesization of these three primary identities into a coherent, multidimensional, accurate self concept.

I: The Unique Self (Individual)

Life is experiencing itself through each of us subjectively. You are a unique experience and expression of aliveness, never to have been before and never to be repeated again. Each individual unique self serves a function, fills a niche in time and space, and contributes to the mysterious unfolding process of evolutionary becoming. Like a branch of a tree experiencing life from a particular position, direction, and historicity, each unique self moves through time and space relating to, expressing, and experiencing life from a distinct vantage point. This reality simply is, no matter the level of consciousness one has about or within this process. We all are uniquely positioned, each experiencing particular realities that are discrete and yet innately interconnected within the larger evolutionary unfoldment of the whole. Like the tree is to the forest, the forest is to the ecosystem, the ecosystem is to the plant, and the planet is to the cosmos, we are each a whole part nested within whole systems.

The unique self is the emergent relationship between what has been, what is now, and all that might become, as experienced and acted out through a specific, embodied, temporal self. Thus, we (alongside others) like to imagine the unique self as a niche, which is a kind of co-created contextual space that cannot be occupied or inhabited by anyone or anything else other than the ever-emergent you. This space (the unique self) is ever-shifting as the context shifts, and as we interact within and move through it to unfold into our next iterations of becoming. The unique self can be likened to a seed sprouting on the forest floor that grows to inhabit a unique ecological space (niche), which expresses the adaptive qualities of its inherited genetic coding within a specific environmental context. This process of evolutionary becoming through embodied expression through a unique self inherently serves, however minimally, a significant and meaningful function within the larger unfolding process of the human and more-than-human ecosystems.

The development of the seed into the tree not only informs the eventuality of the future trees of its own lineage (through the genetic coding embedded into its seeds) but also meaningfully participates as a living member of the forest itself, contributing to the quality and shape of the forest's current and eventual becoming. Although somewhat simplistic, this metaphor is a powerful blueprint for the healthy emergence and collaborative contribution of the unique self within an interconnected field of ever unfolding relationships. It demonstrates that when ecocentric unique selves are able to maximize their fullest habitation of their available niche, the overall ecosystem is supported in vitality, health, and complexity. Through supporting the healthy development and maturational processes of each unique self, the fertility of the shared conditions that generate wellbeing, resilience, adaptability, and (re)generation are subsequently furthered.

Each unique human self is vastly complex and innately capable of wildly creative possibilities that can be directed in both generative and destructive ways. Unique selves thrive when they have a sense of meaning, a directed sense of purpose, and an ontological felt sense of significance. While basic needs such as food, water, and shelter are essential for an individual’s immediate survival, they alone do not provide sufficient ingredients for true thriving to occur over time. Without meaning, purpose, and significance, the unique self loses motivation, stability, and capacity through becoming either passive (nihilistic; dissociated) or volatile (chaotic; destructive). When holistic personal development is absent, such passivity and volatility can become distributed within the larger cultural context, destabilizing the cultural self and the more-than-human ecological self over time. Thus, a primary function of all ecocentric design systems will be the guided exploration of holistic unique self development across the human lifespan as a pathway toward individual maturation (creative stabilization) for subjective well-being as well as for generative participation within the other two domains of being (i.e. human culture and more-than-human ecology).

The human being cannot escape unique subjectivity, for each individual is an instance of the field of human being uniquely situated in time, place, ancestry, and embodied experience. The ecocentric evolutionary process is catalyzed as individuals deepen their self awareness of both their unique niche as well as the larger context (i.e. mycelia, additional trees, forest, ecosystem, planet) of which they are an interwoven part. When this is the case, the conscious depth of their unique experience expands and the particularities of their niche is more fully understood and occupied. This realization affects not only their quality and depth of experience but also the quality, depths, and degree of conscious participation they are able to have within the field of interbeing of which they belong and contribute. This is essentially a maturational process of expanding one's self-concept to include more, which parallels the collective maturational process underway at the species level as we’re invited to expand our current understanding of self to include the three identities.

In future articles, we will outline a more specific ecocentric design model for how we can understand and effectively participate within this domain of the unique individual self to support Soul Rooted Personal Development. The first step is to offer an introductory working framework and shared language around its existence and inherent value. As we acknowledge its role within the larger web of life, we are more able to support its holistic development as an essential facet of our evolutionary process of becoming more fully human. Holistic self identity is in part a spatial-geographical process of homecoming within an ecocentric web of relationality, which results in greater understanding of one’s location within the whole. From this clarified positionality, conscious participation and engagement becomes ever-more possible. In this way, greater self knowledge offers greater choice-making capacity through providing opportunities to align one's attention and true will toward what is relevant for ever-deepened being and ever-greater becoming for the unique self as well as the wellbeing of the human cultural self and the more-than-human ecological self. For conscious, reciprocal relationships are only possible from a rooted self-understanding.

Now that we have touched into this first domain of the unique individual self, we are more equipped to open the metaphysical gateway into the second domain of the human cultural self, given that this species-level identity is ultimately composed of the dynamic intermingling, cross-pollinating, and mutually co-arising dance of individual unique selves organizing, exchanging, negotiating, and relating to themselves at a cultural level of analysis that is ultimately greater than the sum of its parts.

II: The Human Cultural Self (Species)

Culture is hereby understood as the field of relational patterns, habits, and codes that effectively guide, direct, reflect and constrain behavior within a relatively shared identity group in order to support the conditions for the being and becoming of the identity that is shared (ie. participation in and with life over time). The smallest circle of culture is between two unique individuals in a relationship, as expressed through the shared implicit and explicit habits, patterns, codes and structures that support communication, interaction and participation for the generation of greater possibilities and quality of being. The largest human cultural circle is hereby understood to be the human species at large, and is reflected in the fundamental evolutionary patterns and habits of relationship that have made us human over deep time emergence. Within and between these two scales, there is a nearly infinite variety of subcultures, tribal groups, family/kinship circles, bioregional communities, etc. that participate in the continued propagation of values and patterns of relational behavior as well as infinite emergent landscapes of novel ways of interrelating within these unprecedented collective times.

The cultural self, like the individual unique self, has an intricate story of becoming, a history, that informs both its quality of essence at the present and constrains the possibilities of its future becoming. Through the arc of this historical becoming, we as humans (at all scales) have developed complex habits of relationship that inform the foundations of how we understand ourselves and how we behave as human beings. These patterns and habits of relationship have been codified and woven into the culture and serve as a means of directing, shaping, informing, and containing human behavior into the future. These codifications are grown out of how we as humans previously were, what we valued, and how we chose (consciously or unconsciously) to relate and shape the nature of our relational reality. These habits of relationship recursively shape our biological and psycho-spiritual character across deep evolutionary time. Thus, our cultural history has real ontological, biological, epistemological and psycho-spiritual effects that place real unavoidable constraints and directives on the possibilities of the present.

What is essential to understand is that there can be no individual being without a context (niche) within which the individual can establish a sense of self identity. Identity arises out of a field of relative similarity and relative difference, affording the ability for an individual identity to have a sense of self through a field of relationship. Human beings require relationships to self-regulate, self-propagate, and regenerate over time. Each individual is grown out of the field of complex human relationality that inherently informs, shapes, and directs the emergence of any individual beingness. This field of human relations, which includes the institutions that moderate, educate, and shape behavior, is wildly nuanced, highly complex, and self-organizing. It is our human cultural identity without which individual unique self identity in and of itself is an impossibility.

The cultural domain is likened to the subconscious domain of being. It can, given a certain amount of effort or a stroke of reflective insight, be made (and only to a degree) conscious to the individuals immersed within it. Like a fish momentarily breaching the surface of the water, an individual can momentarily gain perspective and knowledge of the field of human cultural relationality that is, has been, and will continue to be shaping one's fundamental experience of aliveness. Our thoughts, ideas, values, language, clothes, customs, desires, fantasies, creativity, art, spirituality, etc. are all shaped and informed by a continual unfolding context of our cultural being across time. We are born into a human cultural moment that has a complex historicity of becoming and a certain momentum, directionality, velocity, and current of evolutionary unfoldment. One cannot, no matter the effort, escape this reality or deny this domain of being in its entirety; we can only ever grow more conscious of it such that we can participate within it with more agency in order to help shape and evolve it into more life-giving future conditions.

Because human culture is a complex ecosystem of relationships, it has many varying sub-groups and identities which inherently include a vast and diverse spectrum of differentiated values, desires, positionalities, aspirations, collaborations, and antagonisms. These subgroups are like guilds within an ecosystem, which function to provide spaces or viable niches for unique selves to meaningfully participate within the whole. At the largest scale, we share a fundamentally human culture (even if it is less consciously developed) that is shaping and providing the context for any sub-identification to occur. However, at increasing scales, human coordination and an ontological experience of meaningful participation becomes more and more obscured. Subcultures, therefore, can afford meaningful, significant, and effective participation with and between unique selves in alignment with a shared story of value.

In order to support these subcultures to engage generatively within their spheres of influence and harmoniously across perceived “otherness”, the task is not to obscure the differences between them but instead to mature our sense of a shared human identity at the widest species level from which all multiplicities of experience can arise out of and inherently belong. As our shared human cultural self increases in its self-awareness and self-reflective consciousness, it can strengthen its fundamental knowing of being in service to the wellbeing and thriving of all members of the whole. The recognition of a shared field of the largest human cultural identity as a species does not limit or dissolve the infinite variety of the individual or subcultural expressions that exist within it, instead it serves to support greater coherence, harmonization, and participation within and between individuals and groups over time.

While we may be most uniquely and immediately shaped by the closest and smallest cultural circles of our family, tribe, community, region, nation, ethnicity, etc. we are most broadly and deeply shaped by the widest circle of the human cultural self at the species level, which has developed its particularities over vast evolutionary time. As members of the human species, our physiology and consciousness have been developed, constrained, liberated, evolved, and directed in particular ways that are shared by all members of our shared species. What impacts humans in the present moment fundamentally impacts all of us, thus tending the foundations of human well-being, continuity, and evolution is essential for the generation of a meta-stable future world, if we hope for it to include human beings that is.

The Human Cultural Self is ever present within the Unique Individual Self through shaping the contours of subjective experience while constraining and directing creative energy. It is also external to the individual as reflected through the laws, institutions, structures, materials, technologies, economies, and customs that contain and guide interaction and participation with and through the nature of the shared milieu. The cultural identity thus expands beyond and is a higher order of complexity then the individual, for it is a reflection of a synthesization of values and tangible efforts of groups of unique individual selves of our collective past living on into the present moment. The highest function of the human cultural self is to continuously generate the ripe conditions for continual well-being of individual human beings and more-than human ecologies across time.

When human culture actively creates the spaces (niches) for unique self emergence and conscious participation, the quality of experience for individuals deepens and their co-creation within the cultural context increases. When this is the case, human culture grows in its ability to effectively fulfill its function as a collective vehicle for human and more-than-human well-being, stability, resilience, and evolution over time. The capacity of the human culture to support the relationship, communication, and generative participation between individuals, sub-groups of all scales, and the human species as a whole is reflective of its capacity for meta-stability over time.

The strategies that the human cultural self uses to create the conditions for unique self participation and more-than-human thriving are shaped by and in turn recursively shape the individual and more-than-human ecological selves. The more-than-human self permeates the cultural self, just as the cultural self permeates the individual self, through the materials, organic ingredients, energies, bodies, forms, relationships, and spaces that grow and inform the cultural self. The more-than-human self is also beyond and outside the domain of cultural self, as represented by the larger ecological forces and contexts as well as the dark mysterious spaces, places, and beings that exist beyond our full comprehension or knowledge. When a culture forgets or degrades the ecological context that affords and informs its being, it inevitably degrades its own experience of aliveness and viability to exist into the future. Thus, the cultural self must see itself as in service to not only the quality of experience and the holistic development of the unique individual selves that comprise it as a species, but also the continual regeneration and animation of the more-than-human ecological self context that gives rise and ultimately shapes the foundational possibility of the cultural self’s very being and becoming over time.

III: The More-than-Human Self (Ecology):

The More-Than-Human Ecological Self is the third and final facet of the human being that comprises the Ecocentric True Self. This identity is so vast, deep, and expansive that an adequate description of its nature and particularities is an impossibility. At the mesoscopic human sphere of participation, this domain is the material and energetic process-relational world that surrounds us and comprises us. We are all bodies, made up of cells and particles, breathing air, drinking water, taking in the energy of the sun, and engaging with the earth (as earth ourselves) in every moment. This third identity reminds us that as human beings, we are not separate from life; instead we are nothing but life, earth, grown out of cosmos and one day returning (at least bodily) to the earthly plane. Thus, the human is a unique expression of the field of relationships that make up the domain of the more-than-human ecological self.

Our unique individual and human cultural selves have been grown out of billions of years of an evolutionary process that is foundationally held up by a wildly complex field of interrelated entities co-creating the conditions for all of this to be and become. The field of interrelatedness, and all the infinite entities, systems, and energies that comprise it, is what we mean when we talk about the more-than-human ecological self. Everything we are as individuals and human culture(s) is an animate expression birthed out of the more-than-human ecological self. The health, vitality, and quality of being of this third facet of being, in this case within the context of our planetary health, fundamentally shapes the quality of our individual and cultural well-being.

This domain of identity is likened to the domain of the unconscious, given that it comprises the primordial and essential foundations for our very beingness, which has allowed us as humans to come into existence and facilitated our evolution over deep time. This domain inevitably extends beyond the boundaries of anything that can be considered purely human, and yet it is ubiquitous to the core of who and what we are. In the most generalized sense, it is the field of complex relationships that generates beingness itself. Its expressions are the “ten thousand things” that range from the smallest atomic particle to the largest galactic system. The ecological self includes the particular ecology of your local bioregion that holds up and supports your aliveness to the intricate planetary systems that generate all life on our shared earth. This domain of self includes both the measurable materials of the universe and also the unmeasurable, mysterious, unfathomable, and unknowable under/overworkings of evolutionary consciousness.

We are no-thing and no experience without this domain of ourselves. It connects us to everything that is, weaving us together in a threaded tapestry of being and becoming. The universe is an unfolding contextual-relational field of interacting instances continuously born into being from what has been and at the same time shaping its own future through its way of being with itself now. We are in no way outside of this and can in no way ever be outside of it. In fact, any conception of an otherworldly dimensional space that exists “somewhere else,” is still actually within this domain of being and is inherently interconnected with everything else that is a part of this domain of experience. This reminds us that there is nowhere else to hide or escape to that is not intricately interconnected with everything and everyone else that is. Thus, how we participate within this more-than-human ecological domain, as an instance and expression of it, shapes the foundations of experience of being and the possibilities of becoming not only for ourselves at the individual and cultural levels of identity but also ourselves at the more-than-human ecological level now and into the future.

The body itself is made up of a multiplicity of more-than-human elements and energies coalescing into a structural functional organism we call the human body. The immediate more-than-human environment is constantly being “brought into” our being, shaping our experience, and constraining our possibilities. From the air we breath, to the health of unseen subatomic particles we are swimming in, we are literally the emergent experience of the quality of the field of relationships that holds together and informs reality. Once we integrate this third domain into our identity, we see that how we participate with the foundations of life shapes our quality of being at the deepest ontological and psycho-spiritual level. We realize that as individuals and human beings, we are inherently in service to the structural-functional well-being and ongoingness of this ecological domain of being.

It is within this third domain of identity that all truly transcendent self-realizations are to be found, for the ecological self meaningfully connects us to everything that is, has been, and ever will be. This recognition affords us as individuals and cultures with the very real opportunity to experience and collaborate within a kind of ontological evolutionary immortality. Such a transcendent realization of symbolic, collaborative, mutually co-arising immortality ironically forces us right back into the moment, into the here and now, into our bodies, into our communities, into our places of sovereignty and stewardship, so that we might participate with what is as an act of humble service to the continual becoming of all that could become over deep time.

Conclusion

How we both participate and experience life within and across the three domains of our being shapes not only our ontological felt experience of life but also affects the very foundations of life itself through sending rippling effects over time to be experienced by all future instances of human and more-than-human being across time. SEEDS strives to articulate a vision of greater alignment with the generative evolutionary forces of being and becoming that are inherent within and across all orders of aliveness, in order to qualitatively deepen, diversify, and fortify beingness, meaningfulness, and significance now and into the future. If we desire to design future worlds based upon more harmony, coherence, and generativity, it is imperative that we consciously honor and include each of these three domains as foundational to the human being. As we expand our understanding of who we are, we become more equipped to wield the extraordinary power endowed through our evolutionary process of becoming human in order to consciously imagine and shape more life-affirming and life-enhancing worlds over time.

This simple identity framework expands our sense of self to include more while also containing and differentiating the core identities so that we can effectively relate and participate within and between them with more subtlety and grace across scale. Without containment and differentiation, we cannot actually relate, innovate, reflect, and consciously participate across relative otherness. Without such healthy distinctions, life (at any scale) becomes self-enclosed and unable to receive necessary feedback that can orient and (re)attune identity and behavior towards greater inclusivity, harmony, and generativity across scale and over time. Honoring the distinction between the three domains, therefore, maintains the necessary tensions between them to allow for creative and generative possibilities to continuously arise. Dissolving any one of the domains entirely into the other two results in an entropy of being across the three domains of self, existentially destabilizing the foundations of experiential relational aliveness.

This revaluation of our understanding of self is essentially an ever-expanding, process-oriented, relationally-attuned story of identity built upon a more whole, complex, integrative, and radically inclusive understanding of self. This is essentially a more mature understanding of self that results from a developmental phase-shift from an egocentric separate self worldview to an ecocentric life-sustaining one. This maturational process of collective self-development necessarily includes a more comprehensive understanding of what contributes to our emergence and continuance within an ever-widening web of reality that has birthed and continues to sustain us. Our intention with this analysis is to provide a meta-framework that honors the intrinsic diversity within and across these primary domains of human identity while simultaneously weaving ourselves into a universal human understanding, based upon a shared story, that serves as a radical invitation for holistic participation toward the generation of a life-affirming planetary experience now and into the future.

Through recognizing the three primary identities as each vitally important, we can more effectively participate within and between them to generate a truer metastability in order to reconcile the metacrisis of our collective times. If we understand the current metacrisis as a identity crisis of collective identity, then grounding ourselves into a shared framework that places value and significance across all three primary domains of our human experience (i.e. self, culture, and ecology) supports us in establishing a solid metaphysical foundation from which to understand ourselves. This collective psycho-spiritual ground of establishing/recovering a shared language and framework for who we are as human beings provides a place from which we can stabilize ourselves as a species.

From that place of stabilization, we are then able to engage in meaningful co-evolutionary participation toward a future becoming that honors all three primary facets of our innate being. As we recognize and accept these three generalized domains of identity as foundational to our existence and continued existence as humans, all three scales of identity scaffold every future design consideration. Bringing conscious awareness to the three-fold nature of our identity offers greater attunement with and resolution of the nature of what is. The more we understand what actually is, the greater our capacity becomes to effectively participate as agents of conscious evolution in increasingly meaningful, creative, and harmonized ways that support more facets of life over deeper time. In our next article, we will share more about our underlying ecocentric design framework that is rooted in the fertile soil of these three primary identities, which we call The Three Pillars of Ecocentric Evolution.

Thank you so much for being alongside us on this journey of articulation, exploration, investigation, and honoring that which lives within us as a mysterious gift for our community and world.