Background of the Gaia Foundation
 

The Gaia Foundation of Australia started in Perth, Western Australia in 1987. Over the thirteen tears since it started it has attracted a growing support, largely because of the projects it has undertaken. The Foundation is linked to an expanding network of individuals and groups, part of the growing fabric of Gaia organisations operating around the world, in Britain, the USA, Europe and elsewhere. Members of the Foundation share three commitments -

1. Personal growth; healing and empowering ourselves in order to fulfil our true personal, community and planetary potential. We are much more than who we think we are.

2. Community building; strengthening the communities of which we are a part through community development and community education.

3. Service to the Earth; enhance the wellbeing and flourishing of all life. In gratitude we give back to Earth a little for what has been so unstintingly given to us.

The Members of the Foundation fulfil these commitments through engaging in Gaia Projects, either by creating new initiatives, working together with other Gaia Members, or by working with other organisations. Thus

"Our intention is to lovingly empower ourselves and others to know oneness with Gaia, the living Earth, through taking courageous and joyous action, now"
Through sharing the commitments and the intention the Gaia Foundation operates as a self-generating flexibly bounded organisation, in which most of the energy is held in the periphery rather than the core. In this way any member can contribute to the healing of our dysfunctional, unsustainable and increasingly violent global society, caused by a faulty relationship between humanity and the living planet. We do this by activities that demonstrate alternative ways of living are not only possible, but are essential for a truly sustainable civilisation in a genuinely post industrial age.

Background
 
The Foundation takes its inspiration and organisation from the Gaia theory, of James Lovelock, Lynne Margulis and others, which shows that the Earth itself is alive. The biological and geological cycles of air, water and earth, driven by the fires of the sun are so tightly coupled within the biosphere that its forms a self-regulating metabolism, an evolving "living entity". The name "Gaia" selected for this planetary "being" by the Nobel prize winning novelist, William Golding, is therefore especially appropriate as it was the name given to the Earth, oldest of the ancient Greek gods - the self creating mother of all beings.

Seen from within the perspective of Gaia, humanity does not represent some apex on a pyramid, but is merely one very recent blossom on the tree of life, a strand in the web of life. Human centred views that see the world as comprising inanimate and living resources intended for our use, is the view of a cancerous self-destructive civilisation, out of touch with reality.

For example, Gaia, over its four billion years of existence has created five great pillars, on which the whole of life on Earth depends. Human activity in a cancerous fashion is currently dismantling and destroying each of these Gaian creations.