Dwight Performing Arts Center
Framingham State University

Thursday, April 19, 2018

A Note from John Feldman

Dorion Sagan (Lynn Margulis’ son and co-author) and I had a great time as speakers at Framingham State University this past Thursday. Thanks to Robin Kolnicki and Lisa Eck for screening Symbiotic Earth and inviting us!  Because of time restrictions, we only played the second half of the film, and I’m happy to say it worked very well.  I gave a brief overview of “what’s happened so far” before the screening.  The audience was captivated and responded with energy and enthusiasm during the Q and A.  Questions and comments covered some pretty heavy topics, and I was most intrigued by the discussion about the need for a new paradigm in economics and law. Once again I was excited to learn that people find the film optimistic, despite the dire circumstances it explores.  Following is an e-mail I received from David Morimoto, Chair, Natural Scince and Mathematics, Lesley University.  We met after the screening, and I sent him the complete film — before he wrote this.

Hi John, 

Your film Symbiotic Earth is fantastic. It embodies Lynn’s ideas and captures her spirit and energy perfectly and tells her story powerfully to make it live forever, just as her iconoclastic ideas now do. I would bet all of my cilia that her hypothesis of the spirochete origin of the mitotic spindle and undulipodia will one day gain enough support to be considered scientifically verified. I don’t hesitate to suggest that Lynn’s belief in the primacy of symbiogenesis in evolution will prevail as well, just as punctuated equilibrium and group selection helped displace gradualism and kin selection, respectively. A posthumous Nobel needs to happen. 

I love the use of the windows in the film framing world views, including reflections, and the use of water and sky and sounds of nature. It is about perspective and perceptual shifts, how we observe. My life will never be the same because of Lynn’s contributions. I hope that complexity science merges with symbiogenesis (and Andrew Bourke’s ideas in Principles of Social Evolution) and Gaia for the next emergent worldview shift, to one of fractal networked self-similarity nested across scales….because it’s there!

Symbiotic Earth should be watched widely, by students and teachers in every high school  college and university, at least. The option of purchase for community viewings is perfect for a symbiotic Earth. This film has the potential to inspire generations of thinkers, scientists, global citizens, and leaders. It is needed for human viability in a post humanist Anthropocene.

Thank you again for making this film.

Thinking with you that we both may be,

Dave