Symbiosis: The Missing Concept in Our Relationship with Earth | John D. Liu

6 May 2025 · 3 min

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2:31

In this monologue, John D. Liu argues that humanity has lost sight of the principle of symbiosis, mistakenly viewing itself as a purely physical entity seeking spiritual experiences. He proposes the opposite perspective: humans are fundamentally spiritual beings temporarily inhabiting physical bodies, and this consciousness links all life in an inseparable web. From this viewpoint, actions that cause species extinctions, disrupt water cycles, or spread toxins are not merely economic activities but crimes of ecocide. Liu highlights ecosystem‑restoration movements as practical, hands‑on classrooms where participants can viscerally grasp environmental problems and directly contribute to solutions. This active engagement, he suggests, offers a antidote to the pervasive dystopic feelings generated by contemporary news cycles, providing both personal satisfaction and a constructive path forward.

Chapters

This concept of symbiosis would be the one that I think we're, we're missing out on. And a lot of people are acting as if they're physical beings and they're seeking to have a spiritual experience. But I have the feeling that we're really spiritual beings and we're experiencing physicality for a very short while. So in a sense, we're bringing consciousness to life. And when we understand we're really conscious, we understand that all life is interconnected, that we don't exist without the relationship to all the other living things. And so causing extinctions or, or destroying the hydrology or spreading toxins throughout the world is not really wealth. It's pollution and it's criminal, really. It's ecocide. So, you know, in the ecosystem restoration communities, this is where people have a chance to learn through doing. And so they're not— it's not theoretical. These are physical issues. And so this is the chance to not only understand them fully, really viscerally understand them, but also to solve them, to work on the solutions. And it brings a lot more satisfaction and kind of is the anecdote to the large-scale kind of dystopic feelings that you have if you— sadly for an old journalist to say— when you watch the news now.