781
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_89
Chapter 89
The Cycle of Alterities
89.1 Ecosystemic Potentialities
The idea of multiple, indeed endless, deaths cannot be dismissed, given the
biological rudiments of rebirth, connoting Otherness. But in light of the brief tenure
of adult human cells, seven to ten years, the physiological bias against a continuous
consciousness (or soul) has largely been divorced from scientific disciplines, and
left to spiritual, psychiatric, and ethical speculation. But there are no rational
grounds for supposing that consciousness has no role to play in the process of reincorporation of physical remains into some other systemic, biological process,
which is the basis for a sustained biosphere.
That sustenance comports with a multiplicity of identities predisposed to the life
force, as conceived in any statistically aligned survey of the living world, where
second winds define rebirth and the statistical margins of confidence leave open the
latitude for everything and everyone. In keeping with forest, bog, and other plant
successions, the biological distribution of simultaneities in Dante, Bosch, Hindu
Vaishnavite tradition, with its emphasis on Kalki, the tenth incarnation of Vishnu,
and the co-eval creation and destruction of the cosmos by Shiva, all speak to an
ecological eschatology. Endless reiterations emphasized in every consideration of
the exterior, of externalities and all things outside the dominion of Self, twenty-firstcentury alterities are augmented by dint of the escalations of so much pressure.
Interdependencies are now expressed as the very conflation of Self and Other.
Ecosystem stressors augment the logic driving so many of the world’s religious
emphases upon metempsychosis, punarbhava (“becoming again”), hulul (Sikh
divine transmigrations), and the like
1
.
1 See the (retracted) essay, “The mystery of reincarnation,” by Anil Kumar Mysore Nagaraj, Raveesh
Bevinahalli Nanjegowda, and S. M. Purushothama, in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry, Indian J
Psychiatry. 2013 Jan; 55(Suppl 2): S171–S176, https://doi.org/10.4103/0019-5545.105519,
PMCID: PMC3705678, PMID: 23858250, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/
PMC3705678/#:~:text=Neither%20there%20is%20strong%20objective,is%20nothing%20
much%20to%20conclude. Accessed July 23, 2020.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
M. C. Tobias, J. G. Morrison, On the Nature of Ecological Paradox,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64526-7_89
Chapter 89
The Cycle of Alterities
89.1 Ecosystemic Potentialities
The idea of multiple, indeed endless, deaths cannot be dismissed, given the
biological rudiments of rebirth, connoting Otherness. But in light of the brief tenure
of adult human cells, seven to ten years, the physiological bias against a continuous
consciousness (or soul) has largely been divorced from scientific disciplines, and
left to spiritual, psychiatric, and ethical speculation. But there are no rational
grounds for supposing that consciousness has no role to play in the process of reincorporation of physical remains into some other systemic, biological process,
which is the basis for a sustained biosphere.
That sustenance comports with a multiplicity of identities predisposed to the life
force, as conceived in any statistically aligned survey of the living world, where
second winds define rebirth and the statistical margins of confidence leave open the
latitude for everything and everyone. In keeping with forest, bog, and other plant
successions, the biological distribution of simultaneities in Dante, Bosch, Hindu
Vaishnavite tradition, with its emphasis on Kalki, the tenth incarnation of Vishnu,
and the co-eval creation and destruction of the cosmos by Shiva, all speak to an
ecological eschatology. Endless reiterations emphasized in every consideration of
the exterior, of externalities and all things outside the dominion of Self, twenty-firstcentury alterities are augmented by dint of the escalations of so much pressure.
Interdependencies are now expressed as the very conflation of Self and Other.
Ecosystem stressors augment the logic driving so many of the world’s religious
emphases upon metempsychosis, punarbhava (“becoming again”), hulul (Sikh
divine transmigrations), and the like
1
.
1 See the (retracted) essay, “The mystery of reincarnation,” by Anil Kumar Mysore Nagaraj, Raveesh
Bevinahalli Nanjegowda, and S. M. Purushothama, in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry, Indian J
Psychiatry. 2013 Jan; 55(Suppl 2): S171–S176, https://doi.org/10.4103/0019-5545.105519,
PMCID: PMC3705678, PMID: 23858250, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/
PMC3705678/#:~:text=Neither%20there%20is%20strong%20objective,is%20nothing%20
much%20to%20conclude. Accessed July 23, 2020.