Earthling Theory: A New Ecological Identity for Humans and Humanity

A revolutionary framework that reveals human intelligence as Earth's creative expression

Introduction: Nature Communicates

"As I stared into its dying eye, I watched it transform from a living obsidian blue to a lifeless greasy gray. And something inside me changed."

Twenty-five years ago, on the deck of a commercial fishing vessel off Cape Cod, a moment of cross-species recognition changed everything for me. Looking into the dying eye of an 800-pound bluefin tuna, I experienced what I would later call "the collapse of the illusory boundary between observer and observed." That moment—when the fish's eye faded from living obsidian to lifeless gray—initiated a decades-long journey that would culminate in one of the most radical reframings of human identity I've ever encountered.

What emerged from that epiphany wasn't just a career change from commercial fisherman to scientist, but the development of Earthling Theory—a revolutionary understanding of human intelligence that challenges everything we think we know about what makes us human.

I’ll be exploring the details of Earthling Theory in future posts.

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My Journey Across Earth's Habitats

My eclectic life journey—from childhood immersion in New England's coastal habitats to field research across Africa's savannas, expeditions in North America's mountains, years in the jungles and islands of the tropics, and sailing research vessels across the world's oceans—has literally reenacted the evolutionary trajectory that shaped human intelligence over millions of years.

Unlike researchers who study habitats through ever narrower parts of habitats, I've studied them holistically and experienced them intimately in the first person. This unconventional breadth of direct habitat engagement, combined with my scientific training across multiple disciplines, positions me to articulate Earthling Theory as an alternative, more accurate, ecological and controversial theory of human intelligence.

Through my adventures in science and all of the points of direct contact, nature was doing her work on me. With physicists and astronomers, I’ve plumbed the origins of the cosmic background, caught glimpses of galaxies, and watched the births and deaths of stars. With geologists, I read the ancient stories that rocks tell of a fiery and early world. With chemists, I eavesdropped on the molecular music that given enough time and chance would emerge as life.

But the deeper discovery came through a perspective that coheres them all together into an all-encompassing story that is both epic and intimate. I started to catch glimpses of a special world where everything is connected.

At its heart, Earthling Theory proposes something both ancient and revolutionary: human consciousness isn't merely inspired by nature—it's literally endowed to us through millions of years of intimate relationship with Earth's living systems.

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The Earthling Endowment: What Makes Us Uniquely Human

Through my work, I've come to understand that Homo sapiens is the only species to have experienced intimate, sustained relationships with virtually every ecosystem on the planet. This unprecedented breadth of habitat experience has encoded specific perceptual capacities and intelligences within our neural architecture that no other species possesses.

Over six to eight million years of evolution, our ancestors forged deep relationships with:

• Coastal estuaries and marine environments

• Grasslands and savannas

• Forest canopies and woodland floors

• Mountain ranges and alpine zones

• Desert environments and arid landscapes

• Arctic and subarctic regions

• Tropical rainforests and wetlands

A red berry, perhaps, coaxed a young female Sahelanthropus down from a tree seven million years go that started our ancestral journey across the habitats of East Africa. Then it was a rock, a piece of the Earth, found by australopithecine and shaped into a simple tool that taught us how to tell the first story. Eventually from coastal environments, we developed our extraordinary ability to track temporal rhythms. From forest habitats came the remarkable dexterity of human hands. From savanna migrations, our pattern recognition capacities evolved. From diverse soundscapes, our sophisticated acoustic processing that later enabled complex language and musical appreciation. We ARE the inevitable impression and expression of the whole planet. We are the embodiment and enmindedment of the Earth. This is what it means to be an Earthling and this is what it mean to be YOU. Do you live as if this is true?

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The Intelligence of Relationship

Central to Earthling Theory is my recognition that human intelligence is fundamentally relational intelligence—what I call "ecological intelligence." As I explain it:

Ecology is the scientific study of relationships. When I use the term ecological intelligence, I'm speaking specifically about relational intelligence—the intelligence that inhabits relationships, the intelligence that comes from relationships.

This stands in stark contrast to how we typically understand intelligence in our technological age. While artificial intelligence processes information computationally, human intelligence operates through what I call "right relationship"—the capacity for creative connection that generates new possibilities.

The fundamental creativity of the Universe comes from the intelligence in primeval relationships, I've observed. We live in a universe that is grounded in relationships.

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From Separation to Continuity: My Perceptual Transformation

As children we all lived in a less constrained identity. But time and experience in culture (especially a modern Western culture) gradually erode the intrinsic intelligence of our distributed experience. I managed to retain this way of being at least through high school by skipping it. As I began to succumb to the pressures of economic and cultural reality I could feel it being taken. Just prior to my tuna epiphany, I had begun to sense that I was living a half-life alone in a world of separate others."

The transformation that followed rescued me from that typical path:

Now I understand what the tuna had to teach me—that every eye is a window and every window a mirror in a world reflected. What I do to the other I do to myself. Now I live immersed in connections. I feel the ease of belonging to the universe, at home in the world.

This shift from separation to continuity represents more than intellectual understanding—it's a fundamental transformation in how we perceive reality itself. Earthling Theory suggests this capacity for experiencing continuity with natural systems isn't mystical but biological—the result of our unique evolutionary journey across Earth's habitats.

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The Contemporary Crisis: Forgetting Our Earthling Nature

I've come to frame our current ecological and social crises not as technological problems requiring technological solutions, but as symptoms of a deeper forgetting. As I put it:

"I think we've forgotten what it means to be Earthlings. I think it's something that needs to be restored. I actually think that restoring this sense of belonging and connectedness to the earth is essential to our survival."

This forgetting manifests in multiple ways:

• The treatment of natural systems as separate "resources" rather than relatives

• The privileging of computational intelligence over relational intelligence

• The loss of direct sensory engagement with natural patterns

• The disconnection from the cyclical, rhythmic patterns that shaped our consciousness

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Rediscovering Our Earthling Identity

Because I've viscerally experienced the same diversity of environments that encoded ecological intelligence into our species' neural architecture, Earthling Theory presents a wholly new origin story and identity for humans and humanity that will deeply impact the future.

The path forward doesn't require new technology or complex interventions. Instead, it involves remembering and reactivating capacities that already exist within us. Through my work with participants across diverse backgrounds, I've documented how people can experience rapid shifts in perception when they engage with natural systems in specific ways.

As one participant described: "Blundell's view of creativity and ecology as inseparable made me start to see them as one. This made me realize how disconnected I am from the natural world and how important it is to think about my existence in a more interconnected way."

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The Beautiful Future: Living as Earthlings

Earthling Theory isn't just an academic framework—it's a practical pathway toward what I call "The Beautiful Future." This future emerges not through technological transcendence but through remembering our place within Earth's creative intelligence.

The patterns themselves show multiple possible trajectories. Which one emerges depends on our relationship with those patterns.

As more people remember their Earthling nature, new possibilities emerge:

• Technologies that enhance rather than replace our ecological intelligence

• Economic systems based on reciprocity rather than extraction

• Educational approaches that cultivate relational intelligence

• Communities organized around ecological principles

• Art and culture expressing our continuity with natural systems

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The Natural History of Storytelling

Perhaps most significantly, I position Earthling Theory as what I call "a natural history of storytelling." The human capacity for narrative—our ability to weave cosmic, geological, biological, and cultural stories into coherent meaning—reflects neural capacities developed through our extraordinary evolutionary journey.

Our current crises stem partly from disconnection from this story-making capacity. Recovery involves not just new information but renewed participation in what I describe as the ongoing story that "has been going since before we come into existence and will continue on."

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Invitation to Remember

Earthling Theory offers both diagnosis and remedy for contemporary alienation. It reveals how remembering our nature as expressions of Earth's intelligence provides practical pathways through current ecological challenges.

The invitation is simple but profound: to remember what it means to be human in relationship with Earth's creative intelligence. Not as separate observers of nature, but as sophisticated expressions of nature observing itself.

This is a story that is both epic and intimate—one that reveals that the world is one continuous web with more beauty than a single heart can hold. And yet it does.

The question isn't whether we'll remember our Earthling nature, but how quickly we can reactivate these capacities that have always been with us. The Beautiful Future isn't something we create from scratch—it's something we remember we've always had the capacity to embody.

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What aspects of your Earthling heritage do you recognize in your own life? How might remembering your nature as Earth expressing itself through human form change how you move through the world?

Share your reflections in the comments, or reach out to explore how Earthling Theory might inform your own work and relationships.

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About Dr. Rich Blundell

I hold a PhD in Big History and serve as Scientist-in-Residence at the Maria Mitchell Association on Nantucket Island. My work bridges multiple disciplines to explore how human intelligence emerges from our evolutionary relationships with Earth's diverse habitats. Through my Beautiful Futures Lab and Oika methodology, I guide individuals and organizations in remembering and applying their ecological intelligence.

Learn more about work at richblundell.com or subscribe to my YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@RichBlundell for regular insights into ecological intelligence and The Beautiful Futures Lab