Welcome to the Ethnospherics.org website. We will be expanding this site in 2010 to bring you knowledge about the World of Cultures. For now, please find the attached paper written by John Allen in 2003 defining this new field of cultural study. Questions or contact, please email: info@biospheres.com
ETHICS IN SCIENCE AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS ( ESEP) 2003, 7–24 Published April 30
Ethnospherics:
Origins of human cultures, their subjugation by the
technosphere, the beginning of an ethnosphere, and steps needed
to complete the ethnosphere
by John Allen,
Global Ecotechnics Corporation, 1 Bluebird Court, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87508, USA
ABSTRACT: With the invention of cultures human populations escaped dependence on a single
ecosystem. Human cultures today have become an ecological and geological force equal in scale to
the five previous kingdoms of life. Cultural structural forms arise from the recurrent fulfilment of
economic and reproductive needs. Gaps not closed by the economic institutions in this fulfilment are
universally handled by three metaphysical institutions: (1) magic to instill confidence, (2) science to
provide explanations and (3) mysticism to deal with disasters. Linking institutions, such as arts,
authority and techne, connect people with these master institutions. The interplay of these three levels
led to the evolution of the ‘Ten Thousand Cultures’. About six millennia ago the linking institution
of techne invented the megamachine (the armed state) and a mode of economic expansion by conquest,
ideology and trade control. By l900 the technosphere and its pampered offspring War had devastated
whole biomes and their cultures. When the Berlin Wall fell the technosphere unleashed ever
more chaotic and unsustainable expansionism. However, a rising ethnosphere now self-organizes the
remaining battered cultures. A union of specific cultural roots with universally accessible scientific spin-offs from techne, such as biospherics and geospherics, give their cultures the means to reorganize
locally and communicate biospherically. The ethnosphere needs to create a cybersphere
that gives immediate feedback on new impacts from the technosphere. A noosphere can then emerge
in which intelligence will end the war on the biosphere and allow cultures to flourish once again, this
time armed with hard-earned wisdom and biospheric understanding.
KEY WORDS: Cultures · Memes · Ethnosphere · Biosphere · Technosphere · World market · Cybersphere · Noosphere
For more information on John Allen, please visit his website www.meandthebiospheres.com