CONCEPT
The Greening of the Self
Macy's term for the expansion of identity beyond the skin-encapsulated ego to include the living systems of which the ego is a momentary, localized expression.
The greening of the self is Macy's phrase for the identity shift that the perception of interdependence makes possible — and, eventually, unavoidable. It is not the dissolution of individual identity but its accurate description: the self understood as a pattern of relationships with a specific location, shape, and duration, rather than as a skin-encapsulated unit standing against a separate world. Macy drew the framework from Arne Næss's deep ecology (self with a capital S), from Bateson's claim that the unit of mind is the circuit rather than the brain, and from Buddhist teachings on non-self. Applied to the AI moment, the greening of the self dissolves the competitive frame that treats human and machine intelligence as rivals for a finite resource, replacing it with the perception that both participate in the longer river.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The greening of the self extends the perception of mutual causality into the practical domain of identity. A person who understands intellectually