Beginning with Basics: earth, life, and wild capital
Winter, like a good sleep, encourages a fresh look at basics. In what’s given by nature, that means a living earth; the life around & within us; & a self-generating wild capital that goes on producing value–nourishment, habitat, relationship, exchange…and that indefinable something we might as well call “X” that gives experience itself its sense of meaning & worth.
Developed and compounded through time, the planet’s re-productive capacity represents the resource base all its creatures ultimately depend on, including us, along with our machines and technologies, themselves compounding at an ever increasing, potentially runaway, rate. We depend on these, too, it turns out, being born into human systems as much as into natural ones. Although we recognize differences, there are no true boundaries between the human & natural realms, which spill into each other at both the heart & margins (DNA, orifices, membranes), thoroughly connected through countless feedback loops.
To a very great extent, even the physical environment humans are born into (& from which their substance comes) already reflects substantial human influence. All creatures change their surroundings to some degree, if only from what they eat, breathe, secrete & excrete. Some change it so much, it no longer supports their needs. Collectively, we have changed our world so much that we are now as dependent on the human aspects of our environment as on the natural. A disruption or collapse in either puts us in jeopardy.
Not everyone was blind to the dilemma implicit in the pace of human “development,” effects of the machine, the industrial revolution, urban sprawl, a fossil-fuel economy, proliferation of roads, churning up of old-growth forests & strip-mines, a mass chemical inundation, uglification, corruption of public institutions, drowning of sacred & inspiring places, draining of wetlands, loss of wildness, beauty & the sense of beauty all in the name of PROGRESS! It’s the economy, stupid. Get in line.
Guru Aldo Leopold noted, “The wild was taken for granted until progress began to do away with it,” but then he tried to do something about it. First it was personal. Those who know the natural world directly in personal experience tend to develop a valued relationship with it. With reflection, experience, and responsibilities (as scientist, steward & teacher), the issues reached far beyond the personal, being what kind of a world do we want to live in, make, and pass on while we still had some choice. In the most basic terms, what is that choice?
To Leopold’s mind, & mine, there’s a true choice & a false choice–not just better & worse. One kind of choice is inherently delusional, a fraudulent (self-) deception, a mental sleight of hand one may see through. The other kind, being reality-based, is subject to study, learning from honest observation, experience, experiment, reflection, and from each other, these being the basis of both science & stewardship, good management & personal relationship.
He applied the term conservationist to those who, like himself, sought a sustainable balance in the relationship between our two legacies—wild systems, producing a wide range of values (including the resource-base), and human systems, with activities affecting these values. From the start, he took issue with the idea of an inevitable conflict between the two legacies, natural & human, or even a necessary trade-off. That was a false choice–from either direction.
Convinced that healthy ecosystems are in fact fundamental to human well-being and quality of life, conservationists like Leopold recognized values not always captured in the conventional economic equations (e.g., reducing a forest to the market-value of its board feet), yet were nevertheless implicit in the deeper dynamics of economic “capital,” i.e., resources that produce value. On the other hand, shortcomings in existing equations didn’t mean rejecting economic factors or practical realities.
Without losing touch with what gave the issues their personal value, Leopold applied this more general understanding to the country’s wild capital held in common–wildlife, waters, and wild places, all of which may, with appropriate management (in some cases, simply protection), go on generating tangible values without end. In business, the best management tries to ride the sweet spot in its use of capital to produce not just a surplus, a harvestable profit, but sufficiently effective reinvestments to enhance future prospects, in some cases producing not just whatever service or stuff it sells, but increased productivity itself.
Managing nature’s resources involves something similar. Though the inherent productivity, nature’s creative potential, may seem limitless, with a near-boundless resilience, ability to bounce back from disruptive traumas, the sheer scale of our increasing influence & dependence presents a dilemma in which we become the victims of our own success. “Every battle won in a war of humans verses nature brings a greater threat of disaster,” wrote Gregory Bateson, in Steps Towards an Ecology of Mind. There’s a problem of mind-set in the very premise of that relation.
We can talk about “values” until we’re red, white & blue in the face, but the basics just aren’t very complicated at all. Consider what those generals valued who were willing to have 20 million American casualties in retaliation for a first strike that effectively wiped out the Soviet Union, with maybe 80 or 100 million casualties, and another 20 million of so elsewhere from indirect effects. Now put their values on a scale opposite the costs. Some values may be so out of whack & inconsiderate of the values of others as to be insane on the face of it. (This was something quite different from MAD, by the way, from the principle of “Mutually Assured Destruction,” held as deterrent by leaderships ultimately committed to avoiding destruction.)
Nevertheless, the potential of “successful” minorities in charge of human systems to lose all perspective must be considered a kind of basic, a given that ought not be taken for granted, or in some cases, taken at all. Even in the last century alone, the history of war, enslavement, genocide, and exploitation of many by a few shows how basic such factors can be, & thus how vulnerable conservationist efforts seem to remain in comparison. Conservationists tend to have little influence with war councils, and often out-flanked by shell-game artists .
Any pseudo-economic argument posing a trade-off between economic well-being and the environment tends to be doubly spurious. What’s the real value of returns that cost what gives life its quality? Add the fact that degraded environment is itself a recipe for worse times ahead, and promised benefits from such a shell game, if any, are bound to be short term, at best. Even worse, however, the elusive “gains” tend to fuel a corrosive corruption in the community’s body-politic, & in the community at large. Riches associated with many natural resources, for example, rarely or minimally go to the people whose lives are affected by the extraction.
Often enough to deserve being noticed, a shell game goes on that partners private interests with the political. In theory, such partnership can be entirely proper, & inevitable. In practice, such limited partnerships can also warp systems in potentially catastrophic ways, draining & diverting resources, bloating a few for the bankruptcy of many. The ability of a few to get very rich indeed from control & sale of resources arguably “held in common” seems to be well documented.
The degree of influence exercised by primarily self-serving interests over vital systems, e.g., the financial, has an inescapable effect on the general health of the environment, economy & people. If you accept the premise that we have many self-serving interests in common, and can assure an honest accounting, the arguments for clean air & water, healthy habitat & wildlife, & the integrity of systems are overwhelming.
Good stewardship enhances economic, cultural, physical, and commercial values, along with the elusive spirit of a place & the well-being of its inhabitants, by its care for (and re-investment in) the natural capital that gave the place its original value in the first place, including qualities sometimes sensed more than understood, personally experienced, not artificially mis-valued. Who can measure the value of a bird, for example, or of a friend?
If I’m singing from an old hymnal, it’s one that crosses traditions, ways of knowing—& not knowing. The mysteries of creation, like its beauties and wonders, speak eloquently for themselves wherever we turn—seedlings unfolding from the hard ground; images from Hubble; raven on a snag; orb weaver working the space above my head now, each with its miracle story. Though science may be known for the joy of discovery, it’s what isn’t known that drives inquiry to refine attention–in a process more or less recapped by each student after. The more one learns, it seems, the more there is to learn. Faced with nature, humility goes with the territory.
Equivalent with the urge to know, it seems, is also one to pass along. It seems we neither learn nor know for &/or from ourselves alone. We travel across time with rare companions, often beyond singling out or naming, people & creature who have helped make our world.
It’s not uncommon for attentive people to have that feeling in wild country that they’re being seen more than they’re seeing. My daughter, Gita, had that sense in her “Owl Grove” at left, even before finding the shadow-owl halfway up the left-hand tree to its source (on branch at upper right).
The point is that there’s always more there than we see at first. Nor is awareness just cumulative, an adding of parts. Like nature, understanding can expand by unfolding–not just an origami universe, but an unfolding mind to go along with it!
Along such lines, the former “Aldo Zone” web-page has morphed into a whole new web-space of its own, www.eco-wing.net, i.e., right here, with separate pages for Seeds of Thought; Aldo’s contributions to the conversation; and further exploration into “Basics” begun here, starting with a fresh look at just what we do know about earth, life and our relationship to the wild.
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Basic truths of the given nature we seek to conserve seem to be that:
# Earth is alive, from microbial microcosm to planet as a whole, with living forms and communities throughout, top to bottom; local conditions determine what develops.
# Local conditions are affected by those more distant, and vice versa, so what happens in one part of a living system affects other parts, often in surprising ways.
# Sooner or later, later turns into sooner; the short-term disappears; yet the past remains present, written in rocks, DNA, current ways of looking, future conditions.
# Parts change, get eaten, break down, disappear, yet health (of organism, species or ecosystem) remains primarily a function of the whole in its dynamic flow. Healthy systems involve both parts and dynamics, localized entities and circuits or channels of influence & connection.
# Diversity in parts expands the potential for beneficial cooperation (e.g., exchange, assembly, divisions of labor), conveying competitive advantage shorter-term and natural selection’s edge longer term.
# Ecology, economics and evolution provide windows into the nature of life and dynamics of living systems. Not surprisingly, we find many similarities in the dynamics of each, with concepts developed from studying one often transferable to the others.
# Many kinds of patterns, characteristics, and dynamics emerge at different orders of magnitude, some only through populations over generations, discovered from observed probabilities.
# Though science thrives on data, it often requires the spark between neurons to make the key connections. For that, it generally helps to throw in the living experience—sensory encounters in the field, with energies of air and land–and to stir with shared reflections…insights, ideas, observations & speculations from others.
# Although often spoken of as if it were a fixed entity, science (like evolution) is essentially a process that depends on multiple (virtually countless) iterations (repetitions) by many participants across generations (& re-generations). Repeatability by others is therefore a key measure of experimental achievement.
# A popular T-shirt (associated with Neil deGrasse Tyson, I believe) says something like: “Science is true whether you believe it or not.” In theory, perhaps, but only by equating science with what-really-is, not with what various humans think &/or believe is, including scientists. Science itself at any given time is no more than what those who seriously study what is think & believe.
# Nor is science necessarily cumulative or democratic–at a given historical moment, perhaps only 1 in a hundred has a particular belief or stands behind a specific scientific conclusion. In 50 years, maybe 99 out of a hundred consider it an established tenet.
# The underlying idea, as expressed by free speech advocates, is that sooner or later, with the free exchange of ideas, the more worthwhile eventually prove their worth to more and more people, while others reveal their flaws & fallacies, their shortcomings & contradictions. In this respect, science is both cumulative & democratic. Although not ultimately established by vote, nor is it at heart established by hierarchical authority. It is its own authority, with experts for priests, called upon to testify, to speak for the established testament–whether a matter of established truth or a dogma of the faithful, depending on degree of enlightenment.
# The cumulative aspect may be a bit more straightforward, being what gives the “house” its advantages in casino games. This seems to have at least two sides. One is simply the knowledge gained from countless trials. The other is the ability to turn the almost totally unknowable single event into a nearly certain outcome at sufficient scale.
# Life, in its perversity, may reverse this–being known, if at all, most surely by the single organism, who may remain more unsure about other populations (whether within or around).
From the perspective of such an organism considering the nature of life, it’s hard to say which ignorance is deeper–that around or that within, that of the ordinary bloke like myself, Yours Crudely, or that of those know-it-alls who believe they think it’s all figured out. Most of life scientists I’ve known were as far from know-it-alls as you can get. If they knew a lot compared to other people, at least compared to me, they were also all the more aware of awe & mystery, the incredible creativity of creation–certainly more than those who take their beliefs par-boiled & packaged in dogma, a high-fructose corn syrup of the mind….
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Notes & clarifications:
One may fairly easily factor in the direct monetary costs of negative health effects downstream from a pollution source, for example, but not the deeper range of either what’s lost or negatively experienced, costs levied by disease and losses suffered from diminished life qualities or a general uglification of surroundings. It’s hard to account for what’s not being produced, the beauty and wild not there, as well as for the displaced &/or delayed costs on organisms going forward from by-products left behind like land-mines.
There are various implications from this. One is a need for objective-subjective translation, correlating information with personal experience to “humanize” the data. Another is the necessity for developing scale-appropriate management, including appropriate regulation. Although generally framed as managing land and/or natural resources, most of what actually needs management is human activity.
As relevant as objective data may be, it doesn’t begin to capture the subjective values that 
ultimately give information meaning, where “meaning” means actual differences made to living organisms like ourselves. Experience of environmental quality, health, beauty, and wonder, with respect for others and for the larger wholes, all make a difference.
Paying attention to the life around us helps explain why conservationists were among the first to recognize the existential threats posed by not yet well managed human impact at successively greater scales. This is what continues to turn increasing numbers of people who value the natural legacy into conservationists. It’s not the statistics, in other words, so much as the experience–first the positive, then the threat of loss. Statistics can help professionals get a handle on trends and variables, the effects of particular interventions, but the commitment & action come from the heart connection, withy passion & compassion.
How many words or data points is a picture worth then? It depends. Not all words (or data points) are created equal. Sometimes there is more there than we see at first–like the owls in Gita’s grove. Here it is again. [Of the three main trees, find the shadow-owl in one at left, about halfway up, and its source on higher branch on tree to right.]
Neither communication, nor its underlying awareness, are necessarily part of any competition–though it may seem so in the public forum, whether driven by the arguments of true believers or the professional representatives of “special interests.” Environmental quality is so clearly in the public interest, claims to the contrary immediately discredit themselves. More often, therefore, the threats and effects are denied, along with responsibility for costs put into the general system.
In “The Tragedy of the Commons,” examples are given to illustrate how the individual pursuit of maximum self-interest can lead, without community regulation, to a long-term depletion of a productive resource, arguably in no one’s interest. At some point, it becomes a question of scale and, where resources held in common are involved, honest accounting–a tall order, it seems, though not unreasonable.
The idea of resources held in common–however discredited by abuses, propaganda and corruptions–can’t ultimately be avoided. Whether it’s the air, waters, & wildlife from nature’s legacy, or the currencies, roads, economic & political systems from the human, we hold them in common, part of a trust connecting past with future.
That strikes me as no different from what a writer does, or language itself, with culture, like the economic system, also held in common. Not that it’s homogenous, let alone pasteurized, more like a common soil with lots of variety in its composition, yet porous with each part leaving its trace on elements, air and water passing through, while these provide raw materials.
Aldo Leopold described some of the synergies, mutual benefits, achieved by the rich variety of species involved in native prairie. For one example, he cited the fact that root systems didn’t just exploit different layers or depth-lavels, but promoted rate, amount & efficiency of nutrient-flow throughout. Much greater soil stability, resistance to disease or trauma, and resilience, ability to spring back, were additional advantages conveyed. In that kind of soil, each part is connected to others, neighbors near and further away; local becomes a merely relative term. .
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