Flourishing requires a network of support services. Whether you are a bacterium, a fungi, reptile or mammal, your state of being and the homeostasis that you are capable of maintaining is based on a myriad of factors. There need to be enough of several things to keep your organism healthy and functional. Air and water are needed for most creatures on Earth to function and a higher rate of pathogenic organisms inhabit areas that are deprived of air. The relative quality of the air available directly impacts the health of organisms. The relative quality of water often is as well. Specific organisms can make their way in polluted environs better than others, but generally speaking, the cleaner the air and water, the healthier the organisms who live there will be. Another realm of necessary support systems required for "life", are based on availability of food and nutrition, or a substrate that can be easily broken down so that energy and resources can be harvested from the environment and ultimately used for metabolism. Macro and micro nutrients, minerals and carbohydrates are almost universally integrated into organisms and at each trophic level, energy is both stored and released in step-wise fashion throughout the food web.
When sunlight strikes leaves, or blades of grass, there is a concentration of both energy, which is absorbed by the tissues of the plant and nutrient, the plant material itself. There is also a massive capture of carbon, directly from the atmosphere, but also from the "food" that the tree, or grass, harvests through roots. When filter feeding whales harvest krill or plankton, billions of discreet energy and nutrient concentrating organisms are required for a single snack. Eating low on the food chain (less trophic levels between our organism and the Sun/Water/ nutrients/minerals where our food starts out)only protects you if the foodshed is clean. Many toxic compounds are bio-accumulated through each trophic level.
Whereas the plankton feeding whale is exploiting the lowest levels of the food chain, his cousins who eat fish and squid are at least two trophic levels removed from plankton. Tiny plankton eating fish may be two trophic levels from the source of the sun energy they need to survive. Phytoplankton eaten by zooplankton, consumed by tiny fish, eaten by larger fish is already four trophic levels and at each one, a typical concentration of both energy and toxicity, of bio-accumulating materials is about tenfold. I have spoken to several toxicologists who agree that one of the best ways to clear some toxic compounds in the environment is to encourage people who like to eat fish to eat them and upon death sequester their bodies as hazardous material, because their tissues are sponges for some contaminants. We are all only as healthy as our environment allows us to be. That being said, we can never know how healthy we might be, had we not denuded 90% of the primeval forest that once covered North America.
When biologists say that organisms need food, shelter, to exchange gasses and carry on the species, we can all understand what that means. If you are the size of a microbe, your habitat can be microscopically small, but all the same support services must exist for you to survive. In conditions of optimal availability of these resources, it is easy to understand that flourishing will occur. In very real terms, the better things get, the better things get for the organism. In fact, in nature the booms and busts that occur within and among the different species of organism never lead to only one organism succeeding in isolation, but when populations go into decline, other organisms and their relative abundance increase, often in equal measure to the biomass of what died off to give them rise.
these cycling processes are similar to the water cycle we all learned about in fifth grade.
Diversity is required to facilitate flourishing. The two cannot be separated. When mono-cultures expand beyond carrying capacity, Mother nature slaps them down and we can see evidence of this at each and every trophic level. Exceed the limits of your habitat and you die off. then, your carcass becomes resource for another food chain to take hold, another series of trophic levels to begin...
Broadening the base of any food chain adds stability and continuity to the whole. Anthropogenic (human caused) change in plants and animals are clearly demonstrated by science to exist for a variety of functions that help we humans to prosper within our environment. Our species domesticated plants and animals for our use for over eleven thousand years. Over 550 generations, we have benefited from conscious husbandry of thousands of species. In the last three generations the diversity of these organisms has fallen precipitously and with it, the adaptability that nature proves is necessary to stabilize populations over time. There is no excuse for this de-evolution of the human possibility for a future. Science proves that flourishing is based on diversity, on availability of a diverse set of resources, on unique and varied ecotones. Our history is replete with examples of how diversity serves all as well as the individual, yet we let fewer and fewer numbers of people, and fewer and fewer species of organism determine and represent greater and greater realms of what we have available.
This reductionist approach is what allows some people to go through life consuming most of their calories from meat and processed foods. If they eat lettuce, of the thousands of types, they probably have only tasted three or four. It is the reality that we face that some people never eat any meals that do not contain high-fructose corn syrup and how just a few genetic strains of potato are responsible for the vast majority of all potatoes eaten on the planet. We have lost more than we can hope to understand because we lack the knowledge of our ancestry that exists in intact native cultures. as we develop into a pan culture, that surrounds the earth with nearly identical tastes, consumer habits and proclivities, we become susceptible to the very real threat that all mono-cultures face.
Bioneers, for decades, have begun to reclaim our ancestrally acquired bio-diverse plants and animals. Often referred to as boutique breeds of cattle, pigs, horses, sheep, goats and chickens are favorites among smaller scale agriculturalists because of their disease resistance, their ability to thrive in varied climate, and under more diverse circumstances. When I was looking into sheep, for instance, my goals were different than most breeders and luckily, there has been a strong effort recently to restore vital, but less financially rewarding breeds. There are specific needs that need to be met in different places and at different times. There are breeds that are more and less adaptable, or adapted to specific conditions and knowing that can make the difference between flourishing and just surviving. It is the same with any plant or animal, let us not forget that we need diversity to flourish.
When sunlight strikes leaves, or blades of grass, there is a concentration of both energy, which is absorbed by the tissues of the plant and nutrient, the plant material itself. There is also a massive capture of carbon, directly from the atmosphere, but also from the "food" that the tree, or grass, harvests through roots. When filter feeding whales harvest krill or plankton, billions of discreet energy and nutrient concentrating organisms are required for a single snack. Eating low on the food chain (less trophic levels between our organism and the Sun/Water/ nutrients/minerals where our food starts out)only protects you if the foodshed is clean. Many toxic compounds are bio-accumulated through each trophic level.
Whereas the plankton feeding whale is exploiting the lowest levels of the food chain, his cousins who eat fish and squid are at least two trophic levels removed from plankton. Tiny plankton eating fish may be two trophic levels from the source of the sun energy they need to survive. Phytoplankton eaten by zooplankton, consumed by tiny fish, eaten by larger fish is already four trophic levels and at each one, a typical concentration of both energy and toxicity, of bio-accumulating materials is about tenfold. I have spoken to several toxicologists who agree that one of the best ways to clear some toxic compounds in the environment is to encourage people who like to eat fish to eat them and upon death sequester their bodies as hazardous material, because their tissues are sponges for some contaminants. We are all only as healthy as our environment allows us to be. That being said, we can never know how healthy we might be, had we not denuded 90% of the primeval forest that once covered North America.
 | |||||||||
| This cycling occurs with energy from sunlight, carbohydrates, minerals, some toxic compounds, etc. |
these cycling processes are similar to the water cycle we all learned about in fifth grade.
Diversity is required to facilitate flourishing. The two cannot be separated. When mono-cultures expand beyond carrying capacity, Mother nature slaps them down and we can see evidence of this at each and every trophic level. Exceed the limits of your habitat and you die off. then, your carcass becomes resource for another food chain to take hold, another series of trophic levels to begin...
Broadening the base of any food chain adds stability and continuity to the whole. Anthropogenic (human caused) change in plants and animals are clearly demonstrated by science to exist for a variety of functions that help we humans to prosper within our environment. Our species domesticated plants and animals for our use for over eleven thousand years. Over 550 generations, we have benefited from conscious husbandry of thousands of species. In the last three generations the diversity of these organisms has fallen precipitously and with it, the adaptability that nature proves is necessary to stabilize populations over time. There is no excuse for this de-evolution of the human possibility for a future. Science proves that flourishing is based on diversity, on availability of a diverse set of resources, on unique and varied ecotones. Our history is replete with examples of how diversity serves all as well as the individual, yet we let fewer and fewer numbers of people, and fewer and fewer species of organism determine and represent greater and greater realms of what we have available.
This reductionist approach is what allows some people to go through life consuming most of their calories from meat and processed foods. If they eat lettuce, of the thousands of types, they probably have only tasted three or four. It is the reality that we face that some people never eat any meals that do not contain high-fructose corn syrup and how just a few genetic strains of potato are responsible for the vast majority of all potatoes eaten on the planet. We have lost more than we can hope to understand because we lack the knowledge of our ancestry that exists in intact native cultures. as we develop into a pan culture, that surrounds the earth with nearly identical tastes, consumer habits and proclivities, we become susceptible to the very real threat that all mono-cultures face.
Bioneers, for decades, have begun to reclaim our ancestrally acquired bio-diverse plants and animals. Often referred to as boutique breeds of cattle, pigs, horses, sheep, goats and chickens are favorites among smaller scale agriculturalists because of their disease resistance, their ability to thrive in varied climate, and under more diverse circumstances. When I was looking into sheep, for instance, my goals were different than most breeders and luckily, there has been a strong effort recently to restore vital, but less financially rewarding breeds. There are specific needs that need to be met in different places and at different times. There are breeds that are more and less adaptable, or adapted to specific conditions and knowing that can make the difference between flourishing and just surviving. It is the same with any plant or animal, let us not forget that we need diversity to flourish.
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