Human Ecology

I've come to the realization as of late that much of the world's problems can be explained in biological and ecological terms. For me, these parallels are re-affirmed the notion that we as human beings are still innately and inextricably a part of nature. We are as natural as anything else in this world. Hard to believe, I know. But just take a minute to think about some of this:

The variety of cultures and indigenous peoples on Earth can be likened to the concept of species richness, which is simply the number of different species in a given system. Since the globalization of our world, the number of unique cultures has precipitously declined (along with actual species richness). Diversity, after all, is largely predicated on isolation. Speciation, or the development of new species, is a result of adaptation to unique habitat pressures. A delicate balance is struck, in tune with a species's (or culture's) specific niche. The introduction of Western culture, then, disturbs this balance with the introduction of disease, new tools, new ideas etc. This Western force homogenizes these indigenous populations, decreasing their overall occurrence in nature. It's like planting the same grass on every continent rather than having native species perfectly suited to climatic conditions (just look what happened to the American prairie lands, replaced by corn mono-crops). The 'developed world' is thus destroying our world's cultural richness. Biodiversity, however, is nature's primary means of enduring unforeseen catastrophes. There could never have been a potato famine in indigenous South America because of the thousands of varieties, each with its own strengths and weaknesses, immunities and vulnerabilities. The health and continuance of life, essentially, is predicated upon variability. Thus you can see why a global cultural and economic hegemony like the United States is simply bad science.

To continue the comparisons, the U.S. can be labeled a 'generalist predator.' This means a predator that can subsist on a whole host of different resources, and has no specific diet (unlike Koalas which only eat Eucalyptus). This then stands in contrast to the indigenous cultures that are effectively 'specialist predators'. Their diets are determined by their regional limitations and tribal knowledge. Their continued survival depends on the continued availability of certain local resources. Unfortunately, the U.S. and the developed world at large has begun to prey upon this cultures, eating them up one by one. Because of its generalist diet, the Western world's survival is not endangered by the disappearance of these local communities. It's the basic biological principle that a generalist predator can drive its prey exist while a specialist predator does not, else it kills itself off.

I've been using the term 'culture' very loosely here of course. It encompasses all kinds of things like language, food, knowledge of the local flora and fauna, histories and so on. The lose of these resources leaves us all the more vulnerable to the ravages of mother nature. A great deal of our present 'civilized' knowledge was gleaned or appropriated from native peoples. We need them. But with our increasingly globalized world, we're destroying our most valuable resources. It's all island biogeography and intermediate disturbance theory when it comes down to it. We're creating new climax communities, forever altering the biological and ecological landscape of the Earth. Soon enough we're going to run out of new genetic material (or cultural material) to adapt to forthcoming challenges as a species.

And I'm sorry if this post comes across as rather confused and haphazard. It probably contains a few jumps in logic. I was just very excited about making some of these connections. And perhaps they only make sense in my head. The main point is there though, that the human species and its relationship to itself is governed by the same ecological principles that we use to understand plants and animals. This should remind us then that we irrefutably a part of nature and that perhaps our actions are not so unique after all. We simply manifest the same principles of resource competition, colonization, predation etc. in a different fashion.