Musings on Biomes

This morning while out for my daily walk I took to contemplating biomes, those unique biotic assemblages and ecosystems spread around the Earth. The distribution of biomes is predominantly dependent upon abiotic factors such as temperature, precipitation, latitude, elevation and so on. Subtle differences in rain totals, day length or wind regimes can have enormous effects upon the land. Having just spent a year exploring New Zealand as an environmental science major and today being back in my native California, those peculiarities of place are fresh in my mind. And lately I’ve been wondering what to make of those differences in perhaps a more philosophical sense. I think now I’ve discovered a reasonable enough analogy.

I realized that in many ways that global biomes may be likened to our global religions or any other human system of belief. This is because ecosystems are in essence an expression to the wild vitality of the universe and an attempt to make order/meaning from it. This is the same as humanity attempting, through various beliefs/rituals/moralities, to construct a functional world from the existence we’re given.  All the plants and animals organize themselves in whatever pattern makes sense to them just as organize ourselves in a way that makes sense to us. What happens is that we are all making use of the same base materials but constructing different structures that are nonetheless equally viable.

In New Zealand, the dominant forest tree might be Totara, Matai, Rimu or Beech while in California it might be Oak, Bay Laurel, or Redwood. In both instances the trees play the same roles of carbon sequestering, habitat provision, soil building and so forth. It is exactly the same story for Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Existentialism or whatever you prefer. Each provides some measure of comfort, community, love and tradition in its own way. Those are some of the main functions of religion now whatever where you’re from. And so again it comes down to the fact that nobody can necessarily be wrong; we’re just doing what we can with what we have.

That’s what I’ve come up with at least. Biomes are like religions: creative expressions of life each equally worthy of respect and valuable for their diversity.