Quote of the Day - 12/26/2011

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world. - John Muir

~~~~~

Imagining a plant or an animal as a totally independent entity is an easy model but not very useful because it does not approach reality. We need to think in terms of systems and relationships. It is complicated and can sometimes become too hard to comprehend. The simplifying assumptions we make can lead to decisions that result in consequences no one anticipated.

Some examples:

• We kill off predators because they are a danger to us and kill livestock but then we have an overpopulation of deer in urban areas. Their major ‘predator’ becomes the automobile.
• We use fertilizers to increase yields of agricultural crops but then the incidence of algal blooms that kill fish occur more frequently.

The natural thread we ‘tug’ connects it all and our understanding is often not deep enough to anticipate the consequence of the decisions we are making. The key is to realize this…not be paralyzed by it. Decisions will have to be made but they should not be made with a point objective always overriding the knowledge - however incomplete - of the thread that links that change to ‘the rest of the world.’