Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Life As We Know It

Spring has come to Texas. I realize that spring officially came some time back, but those sorts of generic “Start of” dates are for people who don’t go outside and interact with the environment. Texas is a strange place, where season boundaries aren’t particularly meaningful – you can have spring-like days in the dead of winter. There are times when every day is a season unto itself, with highs jumping between the 20’s and 70’s. I prefer to wait until we don’t have a drop into the 30’s to say:
Spring has come to Texas. The birds are going nuts, Geckos are everywhere. June Bugs are already flying around (where do they wait til June?). Weeds are proliferating, so I’m out in the garden cleaning things up and planting, and thinking about all the life around me.
I’m raking up dead plants. And empty snail shells. And dead June Bugs. And part of a snake a bird neglected to finish. (Stay with me – this isn’t going to turn into a depressing diatribe on the impermanence of life.)
Life consumes life. No, I’m not an adherent of R.M. Renfield – I don’t want my food capable of fighting back once it’s on my plate. There’s a food chain (a circle, MAYBE, but chain suffices for today’s discussion.) For the most part, it’s plants being eaten by animals being eaten by other animals being eaten by other animals.
This is of course, not to ignore the more aggressive plants. Venus Fly Traps. Pitcher Plants. Triffids (oh, wait – those last aren’t real – or are they?) At least on our world, these are deviations from the norm – living animals dominate living plants (unless we’re talking about my yard.) The chain has backwaters.
At the top of the chain is the top animal – that would be human beings. How did we get there? Some people would argue that we made it on the basis of our opposable thumbs. Others would say it’s our superior intellect. Our ability to record and be aware of our history. Some would even say it’s that we have a soul.
All these things are useful, and help distinguish us from the other animals, but you put one of us in a cage with a Tiger, and let’s see who comes out on top. We would lose that battle. And yet, HUMAN BEINGS dominate the Earth.
What really puts us at the top was teamwork - our ability to cooperate, to collaborate. Yeah, I know any baboon (literally) can do that too, but we do it better. Although there are still some of us still crazy enough to choose going solo into the bush after the tiger, the majority will band together to remove the threat.
And when we’re not busy just trying to survive, we collaborate to improve the quality of life for our species. Achievements stack on achievements, and keep us the big fish in our own small pond.
That’s where we are, holed up on this blue-green ball in the middle of a lot of empty space. We haven’t been to another large body in over 40 years. I would have thought some of us would have landed on Mars (my chosen vacation spot) a decade or more ago. And by now we should be looking further out through our Solar System. AND BEYOND.
What’s out there? If Dr. Sagan was right, there should be plenty of competition for us. A challenger? We thrive on challenges, both as a nation and a species and a nation. At least some of us used to. Heroes. Pioneers. Explorers. And even though we have become horribly complacent and indolent as a whole, there are still enough of us willing to eschew comfort and climb that mountain to keep our species on top.
We don’t know whether we can be the big fish in a bigger pond, but we won’t know until we ride the falls. Who do we want to be - the villager hiding in his hut waiting for the Tiger of his imagination, or the hunting party banding together to face the threat? Yeah, it’s a jungle out there, but maybe it’s just a bunch of (non-carnivorous) plants.
Just saying….
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William Mangieri’s writing can be found in many places, including:
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