Blessed by Nature

Our culture promotes ‘malignant thinking’. Blessed by Nature—Coming to Life in our Planetary Body, uses how cancer acts in a body as a metaphor. Seen in that light, cancer cells are like the 'rugged individualists' of the body. They are stronger than other cells. They are masters at diverting resources to their sole use. They prove their evolutionary superiority by out-competing all other cells. They use this advantage to spread throughout the body, invading and exploiting every tissue. They are the Darwinian winners--right up until the whole thing collapses.

The antidote to malignant thinking is cooperation. Contemporary evolutionary science finds that cooperation is much more important than was first thought. The human evolutionary innovation is our extreme ability to cooperate. The ecosystems we depend on for food, water and shelter are a like a cooperative dance. All the species on Earth have co-evolved with each other to create the complex systems we all depend on. So, for example, you might think that prey animals would flourish without predators. But the opposite happens, when you remove predators, prey species often die out, too. When you remove grazing animals, rather than flourishing native grasslands strangle and die.

Systems science predicts that complex systems often behave in counter-intuitive ways. Simple linear causation fails to predict how they will act. A new metaphor will help us better understand our relationship with Earth's living systems. The idea that our bodies and the living systems they depend on are like simple machines has failed us. We need to understand the ways in which all the parts of our bodies work together to create health. In the same way, all Earth's species work together to create the conditions in which life thrives. Seen in that light, species loss would be like losing different kinds of cells in your body. How long do you think your body could stay healthy if it were losing whole kinds of cells every day?