The Level

As a species, we have developed an unhealthy fear of mortality. We defy aging with chemicals, cosmetics, supplements, and surgeries. In fearing death, we strive to lengthen and save lives. It seems like a no-brainer, that these measures would be common-sense and beneficial; but where’s the carpenter’s level as a frame of reference for the validity of that notion? Since the only reality is nature, and since there is far more to existence at stake than the welfare of humans, we must extend the measurement of the concept beyond subjective ideas of what we consider to be important in our fabricated world. In the real world, the natural world, death is an essential counter-balance to life for many reasons, not the least of which is a reciprocation of nutrients, biomass, and space. A being that utilizes these things in life must return them for another being by dying. It’s natural law. Further, this oscillation maintains a relative balance of distribution of not only a particular species, but of biodiversity. Native biodiversity is crucial in maintaining a healthy and viable environment. You can think of biodiversity as analogous to an immune-system. A diversity of organisms keeps other organisms in check, so there is no extreme of consumption or depletion. This is why monocultures don’t do well without constant intervention. Unfortunately, the introduction of foreign species to an ecosystem is exactly the same as an introduced virus to a human.
Our modern practices mean an effective increase in our population. This, in turn, means that the more humans that exist on this planet, which has a relatively finite amount of usable biomass, the more we take away from other life-forms. (This is something I mentioned in a letter, years ago, regarding natural burials versus embalming and entombing, which exacerbate the problem of not returning necessary nutrients and elements to the environment. In fact, I said that we not only take from the earth in life, but now also in death.)
Nature is constantly seeking equilibrium through chaotic events; as a living organism, chaos and order must co-exist in order to create balance and life. Nature seeks to correct the aberrant systems. By staving off death and increasing our population, we create what are called density-dependent circumstances. However, we are also subject to density-independent circumstances simply due to making ourselves more numerically susceptible to those situations. In other words, the more humans we spread across the globe, the more will succumb to such systems such as tornadoes, hurricanes, and other “natural disasters.” There’s an interesting relativity in there.
Density-dependent circumstances, however, are created by the impact of our numbers upon the environment, which can otherwise be called anthropogenesis. Some anthropogenic impacts are direct and obvious, although we commonly subvert their severity, such as air pollution, water pollution, forest fragmentations and the like. The consequences of these impacts are logical responses to our lack of maintaining a proper balance and mutualism with nature. Ticks, for example, can carry diseases that affect humans; that makes them vectors. Deer often carry vector-ticks. Deer favor the pioneer growth of clear-cut areas that humans create. Deer are also an important revenue-generating game species. That means that humans foster a “healthy” deer population and that we create habitats and situations that bolster them—another imbalance. That means, in turn, that deer-ticks also benefit from anthropogenesis, thus, the diseases they carry further benefit from anthropogenesis. And that means that more humans will suffer the tick-bites and the diseases. (This isn’t to mention how mice are significantly involved and affected, either.) But instead of reforming our approach to living with nature, we counter with further suppression tactics that distance us, such as poisons and repellents and other things that cause increased detriment to the environment, and the problem perpetuates in a geometric fashion. We can see the same thing with fleas, mosquitoes, and particularly with viruses and infections such as Staphylococcus aureus, now better known as MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), and the new, super CA-MRSA (community-associated-MRSA). These density-dependent diseases, much like rabies, are natural responses to imbalances. In other words, these diseases exist for a reason, whether we like it or not. How can we be so selfish to strive for god-like stature and resist natural law, which perpetuates an imbalance in the very environment we need to survive? It’s not only hypocrisy, it just doesn’t make sense.