Once upon a time, Hank and I looked out into our new home’s back yard, which we were behind on mowing, and saw an interesting plant growing under a dying almond tree. We wondered aloud what it might turn into, and that quickly ballooned into an ethos of letting things run wild at the back end of our quarter-acre property.
You could always look at this from a different angle....
In actuality you are helping to select for vigor and adaptability within the gene pool.
Only the strong survive is ever present in nature, this is how species win the long game, by exposure to agents of change and disruption. One weed pull at a time, little by little, and your efforts are appreciated by millions (of critters and maybe a few of your neighbors, ha ha).
Always look forward to your posts, keep up the excellent writing!
Apr 27, 2023·edited Apr 27, 2023Liked by Holly Heyser
There is a lot to unpack in what you have written. You have captured the essence of the issue - our actions have consequences. Managing your back 1/4 acre, managing rangeland for a ranch, wetland habitats... The list goes on and gets bigger, but it all boils down to the idea that our actions have consequences.
I chuckled at envirovirtue. It's is easy for me (or I think anyone) to believe our actions are the best course and wisest of possible decisions. It's harder to question if that is indeed true. One might ask what the climax community of flora and fauna might be in your area? Then as you groom toward that mix of plants and insects/animals you might feel less guilty about displacing some species.
Wild hogs are a huge problem in my area. I have no hatred for them, but I also feel no guilt about harvesting them or displacing them. They are an invasive species. At least those of us connected to the environment understand that what we do has a ripple effect on the environment. If more people understood that perhaps we wouldn't be dealing with climate change and historic water shortages.
As you may have surmised what I have written is more a reflection of my own thoughts prompted by reading yours. Good luck with the property.
Ah.... the eternal struggle. Gardening is all about setting boundaries, and deciding what gets to live or die. (Asia Suler, from “Mirrors of the Earth”).
As you point out, all life is about killing and eating, whether you are a fungus or a human, a carnivore or a vegan. In the end we’re all worm food after all. Thanks for the reflection on how the ancient practices tending a garden or a wood lot, hunting, fishing, gathering, connect us back to our core truths. 👍🙏
“The truth is that even the best choices can have dire consequences. Sometimes you have to make those choices anyway, and simply accept the ache of regret as the catastrophe unfolds. On this planet, there is no life free from harm.”
Love this piece (surprise, surprise). I think one of the things that's hardest about being human is that there *is* no option or choice without consequences and collateral damage, and our ability to understand that our actions have outcomes can make it shatteringly difficult to choose *which* consequence feels most manageable. I think a lot of people are so overwhelmed by all the rippling fallout from every decision that they start simply pretending consequences don't exist, and I also think that a lot of modern-day anxiety is due to consequence overwhelm and the terror of making the wrong choice.
There's an incredible mostly-forgotten German-Jewish philosopher named Hans Jonas who wrote in the 1930s or 1940s (I'd check, but I lost my copy of his book when the house exploded) that the problem with *modern* technology (as opposed to pre-industrial technologies) is the fact that our ability to impact the world around us has finally outpaced our ability to understand the consequences of that impact. He basically says that all our methods for evaluating harm are based on thousands of years of morality from *before* this was an issue, when all we were evaluating was the impact on our immediate environments, and these methods essentially fail us when we try to apply them to modern ethical questions because they simply don't make sense for a world in which our actions can impact people on the other side of the globe. So his takeaway is that we need to work on developing a completely new ethical system of decision-making that can help us make choices in a much more complex world.
I find this interesting because he was writing almost a hundred years ago and I think he's 100% right, but it seems to me that we are still struggling to grasp the point he made about our ethical systems basically being too small for the kinds of decisions we have to make now. And I appreciate this piece in no small part because I think we really need exactly this kind of forthright questioning if we're ever going to develop the new ethics he describes, one which *does* help us make choices in the world we find ourselves in.
You could always look at this from a different angle....
In actuality you are helping to select for vigor and adaptability within the gene pool.
Only the strong survive is ever present in nature, this is how species win the long game, by exposure to agents of change and disruption. One weed pull at a time, little by little, and your efforts are appreciated by millions (of critters and maybe a few of your neighbors, ha ha).
Always look forward to your posts, keep up the excellent writing!
There is a lot to unpack in what you have written. You have captured the essence of the issue - our actions have consequences. Managing your back 1/4 acre, managing rangeland for a ranch, wetland habitats... The list goes on and gets bigger, but it all boils down to the idea that our actions have consequences.
I chuckled at envirovirtue. It's is easy for me (or I think anyone) to believe our actions are the best course and wisest of possible decisions. It's harder to question if that is indeed true. One might ask what the climax community of flora and fauna might be in your area? Then as you groom toward that mix of plants and insects/animals you might feel less guilty about displacing some species.
Wild hogs are a huge problem in my area. I have no hatred for them, but I also feel no guilt about harvesting them or displacing them. They are an invasive species. At least those of us connected to the environment understand that what we do has a ripple effect on the environment. If more people understood that perhaps we wouldn't be dealing with climate change and historic water shortages.
As you may have surmised what I have written is more a reflection of my own thoughts prompted by reading yours. Good luck with the property.
Ah.... the eternal struggle. Gardening is all about setting boundaries, and deciding what gets to live or die. (Asia Suler, from “Mirrors of the Earth”).
As you point out, all life is about killing and eating, whether you are a fungus or a human, a carnivore or a vegan. In the end we’re all worm food after all. Thanks for the reflection on how the ancient practices tending a garden or a wood lot, hunting, fishing, gathering, connect us back to our core truths. 👍🙏
Love this on so many levels, Holly:
“The truth is that even the best choices can have dire consequences. Sometimes you have to make those choices anyway, and simply accept the ache of regret as the catastrophe unfolds. On this planet, there is no life free from harm.”
As always, another thoughtful, inquiring post. Thank you!
Love this piece (surprise, surprise). I think one of the things that's hardest about being human is that there *is* no option or choice without consequences and collateral damage, and our ability to understand that our actions have outcomes can make it shatteringly difficult to choose *which* consequence feels most manageable. I think a lot of people are so overwhelmed by all the rippling fallout from every decision that they start simply pretending consequences don't exist, and I also think that a lot of modern-day anxiety is due to consequence overwhelm and the terror of making the wrong choice.
There's an incredible mostly-forgotten German-Jewish philosopher named Hans Jonas who wrote in the 1930s or 1940s (I'd check, but I lost my copy of his book when the house exploded) that the problem with *modern* technology (as opposed to pre-industrial technologies) is the fact that our ability to impact the world around us has finally outpaced our ability to understand the consequences of that impact. He basically says that all our methods for evaluating harm are based on thousands of years of morality from *before* this was an issue, when all we were evaluating was the impact on our immediate environments, and these methods essentially fail us when we try to apply them to modern ethical questions because they simply don't make sense for a world in which our actions can impact people on the other side of the globe. So his takeaway is that we need to work on developing a completely new ethical system of decision-making that can help us make choices in a much more complex world.
I find this interesting because he was writing almost a hundred years ago and I think he's 100% right, but it seems to me that we are still struggling to grasp the point he made about our ethical systems basically being too small for the kinds of decisions we have to make now. And I appreciate this piece in no small part because I think we really need exactly this kind of forthright questioning if we're ever going to develop the new ethics he describes, one which *does* help us make choices in the world we find ourselves in.