Ishmael -- Daniel Quinn. The peacekeeping law?

[tranexx rekk]

ohnomnomnom...

"It is the peace-keeping law, the law that keeps the community from turning into the howling chaos the Takers imagine it to be. It's the law that fosters life for all-life for the grasses, life for the grasshopper that feeds on the grasses, life for the quail that feeds on the grasshopper, life for the fox that feeds on the quail, life for the crows that feed on the dead fox."


Ishmael says that the law promotes diversity... but exactly how is that.
The way that the takers live, they make themselves more important and eliminate their competitors...
but how does that make things fragile?

...let's suck some face. [:[:

[ooh lamour]

Quote:

Ishmael says that the law promotes diversity... but exactly how is that.

As the law already illuminated, the wilderness is a very harsh environment to live in due to the rough competition between species. When you're an animal, you have to worry about eating and not being eaten at the same time.

So, how do species cope with this?

As Charles Darwin has taught us all, they adapt of course.

While some animals are not able to handle the harsh competition and die off (a phenomenon called natural selection), the stronger, surviving animals continue to reproduce, gradually creating new complex features and adaptations in newer generations that is integrated into their survival of the environment they live in. May it be, better vision, a stronger resistance to a certain poison, or even a creation of a new species - life is constantly diversifying, making their environment a rich and diverse place.

Quote:

The way that the takers live, they make themselves more important and eliminate their competitors...
but how does that make things fragile?

Biodiversity is a majorly important factor in sustaining life.

How so? Well, think of it this way:

You're a farmer, and you're growing only one species of corn. 100% of your income comes from growing and selling that type of corn, and a good portion of your every-day diet consists of it.

One day, however, a nasty fungi has been blowing across the prairies, and that fungi finally gets to your corn, wiping your entire field in one night.

And... well yeah. You're essentially ********.

If you had been a smart farmer and grew various species of crops, when that fungi had hit your acreage and killed off all of your corn, at least you'll have those potatoes or grain or whatever else you grew to compensate for some income as well as something else to put on your dinner plate.

The same thing can be said about species in an environment. The more species, or diversity there is in an environment, the less vulnerable it would be when something catastrophic hits. This logic can even be applied to a grand scale - the earth's 7 mass extinctions. Sure, the dinosaurs died off somewhere in one of those mass extinctions, but at least the earth was plentiful with corals, fish, and other mammals that continued on life to this day.


Now, we Takers, however, have to come and screw up the natural order.

Not only do we reduce earth's biodiversity by killing off competitors, (such as killing off the grizzly bears in California, or killing off all of the wolves here in the States) but we only treasure a select few species in this world that is of supposed importance to us, essentially killing off the rest. Take India, for example - has 20 different species of rice yet wipes off its acreage to grow only 2.

We can also add in our destruction of habitat, unsustainable usage of resources, global warming, and introduction (accidental or not) of invading species into the environment into our long equation of environmental bad deeds.

And because of this, we humans are causing the largest mass extinction that's happening right now. At this very moment. And at a rate so fast that scientists project that half of all species of life will be extinct by 2100.


Thus, finally, I address the actual question; How does that make things fragile?

Well, as I've established before, by killing off the majority of the species on the planet, we're unknowingly making life, including ourselves, more vulnerable to a catastrophe.

Take our agriculture, for example - our world heavily relies on three major crops: beans, corn, and rice. What if a fungi comes a long and wipes those 3 crops out? What other lines of food sources can nations go to when there's no more of that? Well, not a whole lot because we Takers unknowingly wiped off the plentiful food sources off the map. It won't be very long until people are going to have to starve and die off.

What about a plague? An unstoppable behemoth killing people off left and right. This plague could have easily been subdued if we didn't unknowingly kill off that plant or animal species in the rain forest that could have served as a possible antidote.

The possibilities are endless and can stretch out to something even as extreme to meteorites, sudden ice ages, solar flares - whatever.

So yes, it's scary to think, but mankind could be the end of life as we know it. /:

[ooh lamour]

Holy s**t. I wrote a lot. D:
(bored as hell)

[ooh lamour]

I'm sorry btw.
I'm a ******** nerdd. hahaha.

[tranexx rekk]

NO NO NO. thank you! so much.
i was incredibly confused. XD
i thought something along the lines of that, but wasn't really sure if i was just crazy or what.
so thanks you.
nerds are my favourite.