The Web of Life

Before I commence writing my blog entry, I would like to show you a part of a Chief Seattle's speech on March 11, 1854. This speech relates to E.O Wilson's Ted about how the web of life is being destroyed.

"You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of your grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin.

Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother.

Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.

This we know: The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know.

All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected.

Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth.

Man did not weave the web of life: he is merely a strand in it.

Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."

This is a part of Chief Seattle's speech that was given on March 11, 1854.

According to E.O. Wilson, enormous amount of species are disappearing and most of them are unknown to us. In the future, our natural world may be in danger, and it will definitely affect us. Things will be unstable, including us. Maybe the law Ishmael refers to its diversity. The diversity of life is vital to nature because all things are connected. Just like the society Ishmael describes, A's, B's and C's, none of them can live without one another. An unknown organism might be crucial to our existence, we just don't know.

Chief Seatle said in his speech, man did not create the web of life, man is just a part of the web. If a string is cut off, the entire web might collapse. E.O. Wilson's proposal of a Encyclopedia of Life will make all key informations of life accessible. Understanding all the species has one most significant purpose, to preserve our biosphere, the web of life. If we're able to understand them, then we might be able to manage them and fix the problems we're causing in biosphere. We should recognize the importance of diversity. What we do to the web will come back to us. "Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself."

Laws for building a civilization.

From what we have read so far, we conclude that Ishmael believes that there are laws that exist regarding to how a civilization should be built. However, I don't see how there could be universal laws that suit every civilization. Civilizations in the history that collapsed all appeared in different locations, in other word, the environments were entirely dissimilar. In that case, the chance of having the same cause for collapse was low. There are physics laws, such as the 3 Newton Laws but it's hard to imagine that there are laws exist to indicate whether a civilizational flight will truly fly or not. In science, there are right and wrong, but is there a right or wrong way to save our civilization? That's something we can think about. Hopefully, Ishmael will convince me later that there are universal laws.

If there are, according to Ishmael, laws that govern the success or collapse of a civilization, then as humans we are definitely ignoring them. Serious problems are occurring right now, such as the lack of natural resources: gasoline, clean water, and trees. These phenomenons show that things are getting worse, and we are not doing anything significant to fix the problems. Maybe it's because we don't recognize the laws, or maybe there are no laws, maybe we are doomed to face extinction. If there are laws for civilization, then we should start following them right now.

The universe was created for us

Well, I made this blog entry a little bit different. It's a game. You have to guess who I am. It's more than one creature though.

A. The trees were created so we can rest when we're tired. We get tired because we have to hunt for our food. God created foods for us though. God made the mice and snakes so we won't be hungry. The sky is created for us too. We have huge advantage over other creatures since we're flying. We're the king of the world.

B. We dominate the world since everything revolves around us. The grasslands are for us to run and play. The antelopes are creatures made by God for us to eat. The caves are our houses. The river is providing water for us. I bet the universe came to be this way because of us.

C. We're a lucky group of creatures. We live in a place where everything is good for us. We're lazy but it's okay, what we eat exists everywhere. We call it bamboo. All we do is we eat bamboos and do nothing else. God is nice too us, God made us the focus of the world since we're the happiest.

A. Eagle

B. Lion

C. Panda

How do we become conscious of the ethical and social rules in our societies?

We become conscious of the rules in our societies by thinking about it. I didn't feel like we're caged before, until one day we had to blog about comparing gorillas in the cage to our past. I was suddenly enlightened after that post, I realized something: I am no free man, never was, never
will be. However, most of us don't become conscious because we don't want to.

We keep trying to hide from the fact that we live under rules. We lie to ourselves that we all live under freedom. We don't see the ethical and social rules we have. We see them as natural,
however, they're not, they're something we have developed in the history of mankind. We can only fulfill complete freedom when there's no rules.

Only when we question ourselves, "are we really free?", then we'll become aware of the rules. There's nothing wrong if one is not conscious, one's life is still the same. One's life will still be the same if one is aware, it does not mean one is free. One might see thing different, but one still has to follow the rules.

Endangered Cultures

I always have liked cultural diversity. I like to see how different people live their lives. However, many cultures around the globe are facing extinction; a language disappears every 2 weeks. If we don't do something now, soon, there will only be few main cultures existing, which is bad. Cultures are what define us as people, and we can't afford losing them.

Indigenous people have lived on their territories and have the same kind of life styles for thousands of years already. They may not have impressive technology like us, but many of them certainly have better spiritual lives and have made profound spiritual discoveries. They have the hearts to treat enemies nicely, that's something many of us won't be able to achieve. They know how to treat nature with respect and live with dignity. They don't destroy nature just because of their own benefits.

I'm not saying indigenous people are better than us, we're just different. We have made many great technological and scientific discoveries in our history. We have more complicated lives in a physical way. We have so much stuff going on in our daily lives. What I'm trying to say is that indigenous people have the right to exist and we should try our best to save endangered cultures.


P.S
We were asked in class if we would live with a particular group of indigenous people for a year. My answer right now is no. I would love to live with some of them for a while but not a year. I have lived my entire life in city. I am part of the technology world already. Maybe I'll change my mind when I grow older and become more mature. To be honest, I can't take that right now. Nonetheless, if I do change my mind, I will to use the opportunity to better my spiritual life.

Past to now = A gorilla going to a zoo

We talked in class about how wild gorillas have freedom and ones in zoos don't. This fact relates to the history of mankind in a interesting and confusing way: we're basically caged in various aspects like a gorillas in zoos.

First of all, we have something in our society called "morals", codes for our behaviors. They restrict us from killing, stealing, and etc. They basically tell us about what's right and what's wrong. When human beings were still primitive, they did whatever it took to survive regardless of anything. Somehow, humans developed a mentality that set the limits, and somehow we came to idea that certain conducts are "immoral". Our behaviors and mindsets are restricted by the rising bars of the cage.

Laws are rules to ensure that people who violate morals are punished. Laws add bars to our cage. Now, everyone have to follow the rules. Laws prevent us from doing what creators consider as immoral since we're afraid of consequences. During mankind's primitive period, there's no such things as laws, one would not be locked in a cell because of killing someone. Our behaviors and mindsets, once again, are even more restricted.

Knowledge adds a huge bar to our cage. The power of knowledge limits our ideas; it forces us to think practically and face reality. One came from a impoverished background wouldn't think of becoming the richest person since one sees the impossibility of that goal. Mankind uses knowledge to measure the chance of almost everything. For instance, children often think of flying to the moon or becoming super heroes, however, as we grow up and gain more knowledge, we realize that our dreams during childhood are just dreams, unrealistic ideas that will never be done.

Money is a bar also. Before we had money, one worked in order to continue one's life span, now we work for money. We always think about money when we're about to start something. The power of money controls what we do and think. One would do many things for money since one presume that money makes life better. We work for a long period in our lives, because if we don't, we don't gain enough money, and the lack of money creates problems. Money restricts our mindsets and behaviors by becoming the common goal we're fighting for.

Our lives are caged by abstract bars, unlike gorillas in the zoo, they're caged by the physically real bars. Mankind has built these bars to ensure the stability of individual lives in a society. Society itself is like a zoo keeper, it puts individuals into cages they belong in order to preserve the whole society all together. One would be considered an outcast if one is not caged. Most of the people are caged willingly because they know their lives would be stabler and their survival would be guaranteed. It's all part of the plan.

The "Choices" we made

Our global situation right now is in a way good and bad. We have technology but we have also created many problems such as over-population, pollution, global warming and war. What leads to our situation right now is that we choose to sacrifice environment for our own benefits and conveniences. We create big factories to produce objects we like and need, but factories are making lots of waste. We choose to use plastic things because they're convenient. We choose to take shower for a long time because we feel good. Not everybody chooses to sacrifice the environment, but most. Since industrialization, we have already made the choice.

Most of time people are thinking about how to benefit themselves rather than how to benefit the environment. That's the reason why people have developed technology, which is good, but that also has brought bad effects on the environment. As a human race, we always have prioritized our economy and our survival; we don't look at the big picture, what might benefit us right now might destroy us in the future. I believe our human nature has brought us to where we are right now.