Wild about Animal Life

A healthy ecosystem is considered sustainable.  But there are so many ways one can define healthy and ecosystem and sustainable.  I feel as though most of my blog entries have been attempts at defining a widely used ecological term.  And I’m sick of it!  I could write about how I define sustainable but I think my definition of the term is still evolving and I am unready to put into words.  Beyond the actual definition for sustainable, there are so many parameters needed to clarify the boundaries of what is considered sustainable.  What is the time frame being considered when deciding if a system is sustainable? What size area is considered part of the same ecosystem? And… (more).  Instead I want this week’s blog to be more laid back.  I study ecology because the world around me fascinates me.  Nature, our environment, is breathtaking.  I hope to understand as much about life as possible and I wish to enjoy it.  I want to live, feel, and experience it.

So this week I was walking home from a speech with a friend when I thought about how many verbs are also animal names.  I figure it’ll be fun to write a whole bunch of those sorts of sentences. 

When someone throws a projectile at your head, duck!

Many insecure children buffalo their peers so as to feel better about themselves.

My purse was such a mess it was difficult to ferret out my cell phone when it rang.

Don’t chicken out from fear of failure.

See what you can come up with.

A bit of a rant

School is a structured, goal-oriented institution that teaches many subjects and facts.  Yet, school is a small part of one’s life.  Life is made up of experiences, trial and error.  Every day and every minute is another opportunity to learn something.  Knowledge is useless if it is not acted upon, though.  People must try to internalize their experiences and incorporate the lessons into their mindsets and interactions with the world. 

Ecology is an important subject for the general public to understand and thereby be able to change the way they relate to their environment.  School is a great place to introduce the science behind ecology, but experiences must be created outside of the classroom to ensure the students are passionate about ecology as well.  For many, school is an institution dedicated to removing all originality and creativity and teaching society exactly how to think.  Students work the “system” learning to spit back the information handed to them, but often do not try to incorporate the new ideas into their lives. 

                I don’t have an amazing, clever plan to inject passion for ecology into society.  But I do think I have some ideas of things that may be exacerbating the disinterest.  Society is becoming more and more urban and people are forgetting how interrelated our lives are with nature.  Technology is considered our savior; it doesn’t matter what mistakes we make now because an invention will rectify it.  Our senses are overwhelmed by virtual stimulants, distancing us from our senses.  (There are even virtual pets now! How can one cuddle with or walk a joystick?!)  Everything has a monetary value.  If something is cheap, people lose respect for it.  Society has taught us the blame game and removed responsibility from our shoulders.  We feel we deserve to take and use what we want as we please, without worrying about the consequences.  Our society has become individualistic and selfish. 

I realize I have just gone on rant of some of the wrongs in today’s society.  I apologize.  My point is that ecology is about how everything is connected and affects something else.  If people do not learn to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions because they do not experience the connectivity between action and reaction, then ecology is incomprehensible. 

If You're Happy And You Know It Clap Your Hands

If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.  Who among us can truly clap their hands?  What is happiness?  How does one know if he/she has achieved it?  Is a smile a portrayal of inner joy, or simply a facial expression to charm and disarm acquaintances?  Are wealth and material goods the key to happiness?  How much does one need to happy with his/her lot in life?  Is love all you need?  How can a government measure Gross National Happiness (G.N.H.)?  And does Gross National Happiness correlate with ecological stability in a given country?  In all honesty, I am quite uncertain of the answers to the questions I put forth, but uncertainty has never stopped me from trying.  So I will express my musings as to what happiness is and how it relates to ecology. 

Happiness is an emotion.  It is the way one feels when he/she is satisfied with the moment.  It is contentment.  Excitement is related to happiness, but they are not the same.  Excitement is a rush of adrenaline as one anticipates an outcome that should bring about a feeling of happiness (satisfaction and contentment).  A person can be happy with certain aspects of his/her life and be disappointed with others.  Material goods such as money can make a person happy, until the individual becomes dissatisfied with it. 

Gross National Happiness measures overall happiness, though, and not just how a citizen is feeling at the moment.  A person’s overall happiness/satisfaction with his/her life depends upon his/her expectations.  What does the individual feel he/she is entitled to?  If a person feels that he/she deserves more and more, they may always be in the pursuit of happiness but never achieve it.  On the other hand, achieving overall happiness (as opposed to feeling happy every so often) does not mean that a person is so satisfied as to have no wants.  So how is a nation’s happiness measured?  Perhaps by finding out how many aspects of their lives the country’s people are satisfied with. 

Now for how Happiness and Ecological stability could possibly relate.   Some people believe “the best way to increase G.N.H. is by increasing G.N.P. [Gross National Product].  But that is essentially an untested assertion, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that it isn't necessarily true. Our sense of happiness is created by many things that are not easily measured in purely economic terms, including a sense of community and purpose, the amount and content of our leisure and even our sense of the environmental and ecological stability of the world around us” (NY Times, Net National Happiness, 2005).  A nation that considers development, money, and material goods as the foundation for happiness cannot obtain both ecological stability and happiness.  Yet a people that consider ecological stability as a means of obtaining happiness will ensure the protection of their natural environment.  Pursuit of happiness can be the pursuit of ecological stability, but it can also be the destruction of ecosystems.  In the end, it is all about perspective. 

Defining Traditional Ecological Knowledge

Traditional Ecological Knowledge is such a long drawn out term by the time I’m done spelling it out I have forgotten what I was in the midst of writing.  Yet the term defines an aspect of humanity’s interaction with the world, and therefore I want to fully grasp what Traditional Ecological Knowledge means to me.  In order to define the entire term for myself I defined each word individually.  According to Dictionary.com:

Traditional –  of or pertaining to tradition; handed down by tradition; in accordance with tradition.

Synonyms: conventional, widespread, customary, established.

• Tradition - the handing down of statements, beliefs, legends, customs, information, etc., from generation to generation; something that is handed down; a long-established or inherited way of thinking or acting; a continuing pattern of culture beliefs or practices; a customary or characteristic method or manner.

Synonyms: custom, practice, habit, convention, usage.

Ecological – of or relating to ecology; (of a practice, policy, product, etc) tending to benefit or cause minimal damage to the environment.

Synonyms: green.

• Ecology - (scientific definition) - the scientific study of the relationships between living things and their environments; a system of such relationships within a particular environment.
• Ecology - (cultural definition) - the study of living things, their environment, and the relation between the two.

Synonyms: conservation, preservation.

Knowledge – acquaintance with facts, truths or principles, as from study or investigation; familiarity or conversance, as with a particular subject or branch of learning; acquaintance or familiarity gained by sight, experience, or report; the fact or state of knowing, the perception of fact or truth; awareness as a fact or circumstance; the body of truths or facts accumulated in the course of time.

Synonyms: comprehension, enlightenment, acquaintance, consciousness.

After obtaining the definitions of the three words that compile Traditional Ecological Knowledge, I tried looking up the meaning of the entire term.  It was not in the dictionary.  So it was back to me rereading the myriad of words in an attempt to comprehend what Traditional Ecological Knowledge encompasses.

Traditional, meaning that the ecological knowledge is passed down from previous generations.  A standard of understanding that is slow to change.

Ecological, this word can have two nuanced meanings.  One option is traditional knowledge pertaining to the “study of the relationships between living things and their environments”.  Another possible definition is traditional knowledge “tending to benefit or cause minimal damage to the environment”. 

Knowledge: (Although the dictionary definition for this word is long), I liked one’s “perception of fact or truth” AND “the body of truths or facts accumulated in the course of time”.

In the end, it seems as though all I accomplished in my attempt to define Traditional Ecological Knowledge was stretching a three word term into an even wordier mess.  So to end on a slightly more comprehendible note, I will simplify Traditional Ecological Knowledge as I have decided to view it.

Traditional Ecological Knowledge: An understanding of the interactions between elements of nature that enable manipulation of those elements in order to benefit humankind and the environment ,that has been passed down from previous generations with limited amendments, and pertaining to the local ecosystem in which the knowledge was been cultivated.