Ecology and Ecosystems

From the works of Meadows, Capra, E.O. Wilson, and Odum, one can see that ecology is the study of community, but it is what makes up a community that differentiates ecology from other investigations.  My perspective is that it looks at organisms in their natural environment, or in the least where they exist.   The key here is the inclusion of the environment.  With the consideration of natural environments, we come to the idea of interactions within ecology and move to the idea of ecosystems and the interconnections between organisms.

The idea here is that from an ecological standpoint, thought is developed and created from what has already been.  Connections are made, connections are realized, and most importantly we see in the development of thought the connections that exist amongst all beings, matter, and energy.  One can admit when you touch another person, there is a sense or feeling of energy that moves between the two.  When does that energy and connection break away?  At 1 micron of separation? 1 millimeter? 1 meter?  It seems to me that the connection may diminish with spatial and temporal distancing, but never really disappear.  We are all connected, biological and non-biological entities, on this planet.

And what did we do with this connection?  Our consciousness has given rise to governments, relationships, community, and deeper connection.  Maybe we’ll be lucky and figure out how to reap the rewards of these connections for the sake of our ecosystems, of our ecology.

The Origin of (Ecological) Thought

Return, from the brink of the forgotten. 

To the millions that follow the Enviromug blog every day – after a long hiatus of many years, this blog will become quite active again, for a minimum of 9 weeks and 10 posts. 

The topic of contribution? 

The consideration and observation of the world around in relation to the Biosphere and Ecological Sustainability. 

And for this week…  I expect the readers will grant me a day of repose.  Life, sometimes, happens… and has given me a new, and yet old, view of how we have become who we are.  Stay tuned (tomorrow) for what that is…

I find it interesting as I may search for a specific topic in a search engine or view a topic in my newsfeed viewer (Flipboard, BTW) how the top results are often a rehash of some other post on the net, especially when looking at current events. Perhaps more prolific is the somewhat recent phenomenon of likes, shares, retweets, diggs, reblogs, plus, and other social media sharing tools. The thing is, I don't know if what you are sharing is your own thought. So often do we see someone think a subject is interesting, and then share a link to an external site.

But they don't tell me why it is interesting, what they think about it, their perspective, and what it means to them. This to me is not original thought... It's a meager attempt at stating that someone else’s thinking is your own. In a way, it is quite self-deflating and demeaning to state that you cannot come up with your own idea, and that someone else's original thought is actually better than your own.

This has really been brought to the forefront in my own research. In many ways, I am building on the ideas and thoughts of others. I take their perspectives and original thought, in hopefully new and innovative ways, and place my own spin on them in an original and unique way. In this formulation, I am building on the collective knowledge in the hope that others will do the same on what I now feel to be original thought.

Like Benjamin Franklin who repeatedly posted discoveries before they were fully investigated for the intent of furthering science, so too now does the Internet provide an avenue today; it is easy to spread the word on twitter, Facebook, and a multitude of other social media tools. 

From a community standpoint, we are looking at the mobilization of people towards a common good.  This is what our ecosystem and ecology looks like – the creation and discovery of thought.   

Worst part about it – I’d wager there is already posts somewhere out there very much like this one.  Never looked though, so though these ramblings may not be original, they are genuinely my own… first and hopefully last time I put a disclaimer like this in my blog…