We're Not the Most Important Species




We often view ourselves as the top of the evolutionary ladder; we see ourselves as the most important species and the rest of the planet is here for our pleasure. The truth is - we are likely the least important to the overall scheme. We're an afterthought to the whole creation process and nature will continue onward just fine if we are removed for the remodeling.  In most creation stories, we were placed here well after every other part was present. Life on earth functioned just fine without us. It was after we were inserted that things began to unravel.

If we accept what we've learned from science, life of some form or another has existed on this planet for several billion years. For most of that time, there were no creatures even remotely similar to humans. Life evolved, was occasionally beaten back by some kind of extinction event, and was reassembled into new communities. At the end of the Age of Dinosaurs, 66 million years ago, mammals themselves mostly consisted of small squirrel-like creatures. There was nothing really that resembled what we see today. Certainly nothing resembling as human. The incredible biodiversity that is now present, has taken more than 60 million years to develop and for almost all of that time, we have had a very small role to play. We were not put here to run the show, but to play a role like everything else. Our ego might tell us otherwise, but in an ecosystem everything has a role in its function and no part is superfluous.

Our role over the last thousands of years has largely been one as a despoiler. We have acted often as a cancer that gobbles up the living cells around us and makes life difficult for all the other interacting parts. It's an image I see when I view the logo for Sherwin Williams paint, only it's human impact I see instead of paint.


We are important only because of our impact on the rest of life, not because we are the apex species. That said, we can be important if we can once again accept our role in the overall scheme of nature. As a thinking species, we can do that but it will take years to unravel the kind of thinking that has brought us to this point. We need to lose the overwhelming arrogance we have developed and become more contrite. It won't be easy.  

As I plant my little patch of landscape here in Holiday and write and lecture about it, I do so with the hope that what I do will help to take us in the right direction. The growing movement to create living landscapes demonstrates that it is possible.  We are doing so, however, with a large and boisterous clock ticking behind us. That clock is our reminder to act. Nature doesn't need us if we fail to acknowledge it.

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