If we want to fix the mess we’ve made on this planet, we need to get as familiar with ecosystems as we are with human landscapes.
Moving from landscapes to ecosystems might seem scary, because landscapes, throughout history, are always familiar – after all, we are all at the center of our own unique landscapes. But ecosystems are not scary, nor are they dangerous.
Ecosystems are the source of all good things. Ecosystems are not landscapes — ecosystems keep myriad landscapes (local niches) in balance. Take a single tree as a multiplicity of landscapes. A tree is an ecosystem. See how many insects or birds just walk or fly right past each other, going about their separate businesses. Everybody in an ecosystem pretty much gets along, because they notice different landmarks and follow different pathways. Their qualia is unique to them.
Creatures from multiple landscapes endure in harmony together in ecosystems. But, as self-centered worlds, landscapes pale in the light of ecosystems which inform and harmonize those worlds. Ecosystems are an over-arching whole which, could we only understand them more fully, could provide us with the meaning and purpose that our human landscapes lack.
Moving from our landscapes to ecosystems should not be scary — it is not nearly so scary as moving from one landscape to another. Ecosystems are within us — we already know them on some deep level. Like all creatures, we have have evolved with ecosystems — and we have benefited from their plentiful gifts, which still flow to us, and even through us.
But that deep level of knowing seems lost to us. We have moved away from ecosystems, and that is why there is so much fear. The Tao Te Ching says that laws and rights only became necessary as we moved away from the Tao. Redirecting our attention to the qualiadelic, instead of materialistic, reveals a pathway back to the Tao, to ecosystems.
Ecosystems reveal that our God, who is so distant, so unknowable and so doubtable to us, is actually right here, on Earth. Other creatures on this planet have a solid faith that ecosystems will provide.
While the gifts come to the rest of the creatures on earth through their senses, they come to us also through the mind. If we place our faith in ecosystems, like the rest of the beings with whom we share the planet, they don’t have to be scary.