A typical definition of an ecosystem is “a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment.” Such definitions are focused upon ecosystems in all their material interconnectedness: this eats that, and its excrement feeds them, and so these grow while those decay, and so on in a myriad of embedded life cycles.
Sometimes, the definition will be expanded toward the qualiadelic: “Throughout this competitive feeding upon one another, there exist fragile meshes of symbiotic cooperation.” Meshes of symbiotic cooperation hints at the qualiadelic relationships which have created the landscape. Qualiadelic relationships have painted every surface and filled every molecule with qualia. Shared qualia is the source of the harmony which connects landscapes to ecosystems.
A landscape, the common knowledge has it, is made up of many ecosystems. If we pull off the highway and peer out upon a scenic overlook, we see one great landscape – a mountain range, or an ocean, or some desert canyon. A thoughtful sign by the edge of the parking lot might suggest that the landscape before us is filled with ecosystems. But this is not quite right. As we shift our perspective from the material view to the qualiadelic, such common sense needs to be turned on its head. The sign ought to explain that an ecosystem is made up of many landscapes.
To understand ecosystems, we must first redefine landscapes: a landscape is made up of the unique landmarks and pathways used by one, individual being. Each individual, (animal or vegetable), is at the center of a personal landscape. That individual may have inherited particular landmarks and pathways, but those it uses are peculiar to itself. Every individual being has its own, unique story.
Therefore, an ecosystem is made up of as many landscapes as there are unique ‘consciousnesses’ enduring, surviving, and evolving within it. Each individual microbe, fungi, plant, tree, fish, amphibian, reptile, insect, bird, or mammal, (and even each atom, element, or molecule) is the center of its own landscape. Every being has its own, consciousness, one of a kind, formed by its own, distinct landmarks and pathways.
All life evolves into separate species, living in specialized niches. But within every niche, each individual microbe, fungi, plant, tree, fish, amphibian, reptile, insect, bird, or mammal is the center of its own landscape. Every being has its own, consciousness, formed by its own, distinct landmarks and pathways. That’s twenty billion-billion individual landscapes, each one centered upon a unique individual; and all of them existing in relative harmony, balanced by ecosystems.
The Darwinian fight for survival occurs in landscapes: individuals of the same species compete within their inherited landmarks and pathways. Individuals of different species generally live side by side, cooperatively, because the qualia they share leads them down different pathways. A chickadee may snap up insects on the outside of a tree-trunk, while a woodpecker pecks grubs from under the bark. They might as well live in different universes; for the most part they are all but invisible to one-another.
Every human mind inhabits a different landscape, too – our inner landscapes do not merely make people unique from other creatures; they make every individual person unique. Every individual among us is sui generis, a species of one, and so people can, indeed, coexist, balanced in landscapes and harmonized by ecosystems.
Alas, we have been groomed by Big Dopamine. Rather than noticing unique landmarks and moving down different pathways, we follow the herd. But, if we have faith, ecosystems will always provide, and one of us will be led to the berry while another will be led to the root.
Landscapes may be violent places, and full of competition, but ecosystems hold all those landscapes together in harmonious balance, just as a hexagon holds together the freezing water molecules of a snowflake, in the fittest way. Berries and roots are fit for animals – but what do people seek?