I am a primatologist who spends twelve hours most days in the company of a thirteen year old chimpanzee named Bow. I am also an editor with Inverted-A Press.
When we first moved here, there were a number of cultivated flowers growing by the lagoon that were very pretty to look at. Irises and daffodils, and peonies and yucca all had been planted by the previous owners of the property. We also noticed some daisies growing wild by the fence line, and all of these flowers occasionally made beautiful arrangements.
Sword and Bow in 2002 by the lagoon when the irises still bloomed
I have not been tending the flowers, but the daffodils have been coming up every year, anyway, and the peony still manages to bloom helped by the black garden ants. The yucca plant is going strong, but the irises have not bloomed in years. Some plants need work to make them grow and bloom. And other plants prosper in neglect. If you are looking for beauty free of charge, your best bet is the natural beauty that no one has to work at.
I have been preoccupied by other matters besides gardening, and I have let things go. Meanwhile in my pasture, which used to be a monoculture of well mowed grass, all sorts of things have planted themselves, trees and shrubs, and many, many different kinds of flowers.
This blue and yellow flower is sometimes found in cracks in my cement driveway as well as in the woods.
By the path in the pasture you can see the Something Else flower in all its multitude of incarnations. Sometimes it grows side by side with honeysuckle.
I think the Something Else flower is just as lovely as any other rose, and quite possibly more radiant.
No two of them are exactly alike.
Is this closed center a different stage in the flower's development or a different variety of the flower?
Is the darker coloring on these petals due to nutrients in the soil where the seeds happened to fall? Or is it a genetic variation?
It's been raining a lot lately, so they have all received plenty of water -- and it was free of charge!
Different varieties of clover flowers bloom side by side.
One of the things that struck me while on my walk today is that if I had had to plan a garden of wildflowers, I would never have been able to include so many different varieties. Many of these flowers are the same, but different, sometimes in small gradations, like the colors of the rainbow which imperceptibly change and blend into one another.
Others, like the yarrow above, are very different from most anything else.
There are daisies everywhere, no two alike. Some are more different than others.
These flowers look like daisies, too, but how different they are, and the difference is not a matter of color.
You can recognize the center of the daisy, even when someone has eaten all its petals.
Some insects are pollinators, and some are not.
The butterfly helps select the best daisies from the consumer's point of view. It is a kind of quality control.
But some insects are not interested in what a flower offers in exchange for propagation. Some just want to devour its flesh.
Is it exploitative when they eat the petals and give nothing in return?
Is it only all right if they go straight for the pollen?
I like that nature is so non-judgmental. Anything that works is okay. Anything that does not is automatically eliminated.
Even when the Something Else flower has been denuded of all its beautiful petals, some insect might still come by and pollinate it. Even in extreme devastation there is hope.
Sometimes I wonder whether I am exploiting the beauty of my flowers. After all, I don't pay them anything to grow, not even minimum wage!
Certain moralists believe that we can only reap what we sow. But I did not sow any of this. It sowed itself. Or if it had a little help, it was not from me.
Central planning is what produces monocultures. Diversity is what results from letting things sort themselves out. I wish more nature buffs understood this, as it applies to both ecology and economy.
Bow looking at an old photo album
One of the ironies of the current conservative versus liberal dichotomy of outlook is that conservatives believe in central planning when it comes to speciation, and hence many deny evolution could have happened, since they think it requires planning to come up with different species, and they cannot conceive of it happening without a central designer. Liberals believe in evolution, but they think that central planning is the only way to run an economy or to save for the future or to secure good health for a population, while conservatives understand that allowing those things to evolve organically works better. The problem with both views is the lack of integrity -- not in the sense of ethics -- but in reference to the ability to integrate information from different areas of life to come up with a world view consistent with itself.
Some wildflowers for Bow
The beauty that we find in flowers is not magnified when they are cultivated -- the flowers get bigger, but the smaller sized wildflowers are actually prettier. When we cultivate fruits and berries and try to plan for speciation by genetically modifying them, the fruit gets bigger, but the flavor is often reduced, I have eaten wild strawberries in Idaho, and they taste so much better than the kind we get in the supermarket, though admittedly they are tiny in comparison.
Life does not get better with central planning. It may get bigger in some cases, but that's not the same thing. You can feed more people on modern grain than on a hunter-gatherer diet, the experts will tell you. but each of these many people will be less healthy as a result. They used to tell us to eat a high carb diet for our health. It was in the dietary guidelines. Then studies showed it was not healthy at all. Lately the gloves have been coming off in the departments of food planning, (HHS and USDA) and we are told we should eat less meat out of reasons of sustainability, not nutrition. In a natural ecology, sustainability takes care of itself.
I could put in a big effort to plant a garden full of cultivated plants, but I prefer the wildflowers that grow by themselves. They don't cost me anything, and they're also prettier. And they smell good, too! Have you ever noticed that flowers in a florist's shop seem to have no fragrance?
I may not be the one who selects the varieties planted, but I trust the creatures who do, because of their inherent interest in the matter. It's precisely because they do exploit the flowers that the flowers they plant smell so sweet.
The less I interfere in the process and the more I allow the insects and the wildlife to decide what flowers to plant, the greater the variety I find in my garden.
Yesterday, Bow seemed bored. He kept asking for his blanket, then when he got the blanket, he really didn't want it. It was raining outside. "You look bored," I told Bow. "You want to play chess?" He said yes.
He helped me to set up the board.
But he really didn't want to play chess.
That's okay. I didn't really want to play chess, either! There are plenty of other people who are good at playing chess and do it all the time, and those are the people who by rights should be playing chess.
In life, you cannot force people to do what they don't want to. I mean, you can, up to a point, but it really does not pay off. Bribing people also does not work that well. Leave them alone and see what comes naturally to them, and that is what people will end up doing.
It is better to choose people who want to do something and are willing to do it just for the love of the thing.
Wouldn't it be silly to assume that nobody would ever play chess unless they were paid to do so? Then why do people believe nobody would engage in scientific research or build airplanes or defend their country, unless the government were paying them to do so?
Have you seen the new movie by Hayao Miyazaki about Jiro Horikoshi who designed the Zero fighter plane? Miyazaki makes a great case for the fact that Horikoshi did not design the Zero in order to make war or to make money, but just because an airplane is a beautiful thing. Too bad the Japanese government was able to make use of his work. Do you think he would not have designed a beautiful plane without government funding?
The 200th anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans is coming up. There is going to be a symposium about it. At the symposium, some historians are going to argue that the British had a superior force because they were better trained and equipped by their government. They are going to try to suggest that Jean Laffite, with his private flints and gunpowder and artillery and well trained privateers did not win that battle!
In Australia, the scientific community is all a-flutter because they have no science minister, and the sciences are getting de-funded. But have you ever met a science minister who made an independent scientific discovery? A War Minister who won a war? A National Endowment for the Arts bureaucrat who made beautiful art? Keep the government out. Let the chips fall where they may.
Are you worried that civilization will come to a grinding halt? Let it go! Let them all do what they do when they are neither bribed nor forced. Let them do what they do when no one is looking and no one is overseeing. Laissez faire! Beautiful things can happen when people just do what comes naturally.
Bow and I recently saw two little videos that I think will add something positive to my discussion here about the relationship of other animals to man and of the interdependence of all living things to each other, including predators and their prey. While I did not make these films myself and do not know the background of the people who did, I think the videos speak for themselves. Bow liked watching them, and I hope that you enjoy them as well.
The first video I came across quite by accident in my Facebook feed. Since it involved a dolphin, and I had just written about the dolphin movie, I was unusually open to watching it, despite the fact that I am often jaded when it comes to "cute animal videos." Bow found it quite engaging, too.
While I cannot vouch for the authenticity of the video, unless it is severely edited, the dolpin does not seem to be coerced or bribed in any way. Nobody is standing over it with a stick, nor is anybody giving it a fish for returning the ball. The little boy and the dolphin are just having fun. This is taking place, I assume, in Russia or some Russian speaking location, and the caption says "Просто играют друг с другом", " or "just playing friend with friend."
Bow watched the video once, then asked to see it again, and for the third repetition, he figured out where he should press. Sometimes he got excited, but much of the time he sat still and watched, sometimes vocalizing his involvement, and sometimes sticking out his tongue at the boy and the dolphin, which is what he does when he likes someone.
Are dolphins wild animals? Can they be violent? Well, yes, to the same extent that we are also wild animals and can get violent when it serves our best interests. But this dolphin does not see this particular child as a threat, and he seems to enjoy playing with him. They are friends.
That is such a simple concept, that if there were no animal rights activists in the world, there would be no point in belaboring it. But there you have it. There's your answer to the wild animal propaganda.
The second film is somewhat more sobering, because it deals with predation, and how life comes from killing. Bow watched it only once, and he did find it enjoyable, but he did not ask to see it again.
The video is called "How Wolves Change Rivers" and it is a very glossy, high production piece with a message. It may very well be propaganda of some sort. I am not sure who is putting it out or for what reason, but they use the word "sustainability" which sounds very politically correct.
However, the uptake, for anyone who thinks about it, is that predators make life better for everyone, including the prey. I have long believed that, and it's not that different from what my father wrote in his article about the greater good.
My experience with trying to share this article has been mixed. A lot of people of the altruistic persuasion respond favorably to some of the set phrases, such as "greater than the individual." But when I explained to them that this is an argument in favor of laissez faire, they got mad at me. One woman even blocked me on a social networking site. She thought my father's article was great, but that my take on it was not.
Vegetarianism does not pay, if everybody practices it. It is fine as a limited way of life, and I have nothing against those who choose it for themselves for personal reasons. But those who want everybody to be vegetarian, including wolves and cats, have no idea what they are wishing on the world. Herbivores need carnivores to keep themselves healthy and to make sure that their population is not too great and that they don't overgraze. Even soil erosion can be laid at the feet of rampant vegetarianism. The Middle East is now largely a desert because of the unchecked practice of agriculture, which started there and spread elsewhere more slowly.
Even in economic terms, there are reasons for the trophic pyramid, with few at the top and many at the bottom. Eliminate the one percent, and life becomes much harder for the other 99%. Did the makers of that little nature film realize what they were saying? I doubt it. But there it is.
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