Rule 2

2. Always include local nature – the land, the water, the air, the native creatures – within the membership of the community.

Robert L. Fielding: Whenever people plan to change things within their community, it is usual to take people into account. Only rarely are water resources, land, the air we breathe or the living creatures that roam around us also taken into account.

Bert Thornley: Why do you think that is so?

RLF: That’s difficult to say; there are probably a variety of reasons.

BT: Yes, but I think the main one is that these resources do not have a voice when things are being planned. Who will speak up for the air, for example?

RLF: Well, people should, they have to breathe it; their children have to breathe it.

BT: The water companies may well speak up for the resources they manage; farmers may speak up for the land they own, but what about the rest of the biosphere; plants, animals, insects and fishes – who is going to speak for them?

RLF: Well, of course, there are bodies who do speak out for the way animals are treated; the RSPCA, for example, but they usually confine their protests to how pets are treated.

That is probably one of the roots of the problem; that because we only rarely interact with animals – mainly domestic and farm animals, most of us probably regard the rest of them – wild animals – as pests.

BT: I agree. Take the fox, for example; it is traditionally regarded as either the prey of packs of hounds, or a killer of chickens. If any animal so much as touches anything we say belongs to us, we kill it, and yet the fox is a beautiful animal that graces our wilder places, and has a right to live.

RLF: It’s easy to defend a beautiful animal like the fox, but what about the brown rat – has that animal a right to live?

BT: Such animals are called vermin and as such are both objects of derision and attempts to eradicate them.

RLF: But we probably do so without much idea about what rats actually do – whether they prey on other creatures that constitute a greater threat to human health. Rats are subject to what you might term historical prejudice – they carried the viruses that started the Great Plague, it is thought, and so we think of them as pests – dangerous pests – to be killed.

BT: Whereas I should say that very few of us know anything at all about the life of rats – only a sort of anecdotal knowledge.

RLF: And so it is with what we know of most living creatures that live around us and share our space in the communities in which we live. We know very little and yet are willing to dismiss them as a nuisance, even as dangerous.

BT: I once heard of a scheme in China to remove all the birds in one particular grain growing region of that huge country because they were eating the grain there.

RLF: What happened?

BT: Well, birds were persecuted and killed, and people thought they had done a good thing in removing the birds that were eating the grain they had been growing.

RLF: So they were right to cull the birds, were they?

BT: Not at all. From the moment birds started to be decimated, swarms of insects started to appear, insects flourished in the absence of the birds. You see, the people’s solution to the problem of stopping their grain from being eaten by birds did not solve for pattern.

Dealing with one aspect of a problem in isolation; disregarding other factors, means that other problems will appear – some far worse than the original one.

RLF: I see, so that is why all aspects of a community must be taken into account before any action is taken.

BT: Yes, I should say that is probably the main reason for taking everything into account.

RLF: But that would mean comprehensive studies undertaken by bodies with expertise.

BT: Whereas what usually happens is that only so called ‘vested interests’ decide what action to take. Many of those interests are financial ones.

RLF: And those groups – corporations, companies take a far too narrow look at anything – particularly at communities that include plants and animals as well as people.

BT: And they define their goals too narrowly too.

RLF: What do you mean?

BT: Corporations exist to maximize profits.

RLF: Often at the expense of anything and anybody?

BT: Precisely; and if that is done, and communities overlooked, disastrous consequences invariably ensue.

RLF: So what is the answer?

BT: Well, to begin with, we should realize that looking for, ‘the right answer’ – the one and the only one, is planning for failure; that there is nothing of the sort. Better solutions are reached by more knowledge, not by conveniently ignoring variables that get in the way of quick fixes. Economics treats these as what it calls exogenous variables – those either to be ignored or at best factored in rudimentary, simplistic ways for convenience and this impatience of ours to get things moving at all costs.

RLF: That is well said – “at all costs” – in fact, that is just what is never done. All costs must be what they mean – costs of everything to all.

BT: Rather than only those costs that can easily and readily be quantified.

RLF: Precisely; taking into account only what can be quantified is a corporation’s way of progressing. That concept – 'what is quantifiable’ is at the root of all our problems.

BT: Well, most of them, let’s say. But why do you think that is so?

RLF: The old adage, ‘Time is money’ has something to do with it. This obsession with action – immediate action – the more immediate the better - this is at the root of our problems.

In our headlong dash to act, to get money flowing, we systematically ignore factors that, when compounded, destroy what is left after this rushed action.

BT: When are we going to learn that the world – our world, our environment – the ecosystems that support life – all life – including ours, is not organized along the same lines as those we suppose – those systems we impose upon ourselves and then on the rest of the world around us – the natural world.

RLF: Of which we are also a part; let’s not forget that.

Robert L. Fielding