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• Monday, July 6, 2009 09:17 PM

  Liked it.

  I enjoyed this discussion of the values in stability and instability. The northern Adirondacks, where I live, is a relatively stable system but transforms observably within small segments of a human's (my) life.

  In a short time frame, say less than 40 years, we want "stasis". Without it we lose control over our habitat. Unfortunately our human drive for stasis translates to the production and maintenance of lawns and parking lots. These perceived stable environments are wastelands. The oceans seem to be suffering similar habitat treatments.

  So, pretending that there exists a "natural" habitat is to analyze in the distant theoretical environment, rather than describing the observation of forest and meadow, the charming otter example not withstanding.

  I enjoyed this read, but prefer analyzing our World through the dual lenses of gardening and health. I define health as the ability of a habitat to clean itself and support an optimal species diversity. Gardening is choosing levels of evolution, such as forest or meadow. Analyzing and prefering specific levels of evolution has a period focus similar to the stability/instability article.

  Health has a stasis goal. Short term and stable. But it differs from the current stasis model in that lawns and parking lots neither cleanse themselves nor support optimal biodiversity.

  So, the healthy gardener analyzes his environment for strengths, chooses desireable periods of development, supports the perceived strengths, reduces pollutants, and after the system stabilizes, only then inserts missing elements - weed, protect, and after stability, plant.

  —CommunityGuy Read CommunityGuy's other letters
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