Interconnectedness

On my drive to work today, NPR told me (just me–no one else) that Japan is in serious financial trouble.  I believe they compared themselves to Greece.

I thought about how all the financial troubles in the international community underscore the interconnectedness and smallness of the world.

For the record, I do realize that I should probably wait until I park to think about things like this.

And being the biology nerd that I am, I thought about how this theme applies to the natural world as well.

Life is connected through time and space.  By time, I mean that you only exist in this moment because in the last 3.8 billion years, no ancestor of yours died before reproducing.

Every twist and turn in life’s history has lead to this moment.  Every success, every tragedy, every story played its part.  For instance, if a giant asteroid hadn’t hit earth and caused a worldwide mass extinction 65 million years ago, dinosaurs would probably still rule the earth, and we wouldn’t exist.  I like the story of the time traveler who steps on a dragon fly millions of years ago and disturbs the whole space-time continuum.  What was that?  A twilight zone episode?  Google says it’s Stargate, but surely that’s a retelling of the old story.  Have some fun asking Google about time traveling mistakes.  Here, I’ll do it for you.

Life’s interconnectedness in space is the study of ecology–organisms’ interactions on various scales.  A grasshopper eating grass is an interaction, and a lizard eating the grasshopper is another interaction.  It’s not just about who eats who, though.  Earthworms’ processing of dirt and making it suitable for plants to take root is another interaction.

So this brings me back to Japan’s economic crisis: ecology and economics have a lot in common.  An ecosystem is only stable, and therefore successful, if it has a high degree of diversity.  Everything functions better with variety.  Ecosystems build stability from the bottom up, and they can’t be too top heavy: you don’t want to have more predators than prey because you can’t have all the energy trapped in the highest level of the ecosystem.  It has to be spread around for the ecosystem to flourish–the same way the economy can’t function if 99% of the country’s money is in one man’s savings account.

Ecosystems and economies function best when energy and money is exchanged freely and often in a variety of ways.  Also, no part of the chain can consider itself separate from the others.  An eagle may be at the top of the food chain, but being at the top just means you are dependent on everything below you, so you have some serious incentive to keep the food chain functioning.

I could go on and on about how variety is better for everything (diet, wardrobe, genetics, throw pillows, race) and how much evidence there is for the interconnectedness of all things (religion, weather, overfishing, movie remakes, non-native species, pollution, language), but I won’t do this to you.  This post is already too long.

Interconnectedness means our mistakes have ripple effects, yes, but it also means that we are all in this together.  “This” being existence and prosperity.  The togetherness spans all barriers–race, religion, nationality, species.  Our planet is a global community of countries, peoples, and ecosystems.  The more we realize this, the more we will help each other, and in turn help ourselves.  Group hug!