Dustin Bajer

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Humans Are Not A Disease

February 8, 2018 by Dustin Bajer

We Are Not A Cancer

In response to a comment that humans are cancer on the planet, futurist and polymath Stewart Brand once said: “Nah, cancer can’t stop asteroids.”

One of the most pernicious cultural narratives is that we are inherently separate from and destroying the Earth; a blight, a disease, cancer, or parasite on the planet. This story is uninspiring and defeating. Humans are note a disease on this planet.

Nature isn’t a thing but a process of continuous becoming. Nature predates biology. Nature goes back to the Big Bang (and probably before); it is the cooling of subatomic particles into simple elements, the formation and collapse of stars that fused simple elements into complex ones. It’s the clumping of complex elements into planets and (on at least one of those worlds) the formation of the chemical soup needed to create primordial RNA. Once life appears, nature used it to further diversify. Anything natural is the product of this process.

Nature Predates Biology

Not only are we natural, technologist Kevin Kelly might argue that our minds and anything they produce – language, tools, genetically modified organisms (GMOs)*, artificial intelligence, etc. – are also natural.

Interestingly enough, nature has a built-in ethic of sorts. Generally speaking, the long arc of nature works to expand the adjacent possible; that is to say that nature uses the tools of the present to create even more tools for the future. Nature is playing what author and religious scholar James P. Carse calls “an infinite game”; any game in which the goal is to keep playing.

Being A Good Ancestor. Will This Decision Create More Options For The Future?

If nature favours creating possibility, we can argue that to work with nature is to create possibility. To work against nature is to reduce it. So while humans are natural we don’t always act in ways that align with it. One way to work with nature is to practice long-term thinking:

  • Am I interacting in ways that increase the potential of others?
  • *Will this decision create more options for the future?
  • Am I being a good ancestor?
  • Will this act increase diversity and complexity?

While, the answers aren’t always clear-cut there are people (like Brand and Kelly) and organizations like the Long Now Foundation that seeks create a new and more helpful cultural narrative around long-term thinking and a future rich in possibilities

Humans are not a disease. Now, let’s go stop some asteroids.

Humans are not a diseases on the planet

Until now, no species has ever had the ability to stop this catastrophic cycle. Stopping one extinction level asteroid would make up for (but not justify) all of the harmful things we have ever done to our planet.

Filed Under: Dustin Bajer's Articles Tagged With: Nature, Quora

Your Parking Stall Wants To Be A Forest

June 8, 2017 by Dustin Bajer

The Nature of Nature

Imagine a parking stall – hot, grey, dry, and dead.  Parking lots are uninteresting, uninviting, and inhospitable to most plants and animals. They are begging to be forests.

Even the most meticulously paved parking lot has minor imperfections that spell its demise. In the heat of the sun, asphalt and concrete bake – they also expand and contract encouraging cracks to form and spread. If you’re in a cooler climate, the process quickens as water seeps into crevices and pries them apart with each freeze and thaw cycle. As cracks spread they create a physical edge on which dust, dirt, and debris can cling. Small stones fall between cracks and wedge them open. Organic matter like leaves from nearby plants gets caught on them and turns to soil. This process repeats itself. The wind carries small seeds. Some find pockets of soil, germinate, and shoot above asphalt like fountains of life. Their bodies create ever more surfaces for dust, soil, and seeds to accumulate. With the help of chlorophyll, plants capture sunlight and carbon in their bodies. Their roots penetrate below asphalt and turn into columns of soil when they die. This process repeats itself. More plants grow and some of them flower. Insects visit flowers then birds visit insects in search of a meal. Birds deposit nutrients, and sometimes these nutrients come prepackaged with seeds. This process repeats itself. As cracks grow and soil accumulates, perennial grasses partially replace annual pioneers. Next, grasses are partially replaced by woody shrubs. Flowers, grasses, and shrubs colonise concrete, Life it gaining a foothold. Leaves shade the earth and protect it as a layer of soil holds onto water. Small shrubs succeed to larger ones and larger shrubs to trees. With trees come new species of animal. Things are interesting now. There is so much more life. So many more possibilities. The parking lot has become a forest. This process repeats itself. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Dustin Bajer's Articles Tagged With: Adjacent Possible, Nature

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Dustin Bajer

Teacher, permaculture designer, master gardener, hobby beekeeper, consultant, and network nerd living in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Read More

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