This column was originally going to be about New Year’s resolutions, but I got sidetracked (goodbye resolution No. 7: Stay focused and follow through, we hardly knew you) by closed-system ecosystems. So naturally, I’ve been reading up on Biosphere 2, the ill-fated project more known (at least in some circles) for the parody “Bio-Dome” with Pauly Shore and one of the Baldwin clones.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2#mediaviewer/File:Wiki_bio2_sunset_001.jpg
I heard that the trees planted in the enclosed ecosystem failed because they lacked “stress wood.” Like callouses on our skin, stress wood —or “reaction wood” as it’s known — is a particular type that trees develop in reaction to environmental forces, like prevailing winds and gravity. In the cross section of a tree, the reaction wood is what causes the elliptical pattern of tree rings.
But the fact that trees grow this naturally in the wild, as a result of external forces, was quite interesting. When a tree is pushed, it responds by strengthening where it was once weak.
Brilliant.
It’s part of a system that people smarter than I call “self-optimization,” which is basically when a system’s settings constantly change and evolve to meet the changes in its environment.
So when the wind pushes the tree, it responds by strengthening the portion that will support it.
It’s like a dance —a special dance between the tree and the world. The environment shifts, the trees respond in turn. In that respect, they’re both part of a single system. After all, for one half of the hourglass to fill with sand, it must flow from the other half. Two parts but one system.
And isn’t that the same way we self-govern?
We react to our environment, everything outside our skin suits, that is. We build up our own version of stress wood to keep us standing in the face of terrible events. And when we react, we are in our own dance. The world becomes the sculptor and we its clay.
But there are a few key differences between humans and trees (one of which being our utter lack of photosynthesis. Terrible oversight) but one is that we get a measure of choice in how we react to the stress of the world.
We can be hit with the sudden loss of loved ones, and that grief can turn us to destructive behaviors to slay the cause of our pain which happens to be ourselves. Or some may take trauma and transmute it into art. We can choose to accept pain as proof that what is important is fleeting, and that value can be found in the ephemeral.
We will always be clay. And the world will always be our sculptor, but we have the power to direct those hands, to shape our selves, and it’s our duty as thinking creatures to create.
And in that, blind reaction will not do.
