An example of the Law of Limited competition being broken

Removing cats to protect birds backfires on island

By MICHAEL CASEY, AP Environmental Writer Michael Casey, Ap Environmental Writer – Tue Jan 13, 9:18 am ET

BANGKOK, Thailand – It seemed like a good idea at the time: Remove all the feral cats from a famous Australian island to save the native seabirds.

But the decision to eradicate the felines from Macquarie island allowed the rabbit population to explode and, in turn, destroy much of its fragile vegetation that birds depend on for cover, researchers said Tuesday.

Removing the cats from Macquarie "caused environmental devastation" that will cost authorities 24 million Australian dollars ($16.2 million) to remedy, Dana Bergstrom of the Australian Antarctic Division and her colleagues wrote in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology.

"Our study shows that between 2000 and 2007, there has been widespread ecosystem devastation and decades of conservation effort compromised," Bergstrom said in a statement.

The unintended consequences of the cat-removal project show the dangers of meddling with an ecosystem — even with the best of intentions — without thinking long and hard, the study said.

"The lessons for conservation agencies globally is that interventions should be comprehensive, and include risk assessments to explicitly consider and plan for indirect effects, or face substantial subsequent costs," Bergstrom said.

Located about halfway between Australia and the Antarctic continent, Macquarie was designated a World Heritage site in 1997 as the world's only island composed entirely of oceanic crust. It is known for its wind-swept landscape, and about 3.5 million seabirds and 80,000 elephant seals arrive there each year to breed.

The cats, rabbits, rats and mice are all nonnative species to Macquarie, probably introduced in the past 100 years by passing ships. Authorities have struggled for decades to remove them.

The invader predators menaced the native seabirds, some of them threatened species. So in 1995, the Parks and Wildlife Service of Tasmania that manages Macquarie tried to undo the damage by removing most of the cats.

Several conservation groups including the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Birds Australia said the problem was not the original eradication effort itself — but that it didn't go far enough. They said the project should have taken aim at all the invasive mammals on the island at once.

"What was wrong was that the rabbits were not eradicated at the same time as the cats," University of Auckland Prof. Mick Clout, who also is a member of the Union's invasive species specialist group. "It would have been ideal if the cats and rabbits were eradicated at the same time, or the rabbits first and the cats subsequently."

Liz Wren, a spokeswoman for the Parks and Wildlife Service of Tasmania, said authorities were aware from the beginning that removing the feral cats would increase the rabbit population. But at the time, researchers argued it was worth the risk considering the damage the cats were doing to the seabird populations.

"The alternative was to accept the known and extensive impacts of cats and not do anything for fear of other unknown impacts," Wren said. "Since cats were eradicated, the grey petrel successfully bred on the island for the first time in a century and the recovery of Antarctic prions has continued since the eradication of feral cats."

Now, the parks service has a new plan to finish the job, using technology and poisons that weren't available a decade ago.

Wren said plans to eradicate both rabbits as well as rats and mice from the island will begin in 2010. Helicopters using global positioning systems will drop poisonous bait that targets all three pests. Later, teams will shoot, fumigate and trap the remaining rabbits, she said.

Some of the earlier critics are now behind this latest eradication effort, saying it should help the island's ecosystem fully recover because it would remove the last remaining invasive species.

"Without this action, there will be serious long-term consequences for the majestic seabirds which nest on the island including the four threatened albatross species, and for the health of the island ecosystem as a whole," said Dean Ingwersen, Bird Australia's threatened bird network coordinator.

"We believe that the process they are going to follow uses best practice for this type of work," Ingwersen said. "And that all possible ramifications have now been considered."

A Law with Strict Limits

So... Where did we leave off, ah... the Law of Limited Competition. This is that little overarching law of the survival of all living things on this planet. It has guaranteed or negated the survival of most every species, from the jelly fish to the diminishing polar bear. Unfortunately, this is the law OUR culture continues to violate since the conception of said culture.

You may remember that conception from my last post about the beginning of totalitarian agriculture. One of our biggest problems is that the culture of totalitarian agriculture is practiced my the majority of the developed world (East and West). The main issue though, is that our system is so far outside the capacity of resources in the food web. However, the law has allowances. It is stated here:

You (as a member of the food web) may take as much food as you like, but you may not wage war on your competition for the purpose of eliminating them, nor may you deny your competition access to its food. Totalitarian attacks this law for its don'ts specifically. Let's break this down a little with an example. Say, for example, that two types of birds feed on food sources C, D and E. Type 1 also feeds on food sources A and B. Since, sources A and B are only available part of the year, birds of Type 1 destroy the nests of bird Type 2 in and around the area they find food sources C, D and E. Eventually, birds of Type 2 die off and Type 1 no longer has any competition. This causes an explosion in the population of birds of Type 1. Because, as the law's parameters allow, the more food there is available to a species, the more that species will grow. This is exactly the case with US! Well, not us in general, but us in the sense that we follow what birds of Type 1 did, in every corner of the world and have for the past 10,000 years or so. If you don't see the correlation, just check out the article I plan to post as the example of humans not knowing what species should live, and who should die, which is the basis of our culture. It is the reason we have the confidence to think we are right and this is the right way to live.

I think I will leave off with those points. Now, we are about to get into the juicy stuff and I want to keep that separate from the facts I want to deal with. Next we will begin to break down Mother Culture in detail as a means to returning to our (Homo sapiens sapiens) rightful place in the world.

"The Fall" and Totalitarian Agriculture

There is a phenomenon in theology called "the Fall". It entails man's fall from the grace of God because he partakes of the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This is the mythology I want to address here as is relates to our culture of Totalitarian Agriculture.

10, 000 years ago (8,000 B.C.) a revolution began. It was a revolution of epic proportions. This is a story that has been told over and over again. It has even been chronicled in some parables of the Holy Bible. However, you won't find this story in the history books because, as some might suggest, this is when OUR history began.

This was no ordinary revolution, as we might define--a relinquishing of power by some government that has been overthrown or some previously oppressed people rising up and overtaking their oppressor neighbors--this was a revolution of the mind. Let us call it the usurping of the knowledge of good and evil from the gods (God, in the monotheistic belief). However, our understanding of this knowledge is false and has been tainted as the story (OUR history) has been handed down over the past millennia. Indeed, the actual knowledge that was "imparted" in order for this revolution to take place is false.

The knowledge of good and evil that Adam (which is translated from a Hebrew word meaning man) obtains is not that he was naked and should be clothed. The knowledge that caused, what Biblical scholars call "The Fall", is a sense that man (Adam) has been bestowed with the God-given right to decide what beings (plant or animal, including other men) should die and which shall live and the power to execute this ordinance to its full extent. Now, this statement may be a bit disconcerting, so I will explain what I mean in the context of Ishmael, the book I'm referencing for what I have stated here.

In the book, the teacher, Ishmael, tells a story about a discussion the gods have pertaining to the administration of the world. They stumble over whether to let one animal, a quail, live at the expense of the life of another animal, a fox. For instance, disallowing a fox to eat the quail would bring curses of the gods from the fox. Likewise, allowing the fox to dine on the quail, would bring curses from the quail caught in the jaws of the fox. Being of great conscience, again and again, the gods fumble over decisions of this nature since, surely, one action is good causing the other to be evil. One day, one of them recalls their creation of a tree that contains the knowledge of good and evil. They decide to eat from it and are soon presented with a lion and a deer. The first day the deer is spared, and the next, the lion is allowed to eat the deer. As soon as the deer is caught, it begins to curse the gods. The gods' reply to the deer is that they possess the proper knowledge to know what shall live and what shall die, and so they tell the deer to be at peace with its fate because they hold this knowledge. The deer then dies at peace with the decision of the gods.

You may be wondering what this has to do with anything, let alone totalitarian agriculture... Well, I'll tell you. When the totalitarian agricultural revolution began, people decided that if any animal or plant were to disturb their crop or livestock, that animal (or plant) must die in order for our food to live. Not only that, but these beings (wolves, moles, weeds, etc) must be eliminated, in total, in order for us to maintain or expand our available territory for agricultural endeavors.

Furthermore, the Caucasians who began this revolution (at least in what is now Europe and Asia minor) decided to expand South into what we would call the Fertile Crescent. But for their expansion to be complete, the Semites who lived there had to be exterminated. The Caucasians (descendants of people originating in the area near the Caucus mountains) in turn slaughtered or caused the forced migration of these people. In the story of "The Fall" this is believed to be the story portrayed by the slaying of Abel (Semites), the herder, by his brother Cain (Caucasians), the tiller of the ground.

It is all tied together by the mythology of Eve, taken from a Hebrew (Semitic) word meaning "Life". So, when Adam (man) was given to partaking of the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil (who shall live and who shall die), Eve (Life) was given to him abundantly, creating a population explosion and making him the father of our culture, but not many nations, which will come later.

To recap, totalitarian agriculture is a system of agriculture where, when a farm is threatened, all of those who threaten it are exterminated or have their food resources removed from the land required for the production of human food. The more food that is produced, the more humans we see. The more humans we have, the more food we need to feed them. And increasing the amount of food we need means increasing the amounts and types of beings that must be eliminated to expand food production. This system is completely and utterly at odds with a community biology law called the Law of Limited Competition, which I will explain in my next post.

Comments?

Things Fall Apart...

As you can see from previous posts, this blog is more or less about the eventual downfall of mankind and ways to turn the corner on failed attempts at community and society. You may be asking "who's failing?" WE are failing! Capitalism is failing!

In my line of work, systems work in one basically designed pattern. When these systems break down, you are aging past an existence of vigor and your systems are losing steam. On the other hand, you could have some disease that causes you to take some kind of dramatic action, from lifestyle changes to aggressive medication treatments.

Maybe you can see the correlation to our style of economy. We are obviously at a point where something needs to be done to a (capitalistic) system that is failing. But why is it failing at such a, relatively, young age? I want you to ask yourself that question, but what I really want to do here is show everyone that its not only failing, it was never considered a truly long-lasting way to lead a community.

As we go into a weekend that will end in the honoring of a great man and the dawn of a new age in U.S. governmental history, I want to start the actual emphasis of my blog with a parable told in Daniel Quinn's, The Story of B:

"It is well known," B said, "that every piece of hand-woven cloth has an element of magic in it, which is the special magic of its weaver. This magic doesn't necessarily die with the individual weaver but rather can be passed on from generation to generation and shared among families and even whole nations, so that no one who is sensitive to such things can tell in a moment whether a piece of cloth was woven in Ireland or France or Virginia or Bavaria. This is true on every planet in the universe where weaving is practiced, and it was true on the planet I'd like to tell you about right now.

"It happened on this planet that a weaver named Nixt came along who was a strange compound of genius and insanity, violence and artistry, ruthlessness and charm--and this was the magic he wove into his cloth, and those who wore garments made from it became just like the weaver. The weaver was quickly renowned, and everyone wanted clothes imbued with his magic. Wearing such clothes, artists created masterpieces, merchants got rich, leaders extended their power, soldiers triumphed in battle, and lovers left their rivals in the dust. Almost immediately it was noticed that Nixtian magic had some drawbacks. Instead of lasting for centuries, artists' masterpieces tended to disintegrate after only decades. Instead of lasting for generations, merchants' riches tended to melt away in a single lifetime. Instead of lasting for decades, leaders' power tended to ebb away in years. Instead of lasting for years, lovers' charms tended to pall in months. No one cared. Artists wanted masterpieces, merchants wanted money, leaders wanted power, and lovers wanted conquests.

"Naturally every weaver in the land wanted to weave with Nixtian magic, and Nixt himself was soon so extravagantly wealthy that he was glad to share it with them. Within a generation, every single weaver in the realm was practicing only this one kind of magic and all others had been forgotten. From swaddling clothes to shrouds, everyone in the land wore clothes woven with Nixtian magic--and, as you can easily imagine, this nation almost overnight became preeminent among the nations of the world. There wasn't a thing to stop them from taking over the entire planet, and they proceeded to do so in just a few generations, and in every land they conquered, weavers who were practicing other kinds of magic either learned Nixtian magic or they took up some other occupation.

"The spread of Nixtian magic revealed another of its drawbacks. Its exhaustive qualities seemed to increase exponentially. When twice as many masterpieces were created with Nixtian magic, they disintegrated four times as fast. When three times as many mechants were getting rich with Nixtian magic, their money melted away nine times as fast. No one liked it, of course, but artists still wanted masterpieces, merchants still wanted wealth, leaders still wanted power, and so on.

"Within a thousand years, every weaver on the planet knew only one kind of magic and all others had been forgotten. Within another thousand years, it was forgotten that any other kind of magic had ever been practiced in weaving, and people soon ceased to think of it as magic at all; it was just part of the process of weaving, and for all they knew, this had always been the case. In other words, they experienced a Great Forgetting of their own. They eventually came to view Nixtian magic as just part of weaving--just the way people of our culture came to view totalitarian agriculture as just part of being human.

"The trouble was that once every man, woman, and child on the planet was wearing clothes woven by Nixtian magic, the exhaustive power of this magic was operating at such a high level that masterpieces were lasting only weeks--and no one wanted them. Fortunes were made and routinely lost within days, and merchants lived in a state of suicidal depression. Governments and whole political systems came and went like seasons of the year, and no one even bothered to learn the names of presidents or prime ministeres. Romances and love affairs seldom lasted for more than two or three hours.

"It was at this point of total systemic burnout that some enterprising paleoanthropologists happened quite fortuitously to discover that weaving had existed long before the time of Nixt, and that people had for hundreds of thousands of years been very happy to wear clothes woven with other kinds of magic. And amazingly enough--even with out Nixtian magic--artists had still occasionally produced masterpieces, merchants had gotten rich, leaders had become powerful, and lovers had made conquests. And, more important, these achievements had, by modern standards, been durable to an almost unthinkable degree.

"Terrifically excited, these paleoanthropologists brought their discovery to the attention of their department head and asked to be released from other duties so they could study ancient weavings and possibly even rediscover the magic employed in their production. 'I guess I don't get it,' the department head said, after patiently listening to their proposals. 'Why is it important to know what weavers were doing before the age of Nixt?'"


Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. day everyone.

Peace.

Thinking out loud: a back log of previous thoughts

Yes, this is a back log of a random thought and journal entries I wrote before this blog started, but they contribute to the delineation of thoughts that led me to start the blog in the first place and so I thought they should be included here. Since this is the most recent post, I do realize the irony of it being a back log, but oh well...

January 10, 2008

Societies often flourish until a height we could call a "peak"... Then they begin to "worship" things that they have created (i.e. technology, money, etc) and ultimately just celebrating themselves. [this happened in Roman and Egyptian empires and is evident in the United States today]
This is when the degradation of the society begins [it begins to "eat" itself from the inside]... People draw into themselves and start giving less compassion for their fellow man in the holistic thought of, "helping my fellow people helps the society as a whole and therefore helps me in the long run". [the division of classes becomes greater and more apparent than in previous generations]

-I added the thoughts in brackets [] as I wrote this now, revising and rehashing the thoughts contained in the rest of the entry.


July 27, 2008


In my quest for truth, many things get factored: religious faith, organized religious practices, science, my personal faith and experiences... My conversation with *edit* today represents greater society's affinity for concrete answers. But why must everything be so concrete? The Earth is ever changing (tectonic plates), as well as the atmosphere above it. And even more so, the universe around us. I believe there is a God. It exists in our minds, in our physical environment and the physical forces that guide those mediums. I believe that no one congregation, which is just a grouping of people, has a singular answer to truth [what is actually true]. Since truth is a malleable entity [perception is reality for everyone, the orange color you see most likely does not look the same as the orange color that MY brain tells me I see], we can never know what it is. My duty lies in my faith that serving my community is the ultimate truth. I hope my lack of attendance at my father's church is not insulting my parents. However, I cannot help those will not accept help. I WILL help those that do accept it, including myself. This is why I have decided to visit different congregations in search of (other) better ways to serve my community, globally and locally.


August 28, 2008

I'm sitting in the Atlanta airport, gearing up for my third annual Red and Black weekend. Reflection... Over the past week I discussed my religious beliefs (or lack thereof) with *edit*. We both agree that most likely there is no God. Over time figures have created religion as an overarching moral code by which to guide human behavior. Although these morals are evolutionarily inherent, many other guiding "prophecies" have been added to organized religion(s).

In the context of this [theory], I look at the world around me and say "Wow!" Wow, we [humans] are moving at an unsustainable pace as far as consumption of food and other natural resources. Wow! Why do men [humans] so want to rule over other humans? How did we come this far as to have almost entire continents (US, Russia, Canada) ruled by a few power hungry [people]? Are we not focused on the wrong things (technology, government, etc)? Should we not be building homes from less processed materials and eating only the food we need? Should we not put down the clicker and talk to our neighbors? They have trials and struggles too. That is how we have survived (and advanced thus far), by sharing thoughts, feelings and ideas.

I just think we need to slow down and observe how we actually fit into this Earthly situation. As humans, with brains so far removed from [evolved past] any other species that has no doubt [also] evolved, WE should take responsibility for how WE are treating the other beings (plant and animal) in the global ecosystem.

I almost do not see the need to struggle and jockey for position in "society", when we should be living off of the land, taking only what we need and no more [well, maybe a little more... even squirrels store food]. Surplus crops, grocery stores... these are [detestable] in the grand scheme of Ecology... thoughts begin to slow.

A conversation with myself

This post is somewhat eclectic in thought pattern. I promise to expound on the topics I bring up here:

A few days ago I sat at the Central West End Metro station at an active construction site, listening to the clinks and clangs of hammers and running machinery. It caused me to think about the current economic turmoil and all of President Obama's (our) plans for job creation. But, for what?! Just so people can make money? Why? Money is only worth something because we (people) SAY it is. Even when it is backed with some tangible resource (pounds sterling), that mineral is also only valued by people who made up a figure of its worth, by weight. Even with the value of money, in the United States it is usually spent on something that gives one little improvement to quality of life and is, more likely than not, something you bought to impress people, some who you may like and most of whom you probably don't like.

We go throughout our lives working so hard! I ask why we live like this. You know, I have always envied the life of a (domesticated) dog. He never has to worry about where his next meal is coming from... He can sleep most of the day... If he has a good owner, he gets to play a lot and be active... And the kicker is, he can do his business anywhere outside and his OWNER cleans it up for him. Dogs don't worry about money, nor do they try to start wars on other continents because they want the resources there (Iraqi freedom my ass!)

This example just illustrates simpler lifestyle. A lifestyle probably very similar to that of one we left in the ancient dust of so many cultures that came before ours. Our practice of what Daniel Quinn calls Totalitarian Agriculture is one that is not sustainable in any sense of the word and will ultimately lead to our demise if we continue to follow this course. I will explain a law called the law of limited competition that will explain why it's not sustatinable, later.

This is not just about global warming or cooling, or whatever is actually happening with our atmosphere. It is about the stress level that plagues the collective psyche of people of our culture. It is about the way we interact with our environment, locally and globally and more importantly how we interact with the creautres of our planet (ourselves included), flora and fauna. This is about taking care of the place (the Earth) that is taking care of you. Our robbery of the resources of this planet is an abomination. And not before God, because that is not what this is about either. I'm not even sure "God" exists, but that is a story better left for a separate post, some other time.

We need to change our minds about how we get food, first. Then maybe we can change our minds about what technology is good for, i.e., healthcare and innovation and what technology is maybe not so good for, i.e., military industrial complexes and fuel-burning transportation.

We can power our electrical grids with solar power alone, if we tried (I will explain this in more detail later as well) and its done right. We also need to replant a lot of the plant life we have devoured over the years and redevelop the thinking behind the way we define our community structure. Let's start with these ideas and see where the conversation goes. In the meantime I will suggest that all of you read the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn if you are at all interested in what I am saying here. That book opened my eyes to a theory that had to do with a lot of things I already knew, but couldn't articulate as a complete set of thoughts.

Out.

Introduction of a truth seeker

So you want an introduction?

Well, I have usually been the person that people come to for advice. So I guess that makes me an authority on everything, right? Wrong. I am always in search for the right answers to life's questions. Sometimes the answers present themselves in something I read, and sometimes I just have to experience something that opens my eyes to something I could not see before. This log of my thoughts and probably some evidence (since I am a scientist!) is an attempt to enlighten some people and create conversation about making a social change... a change from the laborious lives we lead without questioning why 50 women in a sweatshop in China are needed to produce my sneakers, for example. I hope you enjoy my thoughts and ponder-worthy information. Without further ado...