Ecological Karma
Every life alters the world. A good example of these changes, and how they form cycles, begins with spawning salmon. After spawning, the spent fish die and drift into the shallows. Thousands of animals come to the river shore for the feast. Many of them will later defecate salmon fertility throughout the surrounding woods, helping trees and shrubs to grow more abundantly. Plants with branches growing out over the water shade the spawning streams and keep them cold, thus allowing the water to hold more of the dissolved oxygen that developing salmon eggs need. These branches also host and feed a variety of insects that drop from the branches and become food for the fish. The more abundant the vegetation, the more food is available for the next generation of salmon.
If a change sets up a significant series of causes and effects, this then creates the possibility for that chain to somehow loop back to create an effect upon the species (not necessarily the individual) that initiated the chain. This creates a feedback spiral. Some results of these changes are obvious, as when beavers build dams. Others are invisible, but profound, such as the venting of oxygen into the air by plants. Many seem inconsequential, like the tracks left by a crawling beetle. Each change, in turn, can cause other changes. A beaver dam creates a vast, ramifying set of effects for hundreds of species over many years. The beetle tracks, however, are soon erased by the wind. I view them as inconsequential, since very little has been altered.
One of my favorite examples of a feedback spiral begins when leaves reach the end of their time and fall from trees. When water flows over the ground, the leaves can float with it. As the runoff converges, the leaves become soaked and their surfaces start to stick together. Some of them adhere to the sides of the channel that is funneling the water. Soon, a small dam a few inches high forms. Grass clippings also form these structures in street gutters; pine needles form them across forest slopes. The surface area of the leaves, needles, and grass provide a place for the force of water’s adhesion to restrain the pressure of the water’s flow.
These little dams are everywhere. They form a terrace system which, on a gentle forest slope, can extend across many meters. These rope-like dams pool runoff into broad, inch-deep reservoirs, spreading and slowing the water and allowing more of it to soak into the ground. This process creates the feedback spiral. By causing water to soak in, these dams nourish the growth of the trees, which will then produce even more needles and leaves the next season. After they fall these leaves and needles will form even more dams, which will allow even more water to soak in...
Feedback spirals work in such a way that if a species somehow “gives” something of benefit; then it behooves that part of the environment to somehow evolve ways to “help” that species to thrive. This reciprocation does not require conscious thought or moral judgment, or some underlying purposive direction. These connections simply emerge when cause and effect sequences spiral upon themselves.
These feedback spirals can also work in the other direction. If livestock are grazed in a way that reduces plant cover, ensuing rains pound harder against the unprotected soil. With less vegetative surface area to slow runoff, erosion increases. As topsoil washes away, grass can’t grow as abundantly, making it harder for the same number of livestock to remain on that land.
Species that somehow contribute to the surroundings that sustain them will tend to be supported. Species that somehow degrade that which supports them will tend to be reduced. As a consequence, ecosystems tend to fill with species that have evolved ways of providing ecological service. I don’t mean this simplistically, because every animal species “takes” from others when it eats, and every species nourishes others when it excretes or dies. The world is deep in cause and effect sequences. Multiple causes can converge to shape a single effect; a single cause can generate multiple effects; some results cancel out others. It is more complicated than a neuronal net. We might never fully comprehend this web, but our understanding is not necessary to the unfolding of cause and effect sequences. They happen to the benefit of some things and the detriment of others.
The main message of the new discipline of complexity is that feedback spirals contain unpredictable power. They are to ecology what deep time was to geology. When geologists discovered the magnitude of geological time, seemingly inconsequential causes, such as raindrops, became multiplied a billion-fold. Formerly overlooked, they were seen for the first time as holding the power to wash mountains away. Similarly, as we discover the unpredictable power that accumulates through spiraling, we will understand that seemingly tiny but pervasive ecological causes have the power to transform environments. The more we understand these spiraling dances, the more we realize that this transformed environment which we are dependent upon in not a given. It has been raised into existence by life and is being actively maintained by trillions of connections. Our awareness of this complexity develops respects, and the beginnings of wisdom.
Though feedback spirals do not require consciousness to operate, this awareness can transform the interactions we have with them. Some spirals are easy to understand: don’t defecate in the well. But many are so diffuse or so slow in building that seeing the link between our actions and the response of the environment eludes us Not until we are facing disaster do we understand the connection at a visceral level sufficient to change our behavior. The Dust Bowl is an example from our past. Depletion of ocean fisheries is a current illustration. One function of a successful culture is to somehow preserve such historic insights in a way that “steers” behavior so we don’t have to pay the price of the lesson again.
One “steering” tool we have evolved is the concept of karma – that eventually we will reap what we sow. Our actions will spiral back on us. This inevitability is not limited to relations with our fellow humans. We are learning that the concept goes beyond social interactions; the interconnected nature of the world embraces us in spirals.
Though the world’s response can unfold without a need for consciousness, the actions by which we generate feedback spirals can be dramatically shaped by our awareness. This shaping is part of the work of a good culture. For example, in the midst of jockeying for position among ourselves, a good culture does not let us lose sight of the bigger game, of working together to nourish the greater whole. Finding ways to constrain this greed, however, can be challenging. We can move away from greed by taking only what is needed. This path should be cultivated, but it is unstable by itself. A sole emphasis on this way can lead to a sense of ourselves as only consumers; that the world would be better off without us; that we are somehow apart from the creation. It can lead to the environmental equivalence of hair shirts and self-flagellation.
Another way to counter greed is to practice creation. Perhaps we can be the first species to consciously initiate feedback spirals that will deliver blessings to our environment in ways that spiral back upon ourselves. Gardeners, farmers, and teachers strive for this experience. We can allow the world to teach us how to participate fully and joyously in its feedback spirals. Not only can we express our gratitude, we can become something worthy of grace ourselves.
I love finding ways to dance within the spirals of creation. The land where my family and I live once had a gully running down a hillside–the result of less-than-mindful road-building. I found a place upstream of the gully where the runoff could be redirected across the slope. This diversion requires periodic maintenance, just like a beaver dam. Water that used to flow down gully and away now spreads out and soaks into the slope. Ten years ago this area was covered with yellow star thistle, a nonnative thorny plant. This spring it was thick with lovely native purple-petalled brodeias, and the gully is transforming into an alluvial fan. When runoff soaks in, the water’s energy to erode transforms into water's energy to nourish life. This changes the geology and ecology of the slope.
But the results do not stop there. As I experience the slope changing, my understanding of what life on this planet can do grows. My perceptions, thoughts, and actions are altered in ways that open me to new capabilities for doing this graceful work. One opportunity is to write about a slope where thorns gave way to flowers in the hope that this world of possibilities will inspire and nourish others in taking our cultural work still further. These efforts will generate magical feedback spirals. What possibilities will grow from them?
Copyright 2003 by Paul Krafel