Communities of Life

 I've been thinking about community lately. All kinds of community. When you choose to live in an intentional community, you give community-life a lot of thought before you join. You have to want to be in a cooperative and interactive living space. You'll be agreeing to share outdoor space with others, instead of having it all to yourself. You'll often be thinking about the wellbeing of the whole. not just your own. You will be giving up independence in favor of interdependence. 

Once you're there, you gradually get to know each personality in your community. You notice that everyone has different skills, so together you have a wide band width. You also learn which people are easiest for you to hang out with, which ones share similar interests, which ones stretch you as you find common ground with them. And you find, if your community is a healthy one, that living together this way is far better than living more isolated in your individual home. You and others work out the best ways of making decisions and of making sure that everyone's voice is heard. You plan times to get the work done. And you plan times for having fun together. You find that this home environment is a richer, more supportive one for you than living by yourself.

Of course, even if you don't live in an intentional community, humans do form loose communities wherever they live. Our food is provided by grocers, our health is taken care of by doctors, our roads are maintained by specialized crews. We build community with neighbors, relatives and church congregations. Recently I've been thinking about how our human communities are only a small part of the whole ecological community. We might not have a daily awareness of the wider community of plants and animals that surrounds us, but it's there. The trees and grasses outside our homes, the bacteria and fungi under the ground, the birds in the air, the butterflies hovering over the flowers are all part of a web of life that includes us. Philosophically we know this. But often it does not inform our choices or actions.

When I drive down the road and notice where a bulldozer has cleared a space in the green ground cover, I think about how that community of plants and animals has been disrupted. It might be a community of grass and short annuals, or a woodland. There are so many kinds of ecological community. When I'm on a walk, I notice that different habitats create different communities of living things. Temperature, sun exposure, soil composition, wind, and the proximity of plants or wildlife all affect what ends up growing in a place. It is much like our intentional human community. Over time, by trial and error, the things that thrive together get settled in a particular place and role, and the things that don't thrive there don't stay. 

Ecological communities evolve over time through the interactions between its members. That includes the life under the soil, the different insects, animals, and plants growing there, the weather and other aspects of the place and inhabitants. Sometimes there's a disturbance, and that shakes things up. A disturbance makes some life die. Some other things find an opportunity to take hold. There is trial and error, competition between species, and finally another stable ecosystem may evolve. It might be quite different from the original one. Nature is creative, and since change is everywhere, systems grow and change. In nature, big disturbances are common. They can come in the form of a big storm, a drought, a fire or avalanche, or a big animal. And the aftermath of the disturbance is usually that the biomass on the ground is removed or killed. That lets in the possibility of new plants, more sun, free space. It is a natural process, and the disturbed place recovers and changes. It is not necessarily a calamity.

But what about humans and the huge disturbances we create? In the spring, I notice so many patches of previously green turf or shrub that get bulldozed away in preparation for some new human need: another building, a walkway, or maybe just to clear the view. I notice these many places where the raw soil shows, and I wonder how it is affecting the whole ecosystem.  All the members of that small plot had their role to play. The different species of plants and animals were interdependent, and the system worked.  In the city especially, there is not much room for natural communities to evolve to their most stable "climax" community. We are always manipulating the landscape, and I don't think we often think about how we are disturbing the ecology of a place. Our motivation stems mostly from human-centered values, timetables, and economics. What would it be like if we really felt our part in the wider landscape, earthscape? Would we make different decisions? Would it feel better, more alive?