We are in principle no different from the molecules that function in the life of a cell. We function in the life of life itself — interacting with other species — and without a few billion different kinds of species there would be no life at all, so far as we know, in the whole universe. Together, we are the flower of the universe – the miracle itself. And yet, as Pema quot ed: “It’s so ironic that so many of us have a deep disrespect and even loathing for ourselves . . .” But for me, whenever I look at a tree or the ground or any other living thing, I do think about cells and tissues and ecosystems and evolution and embryology and actions and reactions and causes and effects, and I do reflect that it is a miracle and it’s an even greater miracle that I can understand that it is a miracle. Next time I look out my window at that tree out there, I will think about xylem and phloem and the color green and oxygen and my beating heart and hemoglobin. All joined together in an enormous miracle. I am it, but without it I am not. Only empty space. “Emptiness.”

Listening to: Nobel Heart, Pema Chodron
Graphic from Bare Bones Ecology Energy Handbook

Or, and I suppose that’s what they had to do, we could make-believe that the word winner is not about winning, or at least not about losing. But the fact is that is exactly what the word is about, and if anything it has become much more brutal since that time. And so here we are, in a culture where everyone is trying to be a winner because they believe it’s their “constitutional right,” though they haven’t read the constitution since 8th grade, and then they weren’t listening. Or were illiterate. I have some pocket editions if you want one.

And the people who you want to spend time with, because they share your interests, you can’t, either because you are trying so hard to be better than they are that you can’t share, or because it’s their profession and they can’t share. You have to spend money even to talk to them. OK, if you’re rich you can do anything you want, but I have had this experience many times, especially around horse-riding, but probably the most obvious was when I tried to share something with an attorney and she billed me for the phone call. Competition kills community in this and many other ways.

If you do try to share, rather than compete, you are likely to find yourself a stepping-stone on someone else’s road to winning, and this is fair only if it is honest, which – we wouldn’t say something like THAT to a person we are using for our own benefit. It does happen that two may be on the same road, but more often the result is very painful to one of them, because what we really crave is community, and real community is not compatible with a win-lose approach to life.

The other day someone who is more insightful than most people suggested to me that: “You are selling yourself short.” I’ll admit that I am trying to sell the fact that there are facts in this world, and we will ignore them to our peril, both personally and communally, if we try to change the meaning of the word fact. But that’s not short. It’s a real fact, and I gave up trying to sell myself. It’s an impossible and demeaning aspiration. It’s like cleaning house. You think you will get somewhere if you do all the “selling” that the culture tells you is necessary and you learn all the right ways to say things, and you do whatever else they tell you to become a winner, but you never end up winning, because mutual winning is only possible in the absence of competition. At least, cleaning house you end up with a clean house from time to time. Competition is all about the 0.01%. Everyone else loses.

Selling one’s self is basically impossible because nobody will listen anyhow (see part one of this series) unless you are better at something than they are and I don’t even want to do what they are doing. Selling myself is demeaning because it assumes there is something wrong with me that I need to hide behind a wall of propaganda; and because it requires me to gleefully participate in the immorality of our social system in which I would have to learn the whole complicated system of socially acceptable ways to “put down” everyone else so I can feel good about myself. Say that again? I’m not OK unless I can prove that other people are not OK?? That’s about it.

I know where that idea comes from, because I spent the whole first part of my life being told that I had the choice of being a secretary or a wife or a teacher. So I got a PhD in science. The PhD was easy, moving from California to Maine was not. Then I spent quite a long time being flown around to different places and interviewed for employment as a scientist.

I was finally hired because of the Rule of Law, which of course is why the corposystem is working so hard to destroy our Rule of Law. At that time they made a law called Title Nine that said they (the corposystem) couldn’t reject women applicants if their qualifications were higher than those of the male applicants. So I got hired.

Then the corposystem created “women’s positions.” Women would be hired and given a list of requirements for tenure and then they would be fired on the basis of not fulfilling a different list of requirements that they didn’t know about in the first place. And they would hire another woman into the same slot (because of Title Nine, they would have to) and do the same all over again. We didn’t know; we thought they wanted competence. It set the women competing against each other and relieved the pressure from the men. At least at first. But when I figured this out, I told the women who followed me, when I moved on, and the next time round we all made it in to the University, and the system of “women’s positions” started to break down. The corposystem hates tenure because people with tenure tend to not be slaves of the corposystem. That’s why the system was created in the first place. To carry the wisdom from one generation to the next so that the whole community could adapt to changes as they came down the pike.

So now the corposystem is resolving the problem by trying to make sure nobody gets tenure. It’s a part of their campaign to control the educational system – to use the experts for their competence, while at the same time keeping the real information inside the top ranks of the corposystem and not available to the general public.

But I had to take a few years off science to go the rule of law route. When I won, the EEOC put some requirements on the University, forcing them to hire some minimum number of other women. It’s true I would never have been able to do all those things if it were not for the some of the men who already were part of the corposystem, but nobody else did it. I thought I had changed the corposystem for the better. HA! By that time, the corposystem was turning out women for the jobs who were if anything worse than the men – oh, well, they were much better if the criteria have to do with toxic competition, rather than (or in addition to) good science. And then the women who came in after me started telling me I wouldn’t have had all those problems if I had been a competent scientist. (Read The Colors of Mice: A genetic network.” Wiley-Blackwell.)

So then I had a chance to actually do some science, after spending a few years getting over the trauma, and the whole next part of my life I actually got to do science. (Check out the genetic model I created that the government has preserved for future generations of scientists.) I am not selling myself short, dammit. Other people are happy to do that for me.

And now I am working full time trying to explain that competition is how the corposystem enslaves you. By making you believe that you should sell yourself on behalf of the corposystem. (Isn’t that known as pimping? I call it slavery.) I am able to do this now because of Social Security. That, of course, is why the corposystem, having nearly eliminated tenure, and co-opted the school system up to graduate school, now wants to eliminate Social Security and whole, intact communities. To separate the elders, the source of real wisdom in any community, from the uninformed, well-intended youth that the corposystem can easily control simply by getting them to compete with each other for prizes that do not exist, and getting them to explain to their elders that the same old process that didn’t work last time around, somehow will magically work this time because we have more technologies than we did before.

But if we do conform and compete, then nobody will be a winner, because everyone will be alone, surrounded by enemies, or at least surrounded by people who do not want what is in their best interests, and we cannot survive on that basis as human social creatures in an overcrowded world.

Now we are out in the streets stealing and killing, out across the oceans stealing and killing, because the corposystem tells us that these behaviors will solve the problems of our real, finite planet. That’s one way, and I can tell you, based on biological reality, that the result is most likely to be either our extinction as a species (that’s really how evolution works) or the perpetuation of a much smaller, much more Spartan and cruel human species.

A better way (defined as the least suffering) would be to recognize that life on earth is an interconnected reality that operates according to basic physical processes that we cannot change with ANY technology, and work together to resolve our problems by growing a more fact-based realistic humanity that understands that people do not really need or want to be better than each other, or to be better than all the other organisms on earth that create the air, water and rich soil. What we really need is to care about each other, and about the source of our life on earth. To be a significant part of that interconnected whole.

But we can’t become a significant part of that interconnected whole on the basis of fairy tales – there is nothing wrong with fairy tales. They are meant to explain and inspire. But they can’t change facts, and if we are using them to compete – to prove that we are better than other people or to make believe that we can control the whole of living nature so we don’t have to face up to our real responsibilities to life – it won’t work. Life on earth is an interconnected reality that operates according to basic physical laws. We do understand these laws quite well, and our current crises relate to our choice to try to compete with natural law rather than to fulfill our responsibilities to the community of the whole.

So I gave him a book. If you want one, you can download it free on my website.

OK, I admit it, right now I’m thinking about one particular extremely snobby non-scientist, and you don’t know him, so I’m using him for an example of how to not solve problems. He didn’t understand a word of the book. That’s OK, nobody understands everything. Or more likely he didn’t try to understand it, and he also did not ask any questions about it; it wasn’t what he wanted to talk about. What he wanted was to kindly explain to me all of this biology stuff is only my personal opinion, and there is a debate about whether or not I am right about climate change. What debate? Me and Rush? Certainly no debate between me and other basic biologists. Some discussion, sure; no debate, and at least I read all that stuff about biology and understood most of it.

I mildly suggested to this fellow that he check the facts. Mine and his. I mean, it’s all there on the internet and in books and scientific papers, with the evidences. And his response? I quote: “I’m trying to teach you (that would be him trying to teach me) to THINK!” In all capital letters. He wants me to waste my time thinking about fake debates among people who have not even tried to read the evidences. Maybe he believes the ecosystem was put here on this earth to serve our needs and it never changes.

Look around you folks. It changes all the time, but only in response to physical cause- and-effect realities that are on the ground. The earth ecosystem does not care about anyone’s opinion. Opinions do not change anything except your mind. Sometimes. That’s why the facts are so important.

The ecosystem we live inside of was not put here on the earth. The ecosystem IS the living earth and all its parts. It is alive. That’s a definition of life. The ability to change in response to changing conditions. When it’s cold we shiver, because we are alive. When the living earth changes over time, the name for that change is evolution, and climate change is all about evolution.

Climate change is about life — biology, because this earth would not exist – but maybe I should define biology. I just realized you might be thinking about technology, or medicine, or physics, or physiology or biochemistry or even sociology or politics. Nuhuh. Biology is the study of life and how it stays alive. Biology is not physiology, which is primarily the study of humans, nor is it sociology, which is primarily the study of humans. All of those things we study are primarily the study of humans, as is anthropology and – well almost every study we do is primarily about humans and that is NOT ABOUT LIFE ITSELF. Because humans, contrary to the common perception, are not the center of life.

For about 500 years we have known that the earth is not the center of the solar system.

And neither are we.

These are two facts that will not change regardless of how anyone learns to think, or what anyone believes.

Bare Bones Biology 092 – Climate Change
KEOS FM 89.1, Bryan, Texas
Audio download available later this week
here and at http://BareBonesBiology.com

Recommended References: Bare Bones Ecology Energy Handbook free download on the lower right side of my blog.

8. “Everyone has a right to his own opinion.” Or, “We must keep an open mind.” Nonsense. We have an obligation to evaluate opinions that are important to the community. If the outcome of a particular opinion would be harmful to the community, we have an obligation to speak up and explain why we think it would be harmful. Based in common humanity, everyone does NOT have a right to his own opinion, because there are a great many opinions out there that cause real harm — most importantly and subtly by leading us away from understanding the biological and social boundaries of our human rights. But more obviously, if you want an example, I think some of Hitler’s opinions should have been challenged a bit sooner than they were. If we can’t talk about our opinions, stories and metaphors in a discussion format, but only by two-sided debate, then it is almost certain that our opinions are causing a great deal of suffering in ways that we don’t even imagine.

9. We are afraid to ask questions. Where did THAT come from; it is intensely un-American. I was taught that it’s OK to discuss anything, but it is not OK to do cause harm or suffering to others. Now it seems like it’s OK for anyone to say or even do whatever indecency or atrocity, but nobody should question or discuss the harm caused.

5. I have been told several times that “the facts keep changing.” The facts do not keep changing. That is the definition of a fact. The stories keep changing. Facts are facts; stories are metaphors. To be useful, stories must represent fact. Therefore, as cultures change, stories change, but the facts do not. The moon and the earth keep going around. Will they forever? I don’t know, and that is not the point. The point is that we need facts about our environment in order to stay alive, and unless the stories help us to understand reality they are not helping us to stay alive and healthy and to raise our children in harmony with reality. That’s why facts are more powerful than the stories for growing a sustainable lifestyle. Originally, biologically, that’s what human stories are for – to grow behavioral guidelines that keep people out of trouble by emphasizing that bad behaviors will have bad results. Like – don’t jump off a cliff; don’t eat up the seeds for next years planting. And many behaviors that are much more subtle but amazingly wise. That’s what stories are for in human societies. That’s why the corposystem wants to keep the real facts for itself, and control the stories to project the image they want you to believe in, to entertain, divide and emasculate the people with a belief system that aligns them with the desires of the corposystem excess, rather than the reality of biological limits to our behaviors.

6. The indiscriminate use of metaphors. Words are also metaphors. I think this nonsense phrase – “The facts keep changing” – came out of a popular book about science that was written by a nonscientist who thought it was a cute phrase. It certainly is a radically unscientific phrase. I think everyone involved with the media, and also everyone else, has an obligation to not say things that aren’t true, whether or not they are cute. Even if they are Bill Moyers talking about the “DNA of culture.” The whole point of DNA is that it is NOT changed by culture. Geneticists took about 100 years figuring that out. It’s important to know what can and cannot be changed by culture. It’s part of our job to figure out whether our heroes know what they are talking about before we believe what they say. We can’t have a culture together if the words we use have wildly different meanings for different people.

2. They are too busy talking about themselves.

3. They don’t listen. We change words into something that we want to hear. Or anything that is inside the acceptable mantra. My entire life goal is to not be inside the acceptable mantra unless being inside would be more compassionate and useful than being outside (which is rare). But often what I say is not heard because statements that are outside the acceptable mantra get changed into something that is acceptable, without people even knowing they are doing it – inside the mantra, they sound like nonsense. For example, the below:

The tragedy is that the acceptable mantra is most often the nonsense – that’s why the corposystem wants us to believe it. So they can keep all the real facts to themselves to make money with, and we don’t have real facts to challenge them with. Because there is nothing more powerful than real facts in a real biological world. And we can’t get out of the real biological world. In this life.

4. They are afraid. I have not yet figured out what they are afraid of – probably a whole pile of things including each other, because our corposystem works hard at making everyone afraid of something, but minimally there is no doubt that most people in this community are afraid of asking questions, and nobody can understand anything without asking questions.

The theory of evolution was a brilliant breakthrough that took place a couple of hundred years ago. After that, it was studied rigorously until the evolutionary scientists and the geneticists realized they were all studying different parts of the same creature, and they got together. Now, 200 years later, we know a great deal more about how this beautiful life form, the whole earth ecosystem, manages to survive through the millennia by changing in response to changing conditions. We know that these changes are mediated for the most part by organisms that, by their interactions with each other and with the environment, carry the genetic information for the life of the whole system forward from one moment of time to the next. The correct term for this kind of study is evolutionary ecology. We left Darwinism in the dust at least a hundred hears ago.

The corposystem and modern politics and economics do not want us to know about evolutionary ecology, I guess because they have a strong foundation in that little nonsense phrase: “Survival of the fittest.” You have heard me say many times: “That’s not how it works.” I didn’t tell you how it does work for two reasons. One is that I don’t completely know how it works – nobody does – the other is that evolution is so complicated that most people don’t even TRY to understand how it really does work. Not even a massive computer could do the job because we don’t know all the parts of the whole earth ecosystem, so we can’t plug the information into the computer. We don’t even know all the species that do the work of keeping us alive. That’s why biologists are concerned about us humans killing them off – the other species – without even knowing what they are and how they contribute to our well being. The bottom line is that our modern corposystem is partially justified by a false or fake belief in survival of the fittest.

It is true that tooth and claw is an important reality of life. It’s also true that tooth and claw is a necessary component of life because it contributes to the flow of energy through the ecosystem, but tooth and claw is only a subset of how evolution works. How does it work? I lay out the background in pages 32 onward in Bare Bones Ecology Energy Handbook you can download from my website, FactFictionFancy. The shortest version I can tell you in a five-minute spot is that life evolves by generating functionally effective systems out of pre-existing systems.

A cell is a functionally effective system that is made of thousands of molecules – the key is that all these molecules work together perfectly. The problem, from our point of view, is the millions and millions of functional systems that did NOT work together perfectly within the system and so they became extinct. The way evolution works is to generate millions and millions of functional systems, by recombining the older systems, until a new system emerges that works together positively with the whole of life. That one SYSTEM (species) out of all the millions that unbalanced the systems of life, that one survives over time to become a part of the living whole earth ecosystem. We are unbalancing the life systems of the earth. The difference between us and all the other species is that we KNOW these things.

And the reason I am trying to explain this to you is that I see some new social movements coming up that are based on the reality of evolution instead of the failed models that were in part based on a false view of evolution. I’ll talk more about these in future.

Bare Bones Biology 091 – Evolution
KEOS FM 89.1, Bryan, Texas
Audio download available next week
here and at http://www.BareBonesBiology.com

All survived.