Biodiversity...
I’ve written about this before, I’ve annoyed my colleagues with it at the lunch table, I probably will again.
But so much comes back to it. We are multilaterally dependent on it.
Biodiversity.
It’s so freaking important.
Especially for children and their developing immune systems.
Without it, not only is the world poorer, but it also puts us in great danger.
Let me elaborate, every surface of your body is brimming with life.
Not just human cells, not just human life. These non-human lifeforms are even inside our cells, we have evolved alongside them, perhaps even because of them.
Imagine you have an invisible, microscopic force field surrounding every inch of your body. Protecting you from pathogenic invaders. You do.
Although perhaps a better analogy is that the ‘force field’ is actually more like a forest.
Your skin and gut are inhabited by a vast ecology of living things, microscopic plants, fungi and animals. When the ecosystem is in balance, it works. It’s protective of the land it inhabits (You).
It can easily assimilate or predate upon most of the pathogens you may come in connect with, in your day-to-day activities.
But when the forest gets clear cut i.e. chemical disinfectants, beauty products, antibiotics, showers/baths/swimming in chlorinated water, then that ecosystem goes through a kind of biotic genocide and what is left becomes a monoculture.
If industrial agriculture has taught us anything, the only people who win when monoculture becomes the norm, are the sellers of those very chemical products that are poisoning the land and us. (Although I’m not sure where they are planning to live when their work is done) And what happens to us once our protective skin and gut forests are gone?
A pathogen inevitably moves in, gets the better of us, and we get sick, then we go and buy even more artificial products to further sterilise our homes and bodies.
The villains get richer while we fall into a self-perpetuating mythology that nature is somehow flawed and that we need these entirely synthetic compounds to keep us safe.
Over a period of decades, the clever marketing from these companies became thoroughly embedded into our worldview, so much so that we often accept these lies now as conventional wisdom and common sense.
Marketing has co-opted culture, to the extent that we will now defend the very lies that keep us, our children, and our environments unhealthy.
Even Lois Pasteur, the man who invented germ theory, at the end of his life said:
“It is the soil, not the seed”
In other words, it’s not the germ (the seed) that makes us sick, but rather our bodies (the soil) that provide an environment needed for disease to take root.
But our bodies are incredibly resilient, when properly nourished by evolutionarily appropriate foods, exposure to sunshine, clean water, regular movement, and time in nature, i.e. the stuff that should be ours by birthright.
But not when we are constantly bombarded by synthetic chemical products that strip away the ecosystems that helped create and protect us.
So don’t fear the humble germ so much, save that apprehension and mistrust for big businesses, those that stand to make more profit from our sickness than our health.
We owe it to our children and all future generations that they inherent a healthy and biodiverse world along with healthy and biodiverse bodies.
Until next time, enjoy the wild places wherever you are,
Dallas.
