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An Ecological Perspective On Extraterrestrial Life |
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Written by Administrator
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Friday, 07 September 2007 |
An Ecological Perspective On Extraterrestrial Life
By Ed Komarek 8/25/07 - http://exopolitics.blogspot.com/
I
believe that individuals in both the natural and social sciences can
add much to the overall dynamics of life in the universe, complementing
those with security or religious backgrounds. Security people tend to
be narrowly focused on threats which can bias them toward the greater
perspective to the disadvantage of all. Those who adhere to established
religions can view reality biased by their strong religious beliefs. In
cases where individuals are involved in security and have a narrow
fundamentalist religious perspective the bias are compounded. They are
apt to mistake ET friends as enemies and ET enemies as friends. We have
to look no further than to the present war in the Middle East to see
the combined dangerous destructive effects of both security and
religious bias.
In order to gain a full understanding of any
picture extraterrestrial or otherwise, all elements of society must be
involved. When certain elements of a society take it upon themselves to
speak and act for the rest of society all within society are damaged.
Ecologists and social scientists views have often been excluded or
ignored when such views can add fresh insights into the dynamics of
extraterrestrial interactions on earth and across the universe.
I
grew up in a family of ecologists and their friends deeply involved in
the natural world. Herb Stoddard was a close friend of the family, a
mentor to my father and like a grandfather to me. He and his friend
Aldo Leopold http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldo_Leopold
could be considered two of the founding fathers of ecology while my
father became the first true fire ecologist. My father Ed Komarek Sr.
organized some of these friends into what became Tall Timbers Research
Inc. http://www.talltimbers.org/ and the Komarek family plantation became Birdsong Nature Center http://www.birdsongnaturecenter.org/index.htm
organized by my mother Betty Komarek. Both these organizations are
recognized around the world in the field of the natural sciences.
If
we consider earth life as one sample out out of a vast universe we can
infer that life will take hold almost automatically when the right
conditions present themselves. More and more scientists are amazed at
the extreme environments that can be colonized by life on earth. Even
the bedrock miles beneath the surface of earth harbors microbial life
that takes a thousand years to replicate itself because of the harsh
conditions. Where the conditions for life are favorable then life does
not focus on just basic survival within the elements but employs very
competitive and cooperative strategies of interaction with other life.
Ecology
is centered around and studies these competitive and cooperative
strategies of both predator and prey. Both predators and prey, who can
change roles even moment to moment, competing with each other for
limited resources, Predators cooperate to attack prey and prey
cooperate to defend against predators. Man is no stranger to this
process and is both predator and prey in nature. Humanity is also
composed of individuals and factions that are involved in human
relations as both predator and prey. For this reason social scientists
and ecologists really have a lot in common because both explore the
nature of the complex relationships in their respective fields of study
that are founded on natural and artificial evolutionary processes.
Many
people have a interest in nature but in really know little about it
being brought up in artificial city environments. Quite often city
raised environmentalists do more harm that good having good motives,
but because they don't understand nature well, their actions are quite
destructive toward nature, It is important for the layman as well as
the naturalist - ecologist to understand the forest they are walking
through is not peaceful but is in fact a raging battle ground of
cooperation and competition.
This competitive and cooperative
struggle for limited resources is not just going on in the animal
kingdom but with all life in all environments. That forest you are
walking through is a battle ground between plant species employing both
competitive and cooperative strategies for water and sunlight.
Long-leaf pine even uses natural and man controlled fire as a means to
burn out the competition. It has evolved insulating bark and needles
that are very flammable so as to use fire against the oaks and other
vegetation that are more vulnerable to fire. The oaks on the other hand
employ a strategy of snuffing out the fire by having leaves that do not
burn easily and are more adaptive to lowlands where fires do not burn
so intensely.
Taking in to account earth, our sample of one,
what can be inferred as to life across the universe? We can speculate
that life is a natural result of increasing complex chemical reactions
in environments favorable to life. Microbial life can exist in very
extreme environments and is likely quite common across the universe.
More advanced forms of life are not nearly as common because more
advanced forms of life need less extreme environments in order to
multiply and flourish. Still, because the universe is so big, more
advanced forms of life should also be common. Even highly evolved
technical civilizations should likewise be common.
We can
observe creatures evolving in intelligence on earth in the insect,
reptile, mammal, mollusk and other kingdoms. Given more time and the
right conditions these creatures can become as intelligent or more so
than ourselves. Indeed there is much speculation in scientific circles,
that if the asteroid that hit the earth millions of years ago wiping
out most of the reptiles had not happened, that earth might well be
home to a two legged intelligent reptile that could be now traveling
the vast reaches of space as we are now about to do.
What a
ecological perspective has to offer is a clearer more objective picture
of life in the universe. We can now infer that intelligent life is
abundant and is involved in a very complex web of relationships of both
competition and cooperation everywhere just as on earth. We should be
able to also see by observing ourselves that natural evolution
throughout the universe can give rise to species so intelligent that
they can interfere with natural evolutionary processes. Both
creationists and evolutionists are both partly right and partly wrong
because life across the universe has been been influenced heavily by
both natural and artificial evolutionarily processes.
While
astro-physicists have been around awhile in force I believe that soon
the astro-ecologist and the social scientist will soon emerge as forces
to be reckoned with in the near future as disclosure accelerates. The
nature of extraterrestrial intelligent life across the universe has in
my estimation been monopolized and controlled by certain special
interests through the security services for far too long, and this is
damaging to humanity as a whole. In a universe of predators and prey
does it not make sense to cultivate friendly relationships with other
potential prey rather than to indiscriminately antagonize those
potentially friendly relationships out of ignorance and false
perceptions.
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