Transformation

Where we live, we transform the environment. All living things do that, according to scale, their impact determined by their capacity. And humanity wins, for now!

We have the most effect on the world around us of all single species, so far. So big that some of us have reached the point of feeling sorry. Some people even apologise to the earth and nature for what we’ve done. Others are scared of the consequences yet to come. There are also those that say we’ve done nothing wrong, nothing bad is coming of it, and it’s our earth to do with as we see fit, after all! We may, because we can.

Yet we’re latecomers, newcomers, not nearly in the big league of species longevity. In macro-terms we’re a specific one-day fly. The brain as coping tool for one species may have been a bad idea from an evolutionary perspective. That might have been nature’s view, if ever she had one. She does have actions though, including retaliatory ones, big and small. We don’t know the scale of what she might do to us, in spite of all our science. Evolution always solves its problems. It's done in many deaths. Death is to evolution what tariffs are to Trump. And nature is stronger, has the time. 

When a human town, city or settlement takes away a chunk of what nature had placed there before people, the action can never be undone afterwards. If tried, something else develops that is also new, not what would have been there if the town had never been built. Nature also doesn’t go back. She transforms the given in every moment. Ongoing. Always. Forever. Time is inexorable. 

We’re like life prisoners scratching messages on cell walls, for later prisoners to figure out, or misunderstand, when they get their turn. They all do their time and move on, and out. Whatever follows us on earth may still include life in some form. Want to bet?