Honorable Forum: Your assistance with editing the following draft will be appreciated.
Ecology, Citizenship, Human Destiny, and the Cycle of Being While the study of life and the=20 interrelationships of its various manifestations=20 and forms with each other and their environment=20 is a reasonably basic statement descriptive of=20 the intellectual discipline applied to that=20 subject, there is a very good reason why those so=20 engaged stray or digress =93into=94 what appear to be=20 =93other=94 =93fields.=94 That is simply because=20 ecosystems are extra-human phenomena not=20 fundamentally subject to alteration by the human=20 imagination, and thus their understanding is the=20 key to, and connected to, =93everything else.=94 To be sure, humans do alter ecosystems with their=20 imaginations and actions, but the fundamental=20 nature of living systems (with what we call=20 =93physics=94) is simply what all =93systems=94 are, or could be, all about. Economists, for example, would do well to be=20 eco-logists first. They would understand=20 eco-nomic systems better. Managers or =93engineers=94=20 of all sorts of quasi-systems of human devising=20 would come to understand things we call=20 =93efficiency=94 and =93input-output,=94 but now get dangerously get wrong. That=92s where human destiny comes in. As a=20 =93system=94 divorced from other systems, culture=20 with its trappings becomes no system at all, but=20 a gravestone for itself, a monument to =93oops=20 forgot something!=94 Like confusing =93chains=94 with =93cycles.=94 So =93citizenship=94 in the system of life is the=20 exercise of responsibility to that system, and=20 that is inextricably bound to the destiny of the=20 human-imagined =93system=94 of cultures that is no=20 system at all really, but a mere clock-mechanism=20 that, even if it is atomic, must eventually run=20 down or self-destruct=AD-it is, after all, only a matter of time. So the discipline of ecology is not an endless=20 burden of life-citizenship, but an enormous=20 privilege. All our languages are not up to the=20 task of knowing, but is the knowing any better,=20 or anything like as good, as being? WT
