Heroes Not Zombies

I noticed this little profusion of diversity at the edge of a pavement the other day. Now that I’m reviewing the photo I see really stark contrasts between the natural and the built environments.

On the right hand side here we can see a drain cover cast in heavy iron and imprinted with regular rows and columns of slightly raised boxes. It even looks heavy. It looks rigid. Fixed. You would bet that these covers were produced in a factory. It’s likely that thousands of these almost identical objects were churned out from a production line using a template, or a mould, so that they are as similar as possible. If the factory has “quality control” it’s likely that any which are significantly different from the others will be rejected. The goal is standardisation, efficiency, same-ness.

Human beings are great at this kind of work. We take raw materials from Nature and beat them into the products which we can mass produce. These things are useful. Look at the other useful things human beings have made in this picture. The concrete poured to create kerb stones, drainage paths, and gutters. The tarmac laid and levelled to make roads. The houses built with stone, cement, wood and glass. These are just some of the things which make up our built environment.

But taking centre spot in this image is Life. Bursting out of this manmade environment is a flourishing, a profusion of colour. A tiny, micro-system of flowers. Somehow we know nobody planted them there. Nobody sowed the seeds there. They got there of their own accord, blown in the wind, dropped by animals, carried along by streams of water after a rain. Then they took their chance and growth kicked in. First of all just small green shoots, which grew quickly and diversified. Each developing according to the typical shape of a plant of its species. They look chaotic, disordered, different. You know they haven’t been manufactured.

It doesn’t take long for wild unpredictable nature to make its mark. That’s the essence of Life. That’s the underlying truth of all organisms, including we humans. We grow in unpredictable, diverse ways to create complex communities of Life.

You know, don’t you, that we need all of this. The ability to act on opportunity, the ability to adapt to changing circumstances, the ability to form complex networks of relationships, and the ability to create the environments in which we live.