Heroes Not Zombies

I know this tree doesn’t have a mouth and I know it’s not shouting, either to me or to the other trees, but it definitely makes me think of that.

For a long time we’ve seen trees as separate beings and forests as collections of trees which are in competition with each other for sunlight, nutrients and space. But that’s all changing thanks to the scientists who study the connections between things and the relationships which living creatures have with each other.

The work of Suzanne Simard, published for a wider readership in “Finding the Mother Tree”, is perhaps the most convincing of this kind of research. She’s shown that trees in a forest are in constant communication with each other, sharing nutrients and sugars, warning each other of predators and threats and basically working together for mutual benefit.

This kind of work shows us that the dominant belief in Nature as constant competition between individuals is simplistic and wrong. I think it’s harmful actually – it feeds into politics and economics. It creates cultures of “us and them” and stokes self interest and division.

So it comes as a breath of fresh air to find scientists now demonstrating the importance of a model based on cooperation instead. Well, not simply cooperation but more complex interplay between competition and cooperation than we’ve been led to believe.

Richard Powers, whose brilliant “Overstory” novel changed the way many people understood trees, forests and the world, has a new novel out, “Bewildered”. I listened to him being interviewed by Ezra Klein this week. He quotes Suzanne Simard and talks about his own development of thought, from traditional scientist focused on control and power to his current way of thinking which he terms “humbling science”.

Great phrase. He’s referring to the science which increases wonder, awe and understanding. He’s referring to the shift towards seeing complexity and studying both inter-relatedness and inter-being.

He also said in the interview that he thought the largely negative 20th attitude to our human tendency to anthropomorphising other living creatures has had a downside of increasing the distance between ourselves and other beings, which has allowed as to treat the rest of Nature as a mere resource to be plundered. He said it had diminished our ability to see other living beings as sacred, and even other human beings as sacred.

Isn’t this what we need? The ability to see our interdependencies and our interbeing? The need for more empathy? The need to reconnect to a sense of the sacred.