The Diversity of Life

We spent a good portion of our last class individually coming up with ideas as to the definition of the biological law to which Ishmael was hinting. We seemed to reach a general consensus as to the nature of this law, that each species (us excluded) only takes what is necessary to survive. I found myself agreeing with most of my classmates' sentiments, save for one comment, that mother culture tells us that we are exempt from the concept of "survival of the fittest", that we are told by mother culture that we are separate from other species, I found myself immediately disagreeing with that assumption. Mother culture does not tell us that we are separate from this concept, I'd argue that it is quite the opposite, Mother Culture tells us that we are included, that we are a part of the law just like any other species, that it is our divine right to seize the reins of nature and reap the benefits of biological domination (indeed, why should we not? We are, after all, assumed to be the fittest.). Mother culture manipulates the idea of "Survival of the fittest", it twists, warps, mutilates this concept into the self-gratifying, arrogant piffle that flows through the propaganda-clogged pipelines that we call mass-media, it manipulates the concept into a heavenly mandate to do as we please with the world we dominate. Needless to say, such assumptions have been proven unequivocally false. I found many aspects of the reading fascinating, they reminded me of my independent studies into basic ecology and evolutionary biology. I am very interested by the idea of a food chain, and that fluctuations at a certain level could cause extreme ramifications at another level. Ishmael's lesson about diversity was ironically the least foreign (yet simultaneously the most interesting) concept in the book so far. I'd done studies about diversity before, about generalized species as opposed to specialized ones, about the diversity of life forming a "back-up plan" so to speak, that a wide range of ecological niches (or, more specifically, the filling of those niches) nearly guarantees life's survival, as most global catastrophes are not destructive enough to wipe out all life on Earth. The resilient nature of the biological community relies upon its diversity, anything that lessens the diversity of life lessens the chances that life will withstand an apocalyptic calamity. Take the Burgess Shale community for example, we have a perfect example of a diverse biological community (a community, Stephen J Gould would have argued, more diverse than that of all life on Earth today), there was, most likely, a landslide in the mountains overlooking the marine Burgess Shale community, this will serve as a global catastrophe for the purpose of this example, yet one creature, a seemingly insignificant worm by the name of Pikaia survived, and gave rise to the phylum we know today as Chordata. The diversity within that community was such that a single calamity was not enough to totally extinguish the spark of life. Life survives, that is its law, life continues, propagates, radiates, from submerged volcanic vents to the perishing tundras of the Arctic, ever resilient, that glorious flame, sometimes diminished, but never extinguished.