we don't need to change how we do conservation, we need to change why we do it

Tag: Human nature

Old Buddha Meets Young Buddha, Part-2: Our Own “Personal Evolutions”?

A short selection from Essay Sixteen in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. [YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS ON A FIRST READING OF THE TWO BUDDHAS SEQUENCE] … novel behavior, (including the verbal and conceptual behaviors we call “ideas”) is the result of an orderly and dynamic competition among previously established behaviors, during which old …

Continue reading

Old Buddha Speaks, Part-2: Sexual Traits Guide Reproduction of Species just as Words Guide Reproduction of Ideas

A short selection from Essay Fifteen in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice.  A bird might marry a fish, but where would they live? —Tevye character, in Fiddler on the Roof For the need of a niche, or for the good of a ‘race’, sexual traits intensify the cut of new species, just as they …

Continue reading

Thoughts on the 2022 Ontario Election: the Meaning of LEADERSHIP for Human Beings

[If you came across this post in the TWO BUDDHAS sequence, it’s a diversion that belongs with the main sequence of uncategorised posts; just skip it and go on to the next post.] Many of us are trying to make sense of the desperately apathetic response to the greatest challenge of ALL human history revealed …

Continue reading

Old Buddha, Part-4: The Tree of Life ‘Conceptualizes’ its Own Form

A short selection from Essay Fourteen in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice According to modern ecological theory, high diversity at any trophic level of a community is possible only under the influence of cropping. —Steven M. Stanley, 1973 [1] The wolf makes the deer strong. —Oji-Cree stone-age wisdom Though the young of a species …

Continue reading

Old Buddha Speaks, Part-1: Resource-Partitions, ‘Favoured’ by Competitive Exclusion, are ‘Codified’ by Sexual Traits

All of Essay Thirteen in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice.  … the result is not death to the unsuccessful competitor, but few or no offspring. Sexual selection is, therefore, less rigorous than natural selection. —Charles Darwin [1] From the ecological standpoint, a species is a population of organisms that can’t breed beyond itself without …

Continue reading

Old Buddha, Part-3: the Trees of Life and Knowledge are not the Trees you Know.

A short selection from Essay Twelve in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice The heavy is the root of the light. The unmoved is the source of all movement. Thus the master travels all day without leaving home. However splendid the views, she stays serenely in herself. Why should the lord of the country flit …

Continue reading

Old Buddha, Part-2: Natural Selection is “Selfless” Selection

A short selection from Essay Eleven in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile. [YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS ON A FIRST READING OF THE TWO BUDDHAS SEQUENCE] If, wherever you are, you take the role of the host, then whatever spot you stand in will be a true one. Then whatever circumstances surround you, they …

Continue reading

Old Buddha Meets Young Buddha, Part-1: A Contract Broken?

A short selection from Essay Ten in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice.  Look again at that dot … every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there—on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam … In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come …

Continue reading

Old Buddha, Part-1: the Tree of Life

The second section of Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice begins. PART II —Darwin and the Tree of Life … as a result of competition two similar species scarcely ever occupy similar niches —Georgii Frantsevich Gause [1] I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection, …

Continue reading

Two Buddhas, Part-6: What is it “Like” to know?

A short selection from Essay Eight in Darwin, Dogen, and the Extremophile Choice. [YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP THIS ON A FIRST READING OF THE TWO BUDDHAS SEQUENCE]  Primordial Awareness [the Way] is perfect and all-pervading. How could it be dependent upon practice and realization? The movement of Reality does not need us to give …

Continue reading