Nature is a Mess
There’s nothing neat or orderly in nature. Might there be a lesson here?
Most people have heard the phrase, “Nature abhors a vacuum.” Nature isn’t very fond of uniformity either. The natural world is overflowing with diversity in the size, shape, and other characteristics of individuals within a particular variety or species, and in the mix of species populating any given area. Diversity in nature produces a much more robust ecosystem, less likely to be destroyed by any single disease or adverse weather effect. Further, diversity at the individual level is the bedrock of evolution, enabling better-adapted characteristics to take hold in populations.
People, on the other hand, seem to love uniformity. Uniformity makes everything easier — one size fits all, no accommodations required. This convenience, however, comes at a cost. Large-scale agricultural interests attempt to impose uniformity on nature’s chaos by planting extensive areas with a single variety of a single species of plant (referred to as monoculture). This approach reduces costs and increases efficiency, at least until the inadvertent introduction of a pathogen to which the selected variety is particularly vulnerable. In a natural setting, all the plants of the susceptible variety will die, but the land will be left with ground cover, and the pathogen’s spread will be impeded by the relative scarcity of potential hosts. For large areas planted exclusively with the susceptible variety, the land will be left barren, and the impacts on people may be substantial. Monoculture was a major factor leading to widespread starvation during the Potato Famine in Ireland, and to significant cost and crop loss from Corn Blight in this country.
Conservatives, and in particular conservative Christians, are enamored of cultural uniformity. Variations in belief, skin color, religion or lack thereof, sexual orientation, gender, etc. are inconvenient and uncomfortable. White Christian Nationalism, much like Nazism, would have us all be exactly alike (or eliminated.) But just as in nature, cultural uniformity makes societies more susceptible, not necessarily to pathogens (although my dark side can’t help but smile at the thought of a nasty intestinal virus that only afflicted Christian extremists like the Moms for Liberty), but to ultimately destructive ideas, and to the lies of unscrupulous leaders. Monocultural societies also snuff out any chance for improvement — with no new ideas or new ways of thinking there can be no change, which means no progress.
Almost daily we can read about new attempts to villainize transgender people and drag queens, to ban books that might open the minds of children to new ideas or make them feel good about what makes them different, and to codify into law the beliefs of one group so that they can be imposed on everyone, all under the guise of “making America great again.” Yet, nature and human history make one thing quite clear — enforcing uniformity will make this country weaker not stronger, worse not better.
