Top of a Mighty White Oak

Looking up from the bottom of a very tall white oak. Click to enlarge.

Treasuring Trees—Part 1

I am fortunate enough to live in a rural environment that is heavily populated by trees—of all varieties and ages. Part of my land was once farmed, about 100 years ago, and then abandoned to Mother Nature's succession process, wherein the first wild growth—weeds—gets replaced by short-lived saplings, followed eventually by long-lived, majestic towering trees. Thus, in my immediate environs, I can enjoy the dynamics of the forest's initial rebuilding cycles, as well as the grand, soaring trees of a climax forest.

Immediately surrounding our small, domesticated clearing—which required only the removal of several interim short-lived pine trees—are towering trees that shade us and inspire respect. They possess a natural beauty that I liken to the spires of cathedrals. They bend and sway in the wind, reminding me of green-clad monks, as they bow in blessing.

I have become acutely aware of the blessings that they provide for us, besides their loveliness, which evokes wonder: they expire life-giving oxygen, as they inspire and capture our carbon dioxide, transforming it into trunks, branches, and leaves. When they die and tumble to the ground, trees offer one last gift of firewood that will provide us a cozy experience on winter nights.

I love to watch and listen to the wind blow through the trees. I can hear distant waves of wind approach and flow by, as I observe branches swinging to and fro in response. Sometimes an individual limb or leaf will flutter in isolation, as the remainder of the tree stands still—as if that leaf alone has been excited by the passing breeze and is waving to it, as it blows through.

I sometimes ponder how similar I am to my brother trees, despite our obvious differences—and how our existence complements each other. Besides our exchange of atmospheric oxygen and carbon dioxide, I appreciate how trees refresh the air in so many ways, and how their photosynthesis transforms the sun's energy into food that most all life on Earth depends upon.

We each are composed of many of the same organic molecules. The water and blood surging through my body is similar to the sap flowing through the tree's capillaries. My bones provide the same function of support as does a tree's strong trunk. We both—along with all lifeforms—are a component of the cycle of life, as we die, to become part of follow-on lifeforms. We come into being, exist for a while (although a tree dwarfs my lifespan), and finally become sustenance for the life that follows. These thoughts help me to comprehend the deep connectivity between all life forms.

Over the next four posts I will describe some of the fascinating facts about the lives of trees, mostly taken from the book The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How they Communicate (2015), by Peter Wohlleben, who worked for many years as a forester in Germany.

Truman’s Terrible Choice

Seventy-five years ago the US president Harry Truman faced a horrendous choice: whether or not to drop the world's first nuclear bombs on Japan. We all know what his decision was—he used the world's most dreadful weapon ever devised, in an attempt to bring World War II to an end. There was no intent to use the atomic bomb as a means to punish or crush the Japanese nation... only to terminate the horrible war that had caused such death and destruction for over five years.

The US had implemented a crash program only three years earlier, to develop the atomic bomb—to a large degree because of the fear that Nazi Germany had already embarked on a similar effort, and the thought that Hitler wouldn't hesitate to use the bomb in order to conquer the world. The Manhattan Project to build the bomb was successful... the US was the first country to step across the nuclear threshold.

So Truman had in hand by far the most destructive weapon the world had ever seen. The US had just gone through an extremely nasty battle to take possession of the Japanese island of Iwo Jima. The ferocity with which the Japanese troops defended their island—literally fighting almost to the last soldier at the cost of thousands of lives—created the terrifying specter of the far greater loss of lives that would occur when the Japanese homeland was invaded.

What to do? The desperation of the times had to add an urgency to Truman's choice. The end of WWII was inevitably approaching, but the possibility of horrendous battles and loss of life lay before him. Germany had recently capitulated and Japan could not hold out much longer. The US and Europeans had negotiated with the Soviet Union about how to carve up and occupy Germany's conquered lands, but the US had the premonition that future animosity with the USSR was unavoidable. Japan and Russia were old foes and the Red Army was massing to join the fray. Surely, Truman wanted to defeat Japan, without having to cope with Stalin in the Pacific as well.

Can a super weapon—in the hands of the good guys, of course—be used to achieve the benefit of ending a war? Does the calculus of causing the deaths of thousands of people sanction the use of the bomb, because it may save many more thousands—if not millions—of lives? Can immoral means ever bring about a moral end? Truman's dilemma was certainly a classical example of having to choose between two immense evils. Previous poor choices on the part of many political leaders had consigned him to being thrust between a rock and a hard spot.

The US had the ultimate weapon in 1945... but only two bombs. It was like an Old West, small-town sheriff having a terrific new gun, but only two silver bullets, to face a gang of desperadoes.

We all know what Truman's decision was. No matter his choice, there would be endless speculation about whether or not it was the best one. History offers you only one chance. You can't rerun the scenario and evaluate the other choice. Was it preferable to have killed some 200 thousand Japanese—many of them civilians—or face the possibility of many more dead, from a land invasion of Japan? And were those the only two choices? No, but that's the way Truman entered the history books. Who can say if there was a better choice?

Coltsfoot

This is coltsfoot, one of the earliest wild blossoms in the spring. Its leaves are useful as a cough medicine. Click to enlarge.

Dystopian Sci-Fi

I have been a fan of science fiction for most all of my life. As a youngster I gravitated toward comic books that had a sci-fi bent. These leanings may well have nudged me into a career in science, after college.

Most of the sci-fi that I was reading 50-60 years ago in high school and college were optimistic visions of a benevolent future. The focus was often on all the marvelous inventions we would enjoy, and how exciting they would make life. Isaac Asimov was one of my favorite authors. He had a bright outlook.

In the 1960s, Star Trek entered the SF world, with a TV series. Although many Star Trek episodes featured conflict and alien threats, the series offered us a future of hope—in that humanity will overcome its seemingly endless struggles with poverty, inequality, and wars. Star Trek pointed to a future where society's perennial problems had largely been resolved; thus it could feature a positive future, wherein historically intractable human demons were quelled.

More recent sci fi (over the last few decades), however, seems to be much more dystopian in its depiction. Many current writers appear to have been inspired by current pessimistic perspectives of the nature of human society. Today is not a time in which many of us look to the future with a cheerful attitude, as we once tended to, back in the 1950s. Colman McCarthy's novel The Road or the movie series “The Blade Runner” are good examples of current SF writers predicting some kind of “gloom and doom” future. It can be rather depressing.

Another example of dystopian SF is the novel—and later movie—Lord of the Flies. The book described—and the movie graphically portrayed—how a group of boys would devolve to a band of cut-throat monsters, in the aftermath of them having been shipwrecked on an island. Over time they turned feral, and became an isolated society of meanness toward each other. The book offered a gloomy view of how society's baser instincts would drag us down to a nasty existence—absent culture's moral teachings.

An opposing perspective on society's better nature was recently offered, however, by a true incident of boys being shipwrecked on an island. It is a story that belies the dystopian portrayal in Lord of the Flies. In this real case, a group of boys ended up on an island near Australia—and went on to form an equitable community, that was far more supportive of its members. When found a couple of years later, this band of real boys had instead formed a small society of tight-knit individuals who were kind to each other and were thriving.

Is this a case of reality being kinder than fiction? Is it possibly an example of a more accurate and benevolent portrayal of what our future might bring? Could we be a more charitable species than some of our contemporary futurists suggest?

From Simple to State Religion—Part 4 of Big History

This is the fourth of a series of posts on the evolution of human culture—from our nomadic past to the formation of empires—examining the roles played by writing and religion. The world’s first states emerged about 5-6 thousand years ago. How did they differ from the earlier agrarian communities, besides being larger and more complex? A state (1) claims a monopoly on the use of violence, by means of an army and/or police force, and (2) it taxes its citizens to fund its institutions. The very first states were city-states that appeared in Egypt and Mesopotamia.

The state offered several advantages over the small farm communities that had existed earlier: (1) it provided a safer place to live, because people were better able to protect property within its walls, (2) the proliferation of various skills allowed people without land to develop a trade, and (3) large city spaces and buildings provided venues for festivals and other large gatherings. States soon developed military power through standing armies, accompanied by the rise of state religion.

The earlier simple forms of hierarchical religions fit well with the needs of the new states, by providing social cohesion and cooperation. As the size of cities grew, people needed new ways to develop means for collaborating with others whom they didn't personally know. Common devotion to the same god was a good way to foster that cohesion.

As city-states began to merge into ever larger states, a need arose to create a pantheon  of gods that would include a role for each city's main god. The pantheon mirrored the division of human labor and provided a way to hierarchically organize the various divisions of the state apparatus. Thus theology developed, which became a description or doctrine about the various gods and their relationship to humans.

The second innovation of state religion—morality—came into being with the invention of writing. Now the state's moral code could be written down and displayed in public. The state soon solidified its hold on morality by elevating its principles to a supernatural authority. The gods became the custodians of morality—enforcing their standards via a means of divine rewards or retribution.

States later evolved into aristocracies and monarchies, with a ruler—a king—at the apex. The king was often considered to be like a god. States grew larger and  more powerful, later becoming empires, such as Babylon, Assyria, Persia, and Rome. It was helpful that a state’s/empire's armies were made up of soldiers who shared the same god(s); thus they felt superior to their opponents (my god is better than yours), causing them to fight harder and more effectively. As time passed it became clear that states were in a perpetual condition of war—relieved by short periods of peace. Thus the state, its religion, and writing became the powerful trinity that dominated human history.

[Note: many of the concepts I have described in this short, four-part history of humanity came from an online course offered by the University of Amsterdam: “Big History, from the Big Bang to Today.”]

From Records to Writing—Part 3 of Big History

Some 5-7 thousand years ago the first states emerged. The next post will describe how those states impacted the evolution of human culture. In this post I will focus on the invention of writing and the role it played in the further development of civilization.

The first forms of writing—which lasted for about 2,000 years before they transformed into true script—were used for accounting. As societies grew more complex, it became important to create a record of business transactions that could later be referred to. At that time, writing wasn’t yet words—it was characters. Thus, early writing records were a symbolic form of writing—allowing effective ways for bookkeepers to keep track of business, without needing to know or employ the language of either party.

The record-keeping form of transactions was a huge improvement, because it allowed the storage of information, which in turn allowed communication from one place to another and from one time to another. This process also streamlined the task of taxation; thus it met the administrative needs of the state.

It was previously believed that the first true writing began in Sumer (Mesopotamia) and spread from there. Current thought, however, is that the origins of writing independently occurred in (1) Mesopotamia, (2) Egypt, (3) China, and (4) Mesoamerica.

After a couple of millennia, writing began to morph from symbolic to phonetic—allowing it to move beyond just an accounting tool. It was a transformation from symbols to sounds. Because the symbols were not yet particular to a specific language, they could be commonly used for several languages. For example, Chinese symbols are the same across all of China, being common to several different languages. The disadvantage of symbols, however, is that this form of writing often required several hundred signs.

So the next step in writing was the invention of an alphabet, some 3-4 thousand years ago. Alphabetical letters were based on sounds—not signs. The genius of the alphabet is that all sounds of a given language can be described by about two dozen letters. It was a major simplification. Literary works soon followed.

With the new tool of writing, civilizations could grow evermore complex. The affairs of state could now become based on writing. This development also encouraged the further development of religion—as holy scripture could now emerge.

Next time—the last of this series—we'll look at the rise of the state and how it became intertwined with institutionalized religion...