An Ecological Perspective On ET Life

An Ecological Perspective On Extraterrestrial Life
By Ed Komarek
(8/25/07)
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My blog: http://exopolitics.blogspot.com/
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I believe that individuals in both the natural and social sciences can add much to the overall dynamics of life in the universe, complementing those with security or religious backgrounds. Security people tend to be narrowly focused on threats which can bias them toward the greater perspective to the disadvantage of all. Those who adhere to established religions can view reality biased by their strong religious beliefs. In cases where individuals are involved in security and have a narrow fundamentalist religious perspective the bias are compounded. They are apt to mistake ET friends as enemies and ET enemies as friends. We have to look no further than to the present war in the Middle East to see the combined dangerous destructive effects of both security and religious bias.

In order to gain a full understanding of any picture extraterrestrial or otherwise, all elements of society must be involved. When certain elements of a society take it upon themselves to speak and act for the rest of society all within society are damaged. Ecologists and social scientists views have often been excluded or ignored when such views can add fresh insights into the dynamics of extraterrestrial interactions on earth and across the universe.

I grew up in a family of ecologists and their friends deeply involved in the natural world. Herb Stoddard was a close friend of the family, a mentor to my father and like a grandfather to me. He and his friend Aldo Leopold http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldo_Leopold could be considered two of the founding fathers of ecology while my father became the first true fire ecologist. My father Ed Komarek Sr. organized some of these friends into what became Tall Timbers Research Inc. http://www.talltimbers.org/ and the Komarek family plantation became Birdsong Nature Center http://www.birdsongnaturecenter.org/index.htm organized by my mother Betty Komarek. Both these organizations are recognized around the world in the field of the natural sciences.

If we consider earth life as one sample out out of a vast universe we can infer that life will take hold almost automatically when the right conditions present themselves. More and more scientists are amazed at the extreme environments that can be colonized by life on earth. Even the bedrock miles beneath the surface of earth harbors microbial life that takes a thousand years to replicate itself because of the harsh conditions. Where the conditions for life are favorable then life does not focus on just basic survival within the elements but employs very competitive and cooperative strategies of interaction with other life.

Ecology is centered around and studies these competitive and cooperative strategies of both predator and prey. Both predators and prey, who can change roles even moment to moment, competing with each other for limited resources, Predators cooperate to attack prey and prey cooperate to defend against predators. Man is no stranger to this process and is both predator and prey in nature. Humanity is also composed of individuals and factions that are involved in human relations as both predator and prey. For this reason social scientists and ecologists really have a lot in common because both explore the nature of the complex relationships in their respective fields of study that are founded on natural and artificial evolutionary processes.

Many people have a interest in nature but in really know little about it being brought up in artificial city environments. Quite often city raised environmentalists do more harm that good having good motives, but because they don't understand nature well, their actions are quite destructive toward nature, It is important for the layman as well as the naturalist - ecologist to understand the forest they are walking through is not peaceful but is in fact a raging battle ground of cooperation and competition.

This competitive and cooperative struggle for limited resources is not just going on in the animal kingdom but with all life in all environments. That forest you are walking through is a battle ground between plant species employing both competitive and cooperative strategies for water and sunlight. Long-leaf pine even uses natural and man controlled fire as a means to burn out the competition. It has evolved insulating bark and needles that are very flammable so as to use fire against the oaks and other vegetation that are more vulnerable to fire. The oaks on the other hand employ a strategy of snuffing out the fire by having leaves that do not burn easily and are more adaptive to lowlands where fires do not burn so intensely.

Taking in to account earth, our sample of one, what can be inferred as to life across the universe? We can speculate that life is a natural result of increasing complex chemical reactions in environments favorable to life. Microbial life can exist in very extreme environments and is likely quite common across the universe. More advanced forms of life are not nearly as common because more advanced forms of life need less extreme environments in order to multiply and flourish. Still, because the universe is so big, more advanced forms of life should also be common. Even highly evolved technical civilizations should likewise be common.

We can observe creatures evolving in intelligence on earth in the insect, reptile, mammal, mollusk and other kingdoms. Given more time and the right conditions these creatures can become as intelligent or more so than ourselves. Indeed there is much speculation in scientific circles, that if the asteroid that hit the earth millions of years ago wiping out most of the reptiles had not happened, that earth might well be home to a two legged intelligent reptile that could be now traveling the vast reaches of space as we are now about to do.

What a ecological perspective has to offer is a clearer more objective picture of life in the universe. We can now infer that intelligent life is abundant and is involved in a very complex web of relationships of both competition and cooperation everywhere just as on earth. We should be able to also see by observing ourselves that natural evolution throughout the universe can give rise to species so intelligent that they can interfere with natural evolutionary processes. Both creationists and evolutionists are both partly right and partly wrong because life across the universe has been been influenced heavily by both natural and artificial evolutionarily processes.

While astro-physicists have been around awhile in force I believe that soon the astro-ecologist and the social scientist will soon emerge as forces to be reckoned with in the near future as disclosure accelerates. The nature of extraterrestrial intelligent life across the universe has in my estimation been monopolized and controlled by certain special interests through the security services for far too long, and this is damaging to humanity as a whole. In a universe of predators and prey does it not make sense to cultivate friendly relationships with other potential prey rather than to indiscriminately antagonize those potentially friendly relationships out of ignorance and false perceptions.