EVER WONDER WHAT MOTHER NATURE REALLY THINKS?

Have you ever tried to put yourself in Mother Nature’s shoes? Your author has been attempting to see things from the grand dam’s perspective in order to understand the big picture more clearly.

The first step was recognizing that the old gal must be extremely patient with her powers. She’s been around since the very beginning and is responsible for all reproduction as well as the adaptations of the various species. Now that’s a responsible position! And one would not want to make uninformed decisions in that role.

She’s been fair over time, allowing for a certain amount of experimentation. She’s let developments occur and encouraged decisions about what works and what doesn’t without losing sight of the big picture. However, she’s been tough on those that did not adapt, were self-centered or refused to play by the established rules.

So imagine how she rues the day that humans evolved beyond the cave. She was suddenly (at least by her timeline) forced to deal with a creature that was capable of radically affecting the evolution of other species – perhaps all species. What did she make of the human ability for ulterior motives and self-delusion?

It seems as though she tries to teach people lessons, but she must get exasperated when they refuse to learn. There’s plenty of evidence that she lets people think they are fooling her, but not for too long.

She’ll allow us to manipulate breeding, to remove natural selection and to create a universal gene pool. And, just when we think we are invincible, she gives us dogs with hip displacement, diabetic cats and deadly genetic diseases in several species, including humans. And that’s just for starters. But how many of us truly recognize our own responsibility in the resulting problems?

With all of that in mind, how does one make sense of the conflicting viewpoints that bombard us now that we have advanced the concept of mass communication?

How does she justify the view of animal protection societies that think a rib should never be seen but ignore the obese? Would Mother Nature agree that overweight is more desirable than underweight?

In fact, she’s given us the information to make that assessment. We can determine which animal – the overweight one or the underweight one – suffers the most long-term ramifications once returned to natural weight. Remember that the old gal encourages the ability to recover from lean times, but has never encouraged gluttony.

Can you envision Mother Nature scoffing at us, thinking that we are fooling ourselves by adjusting the natural weight standards upwards so we can ignore our own waistlines?

And what would she think of the extremes promoted by some animal rights organizations? Would she see the advocated actions as being contrary to her design or would she see merit in their positions? Chances are, given her history, she would prefer moderation over extreme views. Keep in mind that animals-as-pets was a human invention not one of Mother Nature’s primary goals.

And, she is the ultimate recycler. Everything is designed to die…to become food or fertilizer.

Perhaps her patience is most evident when one considers how long she has allowed us to abuse our environment before teaching us just how powerful she can be. We may think we’re invincible, but Mother Nature is really the omnipotent force in the world. And, I suspect that the longer we ignore her, the more we will see the true measure of her wrath.