Philosophy and natural systems: observing nature cures existential doubts OPINION March 7, 2025

Map in focus: Sahara

Philosophy and natural systems: observing nature cures existential doubts

For those of you who have been reflecting on the pain and suffering inherent in life, I have to tell you that nature offers answers to those who observe it. These days, when I was feeding my chickens, I saw in that community a perfect reproduction of how human beings relate to each other. Everyone wants to fill their mouth first. And the different hen, who arrived last, continues, despite the passage of time, to be pecked at when she tries to make room for herself while feeding. Despite being unrecognized and humiliated by her peers, she demonstrates more survival skills and was the first to take shelter from the rain to hatch a chick last summer, which saved her from a severe cold.

Poisonous snakes, scorpions, and Zacarias disappeared here after life stabilized in a more balanced way: no mysticism here, but years of observation. Pests and infestations have changed: the first year, after the rainy season, a lot of worms: the second year, lots of crickets. In the seventh year, the surprise was the visit of many frogs after spring. And as soon as the planted seeds turned into full-grown trees with their small fruits, the number of birds dropped dramatically.

Anyone who observes ecology and has studied permaculture knows that natural systems are perfect in their complexity and are made up of a set of elements in constant relationship. Everything is entangled and influences every outcome. Every small action or interference can generate chain effects, but, as with any organism or system, the cause and consequence relationships obey a non-linear logic, similar to a network, in which many elements influence each other to generate a result.

Isn't this also true for diseases of the human body? Genetics, eating habits, a sedentary lifestyle, the social environment, stress, and the climate of the mind all come together and none of them can be considered in isolation to define the cause of a diagnosis.

As scientists used to say, “God doesn't play dice”. Observing nature is the key to understanding how this intelligence that created the things of the world works. Observation works to deduce and deduction is also the scientific method. To deduce that the creation of the universe is not random, that there is an intelligence that organized nature, otherwise there would be no patterns, repetitions, or forms, but only chaos and randomness.

Observing and interacting is the first principle of permaculture, a method created by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren so that human beings can “remain” rather than self-destruct. For those who don't believe that human self-destruction is possible, you can travel to the Sahara and contemplate the desert.

There is evidence that large animals lived in the Sahara, just as they do today in other parts of Africa. Fossils of crocodiles, elephants, wildebeest, and fish prove that there was vegetation and water to survive. It is also the cradle of the first civilizations and the first experiments in domesticating and herding animals.

As Allan Savory teaches us about natural systems, large nomadic herds sustain the thriving savannahs, as the grass vegetation is invigorated by pruning and grazing animals and also benefits from the dung and urine that the herds leave behind when they pass through. But overgrazing - which occurs when the grass is excessively consumed by large herbivores - and compaction - caused by the constant trampling of large herbivores without the presence of their feline predators to guide the migratory movement of the herds - are opening cracks and deserts in the vegetation.

The most accepted versions talk about the natural causes of desertification, but as an observer of the deserts that are forming in Brazil due to poor land management by large-scale agricultural activities and knowing that the phenomena are complex and don't have definitive and isolated causes, I believe researchers like archaeologist David Wright, who claims that the albedo effect caused by the exposure of the soil was fundamental in the desertification of the Sahara 8,000 years ago.

Today there are already grazing and animal husbandry techniques, the result of observing natural systems, which manage to achieve a satisfactory balance to increase the total green biomass of the system and the vegetation cover, instead of decreasing it and desertifying it. Even so, it's common to see bare pastures and hard soil out there, where water can't penetrate and the soil recharges itself. In these places, too, life is difficult, and human beings cannot develop. Or, when they do, it is at the cost of many external inputs and the waste of water in a hidden destructive process with a negative energy balance that the business owner refuses to observe.

These are the systems and their delicate balance. Predatory human action, like the chickens at the beginning of this article, can create problems for natural and human systems, causing destruction. But when humans observe the perfection of natural systems and interact to encourage feedback, they can contribute to increasing the abundance of this earthly paradise.

Article written by: Marina Utsch

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