The web of life

I read a wonderful section in the book The Web of Life by Austrian philosopher Fritof Capra (1996). He invites to look at the ecosystem to learn about sustainability.The ecosystem has organized itself during more than three billion years of evolution on this planet. That should give us some clues how to do it. He formulates a few principles. I will share the first here today. #1. Interdependence. All members of the ecological community are innterconnected in a vast and intricate network of relationships, which he calls the web of life. The behavior of every living member depends on the behavior of many others. The success of the whole community depends on the success of its individual members, while the success of each member depends on the success of the community as a whole. Understanding ecological interdependence means understanding relationships. It requires a shift of perception and thinking: from looking at a part to seeing the whole; from seeing an object to looking for relationships; from seeing contents to seeking the patterns. A sustainable human community is aware of the multiple relationships among its members. Nourisihing the community means nourishing those relationships. The fact that the basic pattern of life is a network pattern means that the relationship of an ecological community is non linear, involving multiple feedback loops. Linear chains of cause and effect exist very rarely in ecosystems. Thus, a disturbance will not be limited to a single effect but is likely to spread out in ever-widening patterns. It may even be amplified, which may completely obscure the original source of the disturbance." So the question in my mind is - what light does this bring to the news I heard this morning, about the terrorist blasts in the capital of Lebanon?