Beings and becomings

Here's what I think: that nature people, conservationists, biologists, naturalists, however we term them, favour either beings or becomings.

By beings, I mean individual animals, plants, etc or even species... indeed, even ecosystems; by becomings, I am suggesting the network or mesh between all living beings and non-living processes, as in the potentiality, the holism and entirety. I don't mean a distinction between a jigsaw concept and a Gaian concept, or, rather, that hints at it but doesn't fulfil the distinction I am trying to track.

Now, within the beings category, there are other distinctions: individuals vs species; individuals vs ecosystem; species vs ecosystem. In the becomings, you might distinguish animate and inanimate. Overall, you might distinguish genes and environments, genes and cultures. You might distinguish between man-made impacts and non-anthropogenic impacts.

There are all these ways of defining, narrowing, specifying, cutting up, that which matters to that which doesn't. or that which matters less.

What it inclines us to do is to care less about factors that conflict with how we want to operate in the world.

So, for example, I might say that British birds are not evolutionarily adapted to the large number of talented predators (cats) in their environment. A person who likes cats will say, that is used as a smokescreen to cover up the fact that we have lost 70% of our birds largely because of habitat destruction, industrial agriculture and pesticide use. And I say, yes, there are far fewer birds - and the ones who remain really don't need the additional threat of millions of free-roaming cats. It's not either/or. It's both/and. They aren't in competition for what matters most. And just because a person likes cats does not change the impact cats have on birds, who are already living in scarcity and have experienced a huge decline in their populations.

As for the beings and becomings, what I am trying to say is that beings are becomings: that they are always in the process of change; and all their changes impact the changes of everyone else. What impact are declining songbird numbers having on the health of trees? What difference are increasing deer numbers having on the health of soil ecosystems? What difference do my interactions with Tane have on springtails and sparrowhawks? What difference does acute oak decline have on flooding or drought? What difference does fox hunting have on the hare population? How many beings will fail to come into existence because of one decision? How many becomings will not become?

This felt clearer in my mind than on the page. I guess I am thinking of a world of relationships and processes, not one of any number of discrete whatevers.

Still, this being does matter to me.