Diversity and richness

So, I've started reading Arne Naess's Ecology, Community and Lifestyle, which, although it's difficult, I like very much so far.

He talks about sustaining not just diversity - as in many species (or habitats or cultures or ecosystems) - but also sufficient numbers of them. For example, without a large enough population, the route to speciation is blocked. It's not just about in-breeding, but about future resilience to change. I wonder if we take this aspect of the problem seriously enough?

For Naess, diversity is of intrinsic value. Interestingly, Naess studied the philosophy of language and he is very aware of how his concepts suffer in translation. The term intrinsic value translates something in Norwegian (egenverdi) which means 'own value' or value in itself, which means that the value of a tree or a river has value independent of our valuation of it. The difficulty is more telling in cases where our words are nouns - say, 'realisation' - where the Norwegian does not use a noun but a verb that is more like 'realising' or even 'realisationing'. Naess's language encourages a conceptualisation in terms of processes rather than states - and I think that is significant to his thinking.

Anyway, diversity.

Recently, I was again struck by the difficulties of being a scattergun rather than a laser. I always have so much that I want to do - painting and drawing, writing the book and poems, learning to chainsaw, sampling soil, weaving willow, covering sport, making mead, identifying moths and trees and birds, communing with crows, playing with tarot, learning about conservation, growing poplars, filming garden visitors, listening to bats, thinking about minds and life and consciousness and value, interviewing people for a podcast, boxing, yoga.... I can hardly keep it all in my mind yet alone in my life.

Wouldn't I be better off if, FFS, I focused on something? Or some things?

I got a little down about it. So I spoke to my friend Richard who said, if you are lost in the dark, what do you want, a laser or a broad beamed flashlight?

There is a place in this world, this confusing, lost world, for curious Crones, for ecumenical eccentrics, for liminal balancers and uncommitted explorers. It's not always easy, and may not bring success, but... who knows... maybe some of these various strands want to be tied together in a novel way, a way that could only be achieved by the wanderer rather than the pilgrim.