top of page
Search
Writer's pictureCrone

Not tall, just... alone

With the Merlin app, one can get a bit blase about blackbirds and robins and be on the lookout for flycatchers and ospreys. Not just with the Merlin app - it's a human trait to value the rare more than the everyday.


I get so much pleasure out of the wren's song (Britain's most common bird, though you seldom see them); the robin's bolshiness; the blackbird's grace - and, by the way, they and robins have wonderful songs; the tit's cuteness... So why do I want to see or hear the rare?


I wonder how much of it is about feeling special or about one-up-man-ship? Some of it most definitely is. In my case, at least.


But rare is not better. It's just rare,


You might say that it's more important to protect the rare than the common. There's a biodiversity case for that... but only because the two creatures may have different impacts on the system... and, of course, where there are many, say, deer, a biodiversity issue can ensue. They eat a lot of one thing (thereby making that rare - and impacting the creatures that would use it as habitat)... John A Livingston would put it like this: they simplify the system. Balanced use of many resources means many species can thrive. A more diverse system is more resilient. Everyone benefits. A simple system is more fragile.


None of this, though, makes a deer matter less than a bison. It does, though, mean that deer are, by their numbers, causing harm, How to resolve it without killing deer? In a closed system, the deer would die of starvation, I suppose. As it is, they can move on. I think in Scotland, they do starve.


Anyway, I was thinking about rarity because I am inclined to think that sensitivity to other people's... no, the sensitivity that allows one to se through another person's facade (conscious or unconscious; openness; courage to refuse to conform (not to be contrary, but because it feels wrong); courage to ask questions and to ask for help; a focus on quality rather than quantity; a way of thinking that is associative and analogical rather than linear and analytical... all that is getting rare. There are plenty of other qualities, and I am not saying that these are better, just that they seem to be rare.


Right now, they do not seem to be valued very much.


The other qualities, more common, may, like the deer, be simplifying the system (of discourse or of society or of the workplace) and thus the system may be getting increasingly less resilient.


If deer are eating all the saplings in a wood and you notice that the wood is not regenerating, what you do not do is say, 'We need more deer.' So why do with think that more quantification, analysis, rigid thinking, invulnerability, conformity and superficiality are what we need?

3 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Comments


bottom of page