The Sacred Balance.

I recently finished reading the book The Sacred Balance by David Suzuki.  He takes the reader through the basic elements - air, water, earth and fire - and discusses how each of them were formed way back when the earth was still being formed, how they are when the Earth was healthy and how our transition from primate to modern society has affected them now.  He continues on to talk about the importance of love in humans - how it is grows out of the love from our parents and communities.

For example, the air that we know around us was first created when the first organisms (single-celled bacteria) started using energy from the heat on the planet to start (for lack of a better word in my non-science vocabulary) live.  They were similar to the cynobacteria and thermophiles that we have living in Yellowstone's hot springs - they don't have chlorophyll like most algae or plants but instead use the heat from the hot water to create the energy they need to live. When these first bacteria started to produce energy, they started to release oxygen.  As life continued to progress (all in the oceans at this point) they continued to release oxygen (whether from photosystensis or the original form) which eventually filled up the ocean.  Once the oceans became full of of oxygen, the oxygen particles passed out into the atmosphere. And evolution has continued into the world that we know today.

I was truly fascinated by the first few sections of the book.  It made me more aware of how I use the resources that so many of us take for granted (and are in the grand scheme of things only been so ravaged in the most recent years).  The later sections - once he starts talking about our need of love and community (which is true and he makes good arguments for) were a little more out of my realm of interest.  I can see that we have a striving need for community.  Although in the world today, it's less about who is your neighbor but more obvious in the online world.  The blogs that we follow, websites we go to (and create ourselves), and our Twitter "friends" have become the community that more people relate to than the ones that our physical selves are members of. 

I am trying to give more of my books away and am going to try to use my blog to help me remember what I've read, how it's affected me and what I've learned.  This will probably be a book (at least the first two thirds) that I read a couple more times before fully understanding the balance that he discusses with precision and care.  A balance that is being thrown off with consequences that is already becoming apparent as I watch the world around me more closely than I ever have.