Environments

...and Adaptability

It doesn’t seem hard to observe that one thing about environments is that the participants in any given environment are pretty adaptable to it. 

I think this might be true across many contexts — it seems to be true for plants. For insects. For animals. Aquatic life. Birds.  ...and polar bears (though adaptability and survivability are still two different things).

Oh, and humans. 

Yes, like many things we also seem rather adaptable to the environment we’re in; especially to the elements that make up our environment.  Look at species all over the world, and throughout time, and notice that creatures have not only learned how to survive, but also prosper.

But, there are, of course, participants in any environment that resist it or, at least, adaptability to it. 

So, it also seems observable that another dynamic exists — those participants that resist the environment or seem unable, by choice or otherwise, to adapt to it are often rejected by the environment. At times, there appears to be a kind of dance in any given environment between those that are cooperating with it, adapting to it, and those that are resisting it. At other times, though, that dynamic is not so friendly.  Either way, one could imagine that some of the dynamic is even necessary, for the purposes of environments in general. 

Participants who become entrenched in resisting the environment often end up finding themselves mostly outside of the benefits of the environment.   At the very least, if not outside it all together, unable to join it; both as a function of their choice or of the collective choice of those which represent the features or embodiment of that environment. 

In other words, there are participants at the center of environments who by nature or function perpetuate it and there are participants at the margins of environments which are resisting it.  They, too, provide a function and may, at times, even be the catalysts for the environment itself to adapt.

If we keep these observations at a scientific level, we may be more comfortable with this diversity of the experience for the participants involved.  However, when we move past the observational interaction to a moral one, we discover a wide range of other factors that influence the environment and the dynamics already mentioned here.

From the moral perspective, we could do well to consider the purely observational realities that exist — morality, after all, does not understand all it thinks it does.  From the scientific perspective, we could do well to consider how moralities impact environmental realities in both good and bad ways.

Due in part to my personality, adaptability is not a difficult concept for me to consider or embrace. There are seemingly 1000 things a day that I adapt to in light of my environment. I am aware of things that impact others, particularly some of the things that I do. I’m not claiming any degree of perfection, as much as proclivity.

Perhaps this also explains some of the diversity of the journey my career path has taken — in and out of a variety of industries, situations, people, and activities. I also feel quite drawn to the notion of how inter-related things are. Our inter-connectedness is also not hard for me to grasp and feels like it is confirmed on a regular basis just looking around at how life and its participants work and function. And, though, this probably puts my participation in environments closer to the center of them, it also enables me to imagine what participants at the edges feel, particularly as they feel rejection from their environments.

And, so, it may be worth positing; environments seem to both accommodate and require adaptability.  What we do accordingly is not insignificant — both regarding ourselves and regarding others.  I wonder what we can learn from the fact that we are actually participating in something about the very nature of things by way of our environment.  How can our simple recognition and acknowledgement of this free up what we can conclude (and not conclude)?