The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one. (John 17:22,23)
Andrew Sullivan posted this yesterday at his “Daily Dish” – http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/05/the-web-of-life.html
Watch and marvel! It may be the most profitable 10 minutes you spend today.
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May 28, 2012 at 6:25 am
Gillian F
very cool. especially when you see that it is all one – every part is part of the whole and the whole is contained in each part and Terrence Malick’s ‘Tree of Life’ is a picture of the ‘Web of Life’
May 28, 2012 at 7:41 am
jaqueline
This guy thinks a tree does not convey the idea of organised complexity…he thinks they are about simplicity and symmetry does he? Who has ever met a perfectly simple, symmetrical tree whose parts do not depend on each other; that does not have hundreds and thousands of other species that depend on them and feed on them and they on other species..( trees feed on other species.., it is what compost is for those of you who are thinking of chomping trees.) you know, something like how he describes the cod.
What this video does demonstrate, is that this guy does not understand trees.
and bwhahahaha to the idea of branches not being connected… really? he really put that in?? He tries to convince us that branches are not connected…now THAT is a metaphor for his whole premise. ( when in fact branches are a perfect illustration of how apparently disparate and seperate areas are deeply and dependently connected. And is it not slightly ironic, the number of branches he has in his own diagrams?)
The ‘new’ diagram, comparing the neuro network of a mouse and millenium simulations…he ought to look at a forest from up in the air and tell us what it looks like.
May 28, 2012 at 5:56 pm
jaqueline
The other thing that troubles me about this illustration is that Lima says that galaxies and neuro network of a mouse are a great image of web connectedness, yet forgets to mention that there are gaps in connection of the ‘tendrils’ that he has focused on. Between the very ends of neurons there are tiny gaps which need to be bridged and electricity leaps between them. Galaxies too are not as obviously connected as he proposes.
Trees in a forest looked at from above look the same as the mouse neurons and galaxies in design. There, tendrils too have ‘gaps’ but are bridged by living things, that leap between them.
I agree that we need to look at the world differently but Lima pretends that that his is a new idea. It is not. It has been understood since the dawn of time, that is why we have since then, used the tree as the image of life.
Lima betrays his own limits when he suggests trees no longer represent the complexity of life well The fact that he looks at a tree from one angle contradicts his own suggestion, especially If he could not even figure to look at a forest form above to see the pattern. If we think trees do not represent organised complexity then we have been blinded to them by our own prejudices and limited perspective. If we listened to and saw trees properly we would understand that all this time they have been telling us the story of the web of life since they had been created. That we have been blinded to their story is a refection on out inability to understand it, not their ability to tell it.
May 30, 2012 at 8:45 am
lindsay
Hi Jaqueline,
I think what you are saying is that we can’t take a single tree in isolation as a representation of all of life – The Tree of Life, that we need to look at all the trees, a bigger picture, at the entire forest … all the trees and all the living organisms and the inter-connections and also the spaces between the trees … to get a more realistic view of life? Is this what you are saying?
May 30, 2012 at 9:44 am
jaqueline
no…I think I am saying that Lima is looking at the tree symbol in intellectual isolation.
In my view, even one tree is sufficient to represent all of life because even one tree supports a tremendous diversity of all sorts of different life forms and systems which are dependent on each other.
In the old french (?) illustration of a tree representing disciplines of thought/science,or ancestry, Lima’s pen jumps from one branch to another ( this time NOT drawing lines as he does in all the other at first apparently not connected examples such as the cod’s habitat ). IF we looked at the tree from above at a distance as we do mouse neurons and distant galaxies, we would see that those systems of thought ARE connected. It is just a shift of perspective.
But you bring up a good point…we are in our mind used to seeing a tree in isolation..OUR tree and we really need to look at it in the context of a forest…and perhaps THAT is the paradigm shift we need to make as a western culture.
I am not sure about his background in biology…but it struck me as I
was watching his video that our text book in my High School Biology class was called the Web of Life. So I can’t help recognising this ‘new’ idea has been around for ages ( for thousands of years prior to my high school days ), and we have just down- right ignored it.
May 30, 2012 at 9:52 am
jaqueline
my mum, a well trained opera singer, when she hear Mariah Callas would just rail that such a famous singer would make such mistakes…while in the meantime the public just LOVED Callas.
Lima appears to be a design nerd… and as a design nerd myself ( though sadly not a rich and famous, trendy and handsome one) AND a myth and symbol nerd it gets on my nerves, in the same way Callas got on my mum’s….. which is why I am not perhaps as charitable as I could be.
May 30, 2012 at 6:42 pm
lindsay
I must admit I was a bit puzzled by your rant about Lima but then I don’t know much about design so it didn’t bother me as much. My thoughts on the fellow narrating were ‘he sounds young’, ‘I like his accent’ and ‘he seems handy with a pen’ … but now having taking a closer look at the professional profile of Manuel Lima on the internet, I have to admit I’d never heard of a data visualization design before … which in my field of work, working with masses of data, is something I now want to look at a bit more closely …. it’s one thing trying to make sense of data for myself, and an entirely different thing finding a way to present a summarized view of data to someone else so that it is accurate and makes quick sense. Statistics are okay for people who like and understand statistics … not everyone does.
May 31, 2012 at 1:18 am
lindsay
“In my view, even one tree is sufficient to represent all of life because even one tree supports a tremendous diversity of all sorts of different life forms and systems which are dependent on each other.”
Yeah, I’m trying to apply this “Tree of Life” model to organizational structure in practical terms and keep running into a similar problem … trying to figure out what level of granularity to use. One tree can represent the entire planet earth with all of life in it, for example, or one tree can represent, say, a single person in a forest of trees.
The problem I’m trying to answer is does the “Web of Life” model provide a unitive vision for the Anglican Church which allows for all communities falling under the Anglican umbrella and off-shoots of the Anglican community (as well as other faith communities and non-faith communities) to peacefully co-exist …? So, yeah, I am thinking of our tree and how it relates to other trees.
May 31, 2012 at 6:56 am
jaqueline
So,
Why I like the tree better than the Lima’s illustration, is because the tree does provide for a multitude of species to co-exist. Birds, and mammals, lichen and veins…they all dwell and depend upon the tree.. to me this is better than the illustrations he used…because…even though there are many, it is many of one type of thing.
Maybe that is the point he misses when he critiques the thought/ science/ ancestry tree…that yes, it is diverse and apparently seperate, but that tree supports and connects all of it.
May 31, 2012 at 6:24 pm
lindsay
Yeah, the problem I am having is trying to figure out where the Anglican Church fits in this picture … is it part of the tree, the branches, or similar to the birds, lichen,etc. And how does the Anglican connect to everything else?
Ooh, you know what I’d love to do … it would be fun, I’m thinking … if we got some large pieces of paper and coloured pens and tried to sketch a pictorial unitive vision of the Anglican Covenant, the old-fashioned way. I can’t do it ‘cos for one thing I can’t draw and secondly I can’t figure it out … I need help. What do you reckon? Would you be game? … and if anyone else is interested … Hey! we could make an evening or afternoon of it … if anyone else is interested … it would be lovely to get input from children for instance ‘cos children see things we adults tend to overlook …
May 31, 2012 at 6:39 pm
jaqueline
I am really curious as to why the Anglican Covenant matters so much to you?
…it seems so artificial an agreement to me. I think it is because instead of unity or liturgy/ form, it looking for another common denominator .. I think being Anglican should be about distinctive form.
May 31, 2012 at 9:54 pm
lindsay
Good question! Can I draw you a picture? just kidding … if I could draw it would be a whole lot easier to explain … words aren’t enough, but I’ll try …
A little 4-year old boy with dark brown hair and big brown eyes calling from the window of his 1st floor apartment building late in the evening in July just as it is getting dark. He wants to talk. As my kids have to leave to go inside to their Dad’s apartment, I turn to him, and we talk. It’s his eyes more than anything stay with me, big brown, soulful eyes. He is sad, he feels alone, he has no-one to talk to … you see, his Mom, I can hear her on the phone on the other balcony as she talks rat-a-tat-tat fast, non-stop. The little boy is supposed to be in bed asleep, but his Mom is mad at him, his Mom is mad at his Dad because he buys the little boy expensive toys he doesn’t need, his Dad’s girlfriend has a big dog that bites his Mom and the little boy, he doesn’t go to pre-school and has no friends to talk to … he is alone. No little 4-year old should have to feel that alone.
So when I’m thinking of the Anglican Covenant, I’m not thinking about liturgy and hierarchical orders and bishops … I’m thinking about this little boy with big brown, soulful eyes …. and his Mom and his Dad and the people in the apartment block and the absolute, heart-achingly desperate need for community … you know …the village that helps to raise a child … and the breakdown of extended family and how children are programmed to need grandparents and aunties and uncles and cousins … and how grandparents and aunties and uncles are also programmed to need little kids … to feel valued … and how, when we are all alone, as the little boy tells me he is … how much it would help for him to know he is not actually alone, even when he feels alone …. God is with him …
and I’m thinking of another little boy who died alone in a corner store across the road from his school when a shelf full of groceries fell on top of him, and how his family, my friend’s family, spent 2 weeks searching for him and how no-one in his community bothered to tell his family what had happened to him …. because death and indifference were too common …
… and of Bishop Desmond Tutu and how his vision of a Rainbow Nation helped to mitigate another vision of ‘One Settler One Bullet’ and to bring about peaceful change …
So, I guess when I’m thinking of an Anglican Covenant it is as a covenant that supports us, guides us, to help this little boy know he is not alone … that the world is big and he is loved … and his Mom and Dad too, the sort of covenant that encourages rather than causes friction or turns people away … that removes the fear, cynicism, guilt and resentment out of church … and replaces it, naturally with a kind of love, compassion and vision, the kind which encourages community wherever in the world this community might be located and whatever distinctive form this community takes …
May 31, 2012 at 11:01 pm
jaqueline
I am so sorry Lindsay I am not there with you …I don’t think I am very useful for this question. The Anglican church is great…making a covenant with a bunch of Anglicans that won’t stay unless we all hate gays does not make sense to me.
June 1, 2012 at 7:18 am
jaqueline
So I woke thinking that maybe we are thinking of two different things. The idea of an Anglican Covenant was instituted/ instigated as a response to the potential rift occasioned by differing responses to the issue of Gay ordination/ marriage. You have conservative evangelical anglicans on one had saying that to allow those privileges for gays will send the whole church to hell ( so to speak ) and those who think that if we withhold those privileges we are actually denying fundamental human rights of the expression fo being human. So to follow your analogy of the first little boy…one camp sees marriage etc as an expensive toy that Gays do not deserve, the other sees marriage as a fundamental need that everyone has a right to. The convenant was to try and avoid a schism..but you can’t avoid a schism if one group really does not want to agrees to disagree. It is a useless excercise.
As an only a lay person, those of us who roll our eyes about the covenant, wonder what the fuss -we see the church as big enough to accommodate both views why one side would force the other to go against their hard won
conscience is beyond me at least. What ought to bind us is a commitment to love one another , even our enemies…and what ought to distinguish us as Anglicans is the form of the expression of faith that has sustained us for hundreds of years. Why one church cannot follow it’s view that it won’t allow an ordinated gay priest or marry a gay couple is stupid and vise verse. It is making an absolute out of a relative and ………
that is never a good formula.
In other words I do not see us as lay people as a child who is helpless while its parents duke it out. We have grown up and now we can say to them, you know…you two don’t know a thing, why don’t you grow up.
June 1, 2012 at 9:23 am
lindsay
Oh, I see … the little boy is a real little boy I met …. he isn’t meant to be an analogy. He is one of many, many children who get overlooked when adults get caught up in arguments, whether about politics, religion, same sex marriage or whatever else. Children invariably get hurt. Children, Moms, Dads need community support … we all do. One of the saddest things to witness is when a community gets broken and implodes on itself.
The Anglican church, or any church or faith group, is a part of community and traditionally has been the backbone of community … this is changing, yes … but I still believe the Anglican church, i.e us – or any church can play a vital role in encouraging and supporting community … wherever this community might be …
I’m not talking about heavy-handed, holier-than-thou telling people what to do … I’m talking about an Anglican Covenant which sets the tone, leads by example and embraces and respects everyone … no matter what their particular political, religious or same-sex persuasion … We are the Anglican church … this isn’t about some separate thing … this is about us and how we approach each other and the world …
Why is this important to me? Because, the way I see it, when we don’t do this, when we allow or encourage community to be broken, when we are indifferent or play an active role in the breakdown of community, when we try to force our opinions on others, or when we physically remove children from their homes and try to indoctrinate them in residential schools, children invariably get hurt ….
May 28, 2012 at 8:46 am
lindsay
Chaos and order … Wow! I’d thought chaordic theory had taken a back-burner but now I see it’s been working away in the background and becoming evident in all sorts of exploration, even that of knowledge itself.
It seems the old, over simplistic hierarchical models which have influenced so much of our thinking in the way we as the human race make sense of the world and has led us to restrict ourselves in so many aspects of our day-to-day lives … including the way we try to organize ourselves … including how we treat each other and the planet … it seems this kind of thinking evident even to present day … is now starting to be challenged. Just as systems theory changed the way we view and act in the world, this ‘web of life’ view has the potential to take it to another level.
It’s a model of relationship. It’s about time. Amazing! I love it! Thanks Christopher!
June 1, 2012 at 9:14 pm
lindsay
July 7, 2012 at 2:32 pm
jaqueline
And the trees talk back:
“Researchers at the University of British Columbia are concluding that trees are interacting with one another in a symbiotic relationship that helps the trees to survive. Connected by fungi, the underground root systems of plants and trees are transferring carbon and nitrogen back and forth between each other in a network of subtle communication. Similar to the network of neurons and axons in the human brain, the network of fungi, roots, soil and micro-organisms beneath the larger ‘mother trees’ gives the forest its own consciousness.”
Oi! Mario! Did ya read this, did ya catch it??
“Similar to the network of neurons and axons in the human brain…….”
http://www.wakingtimes.com/2012/05/02/how-trees-communicate-video/