It's the middle of November, and Hallowe'en is two weeks past. Further, the solar (non-canonical) Samhain is also gone. Last weekend, the passed the half-way point between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. We are now in the dark of the year.
The article on being green has provoked some thoughts in this blogger, as well as in Charles Moore. Mr. Moore points out that nature overproduces, and that waste is a part of nature. I want to expand on that thought: waste is an essential part of nature.
(The name Samhain comes from the Gaelic for "Summer's end" – there is no Celtic god of death named Samhain, or Sam, or even Sam-I-Am.)
Samhain is the last of the harvests during the waning year. In Wiccan tradition, we begin with the first fruits around the beginning of August, ramping up to full flow at the autumn equinox, and ending at Samhain. In some mythology, any produce left in the field after Samhain is spoiled – poisoned by evil, or at least mischievous spirits.
In the course of a year, we follow the phases of life from planting the seed to nurturing the seedling to maturity, to harvest, and finally to death and decay. Each part of the cycle is as necessary as every other part, and to attempt to forestall any one part is to create a road block and bring the whole thing to a screeching halt.
In nature, the process of decay is a method of taking resources and returning them to nature. These resources are not targeted, but scattered in a most haphazard manner. Dead mice do not get recycled to make new mice. They may wind up going to build cats or owls or snakes, or they may become food for plants or insects. Sometimes, resources will pile up faster than they can be cleaned away.
One thing is certain, though: even the most wasteful processes won't lay waste forever. Whenever any kind of resource builds up, something comes along that can find a use for it.
In economics, Say's law, attributed to Jean Baptiste Say, states that a supply of anything will create its own demand. What applies to a human marketplace applies even more in the marketplace we call the biosphere. Any time waste is allowed to accumulate, something comes along to put it to good use. Even man-made chemicals, chemicals never before seen in nature, can be used.
Someone wanted to measure the volume of air inside a termite mound. He figured he could seal it off, and then inject a known quantity of freon into the mound. Nothing feeds on the stuff or breaks it down, so it just hangs around. He figured when it reached equilibrium, he could measure the concentration and figure out how much air had to be in the mound to dilute the freon that much.
Problem was, it never reached equilibrium. It kept decreasing. After all possible holes had been sealed off, the researcher discovered there were bacteria inside the termite mound that were breaking the freon down. They had figured out how to "eat" the stuff.
A human garbage dump is not necessarily a bad thing, and attempting to find some sort of beneficial use for everything we throw away is not necessarily a good thing. We may never learn some of the best uses for our trash until it's been allowed to pile up, and people are allowed to play with ideas.
And if it turns out old newsprint, processed the right way, cures cancer and AIDS, we may wind up wishing we'd saved some of the stuff.
The bottom line, and the lesson of Samhain, is that we need to get over our fear of waste and decay. Something is going to go to waste no matter what we do, and if we try to prevent it in one area, we will inevitably provoke lots more in others. Sometimes the best way to deal with waste is to watch and see what grows in it.
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