Ecology
Wikipedia has a good definition of ecology. We’ll be focusing here on the interrelatedness of all life, particularly on the relationship of man to the natural world and his interdependence with the rest of nature.
You can’t escape nature. You are part of nature and its elements course through you. You are, whether you realize it or not, a node in the great interdependent network of life.
You are a city, a community, a myriad of interdependent organisms, human and non-human (whatever that means in this context) that need each other to maintain a balanced environment and survive. Together, you form a coherent whole, a person. There is no underlying, constant “you” but rather a stream of life, with organisms living their lives within you, being born, growing, thriving, giving birth, and dying, and sometimes entering and leaving you, and the whole remaining in balance if you are healthy, and seeking to regain balance if you are not. Your body dies when it is no longer able to maintain a balance for the community. If one critical part of the community dies, then the whole soon follows.
Likewise, the earth as a whole is a body supporting a community of organisms and when the community is out of balance, as it is now, you see the signs of that disorder manifested in various ways, species going extinct, rapid climate change with no known external cause, high levels of anxiety and other stresses in the human and animal populations, etc. The difference here is that if we succeed in destroying the current ecology of earth, the earth will remain and another ecology will emerge to take the place of the current one, perhaps without us as a participant.
