Organism defines the Environment, Environment defines the Organism

Tuesday, January 15, 2008 at 01:30pm by David Askaripour in Philosophy

If I was born in a tree, high up in the canopy of the forest, would I be scared of heights? If I was born near fire and grew up around open flames, would I now be scared of fire? If I grew up on a mountain top with Buddhist monks that lived a simple life, would I desire riches and flashy material items?

I think not.

If I planted corn seeds in fertile soil and nurtured these seeds, would they grow? If I spread hatred and negativity towards all I met, would people love and respect me? If I poured oil and toxic waste into a pond, would the fish survive?

I think not.

You see, the organism will always define the environment. And equally, the environment will always define the organism. They are One.

We’re Ignoring the Environment of Every Situation

Just as you don’t find ants without dirt as you don’t find dirt without ants. We humans overlook this simple concept as we continue to try and explain, analyze, and calculate situations, events, and happenings without considering the environment invariably encompassing the situation (of the organism). No wonder why we find it so hard to help each other.

Take Joe, for example, who is having a hard time excelling in school. Constantly failing test after test. Joe asks his friend Sarah: “Hey Sarah, I don’t know what to do. I keep on failing. Help me, please! What should I do?” To which Sarah responds: “Okay, relax…all you need to do is concentrate and study harder — just try harder, that’s all.” “Gee, thanks. You’re the best,” Joe responds.

The semester progresses and Joe continues to flunk his exams in every subject. He’s fallen into a state of despondency and deep depression. He’s totally lost.

Our Minds Are Narrower than we Think

Now surely this wasn’t Sarah’s fault, however her advice was entirely narrowed-minded (using the literal sense of the word narrow) and didn’t take into account Joe’s environment whatsoever. Let’s take a deeper look into Joe’s (the organism) Life (re: his surrounding, environment).

Joe wakes up at 4AM every morning to give his sick grandmother her pills and cook her a special diabetic meal. He then takes her on a walk around the neighborhood park to ease her intermittent claudication, a result of her severely blocked arteries in her legs. As soon as he gets back home, he’s already out the door to begin his 40 minute drive to a community college that he’s attending. Upon returning home, he has just enough time to fix his grandmother’s lunch a walk her to bed for a nap, then he’s out the door again to begin his hour long drive to work at the steel factory until 12AM. Upon returning how, now roughly 1AM in the morning, her checks to see if his grandma ate the dinner that he left by her bed. “Yup, she ate it, good…,” says Joe as he slumps over the kitchen table with is head in his hand now thinking about all his exams that he hasn’t even began to study for.

It’s now 1:40AM and Joe is fast asleep on the kitchen table after a futile effort to read a few paragraphs from his American History textbook. You see, Joe’s parent’s died last year during his senior year at high school. He assumed responsibility of his sick grandmother after they passed and he decided not to go away to college. Instead, he enrolled in a local community college and commutes there daily so that he can be at home to take care of his elderly grandmother.

We Become Our Environment

This is now his environment. And everything that happens in Joe’s environment now defines him. He IS his sick grandmother. He IS the late night job at the steel factory that he works to pay for tuition and his grandma’s medical bills. He IS the accumulated stress and anxiety that builds up throughout the day.

Now here comes along Sarah with her myopic, narrow-minded view of Joe. Her fault — or better: ignorance — is that she sees Joe as “Joe.” Not Joe as an organism living in an environment. Just as one would see a flower living in a field. Now what would happen if that entire field received no water? The flower would surely suffer, right? Sarah’s mind can’t see Joe as that flower living in an arid field. And see responds with: “study harder and concentrate” as a solution to his problems.

One Can Love Without Understanding

Sarah’s heart may have been in the right place, but her understanding was off. She did as so many of us do — ignore the environment. The environment defines us. How can we ignore it? Joe isn’t stupid, he’s just under a lot of mental / time pressure which leads to stress and an inability to study for his exams. A better initial response from Sarah would have been: “How are you feeling?” “I’m feeling stressed,” responds Joe. “Really, why is that?” asks Sarah. And so on and so on, leading into the true understanding of Joe’s situation.

If we can grasp this concept of “environment/organism - organism/environment,” we can see the whole of any situation instead of just the half. And although we can never fully comprehend any situation in it’s entirety — because, as Alan Watts says, “to do that is to understand the entire universe” — we’ll be much better prepared to offer sound and intelligent advice to anyone seeking.

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