Conditional Existence: Not Good, Not Bad

A Stoic framework of economic and environmental dynamics, watermelons, and how to change the world

Voiceover - Conditional Existence: Not Good, Not BadTanner Janesky

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Everything that exists, whether in nature or society, arises not from moral value but from conditions that allow it, and our judgments of good or bad are simply the meanings we choose to assign. If we want to make a change in the world, we need to understand the conditions and dynamics that allow something to exist and change them.

Events are neither good nor bad. They cause specific changes to occur in the economic or natural environment. Different policies and life forms are brought about through evolution and adaptation to conditions and circumstances. They are not the only things that could exist, but they are the ones that do exist because of other things in existence that they require, and the path of evolution. Therefore, things are neither good nor bad, positive nor negative—they just are.

The meaning of things is the meaning we humans decide to give them. Different people will assign different meanings to the same things. That's the essence of stoicism—accepting that we cannot control external events, only our responses to them. Things are neither good nor bad; only our judgments make them so.

We are often quick to cast events into moral categories. A flood is “bad.” A promotion at work is “good.” But what happens in nature and the economy is not inherently meaningful. It's the result of interactions.

To understand the world in this way is not to strip it of wonder. In fact, it may be the only way to truly appreciate it.

Trees grow. The sun rises. It rains.

A mother says the rain is bad when it falls during her family picnic at the park. A farmer says the rain is good when it waters his crops after a drought.

But the fact is, it rains sometimes. It rains because water vapor in the atmosphere cools and condenses into droplets around nucleation sites, forming clouds. As more droplets accumulate, they become heavy enough to fall to the ground due to gravity. This process is only possible because abundant water molecules exist on Earth, those water molecules are capable of existing in different states of matter at different temperatures, and the planet receives the right amount of solar energy to change the state of water cyclically.

You are reading this because you are a conscious being. In order for you to exist, an insane number of conditions and other life forms must exist. And for those life forms to exist, another unfathomably large number of conditions must exist.

You couldn't survive without plants, which make the oxygen you need. Plants couldn't survive without the laws of physics and chemical reactions involving a good chunk of the periodic table. But you do exist. And so do plants. And a myriad of other living organisms and non-living matter. It has to be this way. Life has to coevolve. Random mutations bring forth changes in living organisms. If these changes produce a viable being with different characteristics, many other organisms will adapt in response. The adjacent possible expands—and the process iterates.

A long history of these changes has ultimately led to your existence. You, like kittens, forest ecosystems, the stock market, and consciousness, are an emergent phenomenon.

Emergence is when complex things, patterns, properties, or behaviors arise from simple interactions among individual parts of a system, without a central plan or controller. These outcomes cannot be fully predicted by analyzing the individual parts. Complexity arises out of a simple set of rules. Emergence shows how whole systems can exhibit qualities that none of their components possess on their own.

Watermelon

Take a watermelon. It looks simple, but it's the result of a complex web of relationships.

Watermelons exist because the conditions are such that watermelons can exist. There's a hydrological cycle that brings rain. Nutrients in the soil come from fungi and microorganisms breaking down organic matter. Solar energy provides the plant's leaves with the low-entropy energy to carry out photosynthesis. Carbon dioxide in the air from geologic and human activity is present at the right concentration. Honeybees and other insects are attracted to the scent of nectar on watermelon flowers. In getting this nectar, the bees pick up pollen grains from one flower and deposit them on others, allowing the watermelon plant to produce a fruit with seeds that it uses to reproduce.

Humans find the fruit quite tasty, and they have the knowledge and ability to plant watermelon seeds to produce more fruit. They create LLCs to sell watermelons, roads and trucks to transport them to grocery stores, and recipes online to make fruit salad.

These conditions allow watermelons to exist in vast numbers. Without any one of these prerequisite conditions, watermelons would not exist as we know them. Watermelons are neither good nor bad; they just are. They arose from a long chain of events that led to the evolution of all the necessary conditions for them to be.

This dynamic extends beyond fruit and flower. It stretches into the tangled web of economies and societies.

In the natural world, the rule is adaptation. Life does not proceed according to a plan. It proceeds because of what is possible.

The same is true of economies and institutions. A policy does not come into being because it is good. It arises because it fits. It adapts to the pressures and needs of the moment. A government subsidy, a new form of taxation, a banking regulation—these are not moral artifacts. They are results. They emerge because other things are in place to support their emergence.

Think of the rise of fossil fuels. Coal and oil became dominant not because they were good, but because they were abundant, cheap, and humans figured out how to use them to bring about changes they wanted. They were useful in a world that wanted industrial production, fast transportation, and cheap energy. This usefulness gave rise to entire systems—railways, factories, and suburbs. Fossil fuels made them possible.

Now the conditions are shifting. New technologies, climate pressures, and political incentives are beginning to support renewable energy. Not because it is morally superior—though many argue that it is—but because the system has changed, and something else now fits better.

The world does not choose what is good. It evolves what is possible.

Niches

Every plant exists because the conditions are such that the plant can exist in its ecosystem. It can get the right amount of sunlight, water, and nutrients, fight off pests and disease, and reproduce within the limits of what's possible in that ecosystem.

An ecological niche describes how an organism or population responds to the distribution of resources. Organisms occupying that niche not only survive, they alter the conditions of other niches. For example, a cherry tree produces flowers that provide nectar for bees, which pollinate the plant. When pollinated, the flowers develop into fruit that serves as food for birds. Those birds then fly to new locations and deposit cherry seeds, allowing the tree to reproduce—if the conditions are right. If cherry trees could no longer grow there due to changing conditions, it might be harder for both bees and birds to survive. And if the birds disappeared, it would be difficult for their predators to survive.

There could be hundreds of factors or more that go into creating a niche in which something can survive. The habitat itself is critical. If a wetland is drained and a new apartment complex is built upon it, all of the species that relied on that wetland—the frogs, turtles, cattails, herons, cypress trees, etc—will either have to move or die. The prior habitat is destroyed, and a new one is created—a habitat for humans.

The new apartment habitat not only brings in humans, dogs, and cats, but also invites a new set of species that are suited for that niche. Generalist species move in, such as raccoons, rats, pigeons, house sparrows, and starlings. These animals thrive in human-modified environments with food waste and artificial shelter. Invasive plant species, like kudzu, English ivy, or Japanese knotweed, often replace native wetland plants due to soil disturbance and landscape modification. Mosquitoes and flies may increase because their natural predators are gone.

Some people will view these changes as a sign of human progress. Others will see it as an ecological disaster. Neither is truth. The reality is that humans have altered the habitat and conditions of the ecosystem, which has allowed some species to move in and thrive, and caused others to die.

I live in an area that's being developed rapidly. Giant earth-moving equipment is bulldozing thousands of acres of native desert ecosystems. This affects not only the habitat that's been destroyed, but also nearby habitats. There's a new sign at a trailhead where I run in a protected desert reserve. It urges trailgoers to report raven nests so that they can be destroyed. Why? Because:

Although ravens are native to the Mojave Desert, expanding populations threaten the desert tortoise. Trash, human-made water features, and utility towers allow raven populations to grow and spread beyond their natural size and range.

This is an example of how human impact has changed the conditions of the surrounding ecosystem, allowing one species to increase in population, which threatens the population of another.

Ecosystems with higher biodiversity tend to be more resilient. If a new species comes into a diverse ecosystem, it's unlikely to take over since it will probably have many predators that keep the population in check. However, low biodiversity tends to invite opportunistic species that multiply rapidly. A monocultural wheat field serves as a high-energy buffet for locusts, who can quickly reproduce without predators.

Economics as Ecosystem

An economy is not a machine, it's an ecosystem. It grows and shrinks. It feeds on inputs and responds to change. It is made of human wants and natural limits. And like a forest or a river, it does not ask our permission to change. It changes based on interconnected inputs and conditions.

We call a recession “bad.” We call a boom “good.” But both are movements in the same cycle. One leads to the other. This is not to say that these events have no consequences. They do. People lose jobs. Prices rise. But the meaning of these events is not inherent. We give it meaning.

A market crash is not evil, and a wildfire is not a disaster. They are changes. They are symptoms of systems pushed beyond a tipping point, or of imbalances correcting themselves.

In this sense, both economics and the environment operate under the same logic: a logic of conditions, of cause and effect, of thresholds, feedback loops, and tipping points. Not of right and wrong. The sooner we understand this, the sooner we can bring about the changes we wish to see.

So Judgy

We are meaning-makers. We look at the world and want to know what it means. We want to know someone is in charge and that they will do a good job. We want to believe that things happen for a reason.

But nature does not care about our stories. The wind does not care if it blows down a home or cools a child on a hot summer day. It only moves from high pressure to low.

An economy doesn't care what you think about the government, taxes, environmental protection policies, or how much you have invested in the latest tech stocks. It only shifts according to changes brought about by human action or environmental changes and conditions.

This does not mean we should not care. It does not mean we should not act. But it means that our actions should come from an understanding of the interconnectedness of all things, and that our actions have both intended and unforeseen consequences.

Change the World

The point here is that, as conscious beings, we can decide how to act. We determine what we do in the world, individually and collectively, with the intention of bringing about specific results. But we don't think it into existence. We can only alter some of the conditions that allow something to be brought about. This is true in economics and in the natural environment.

If you don't like something and want it to be different, figure out the conditions that make that thing or situation possible, then act to change those conditions rather than the thing itself.

Sometimes, altering conditions has very little effect on anything else. And sometimes altering other conditions has massive effects. Many systems we are part of are complex systems. These are systems that have extreme sensitivity to initial conditions and positive feedback loops. There are certain high-leverage variables in these systems that, if altered, would have cascading impacts and dramatic effects on other variables. And some changes don't make much of a difference to other parts of the system because they may run into negative feedback loops or their magnitude isn't large enough to reach a tipping point.

If Apple makes its new iPhone with a square edge instead of a round one, society doesn't change much. But if Steve Jobs had never met Steve Wozniak or had never started Apple, the way we communicate, get information, make payments, and relate to each other might be entirely different—not to mention billions of dollars of global trade and 401k retirement plans.

Social and political change, like anything else, depends on conditions. Research by Erica Chenoweth found that when just 3.5% of a population actively participates in nonviolent protest, it’s often enough to shift the system. It’s not about how right or wrong the cause is—it’s about numbers, timing, and pressure. When the conditions are right, even a small group can make a big difference. Change doesn’t happen because it should; it happens because the conditions are such that human actions lead to cascading effects. Belief alone has no effect. We must act.

If we want our efforts to have a significant impact, we need to focus on doing things that affect lots of other things. We need to use leverage. Focus on things that have a domino effect. Think big, act small.

Natural ecosystems have a massive impact on nearly everything humans do. We are not separate from nature. We are a part of it. We influence it, and are influenced by it. If human economies, culture, and health are to thrive, then nature must thrive.

The emergent phenomenon of human civilization has dramatically altered natural ecosystems. Land, water, and atmospheric gases have been altered. Many species have lost their habitats and gone extinct. Many of us would call these things bad. But it's useful to think of them as results of changing conditions.

For example, the Holocene epoch (roughly the last 11,700 years) introduced a stable planetary climate. This allowed the beginning of agriculture, which allowed human populations to grow. This led to an increase in agricultural demand, and more forests were cut down to make room for fields of crops. The species living in the forest either died or migrated somewhere else. Downstream consequences continue to occur.

Understanding the dynamics of nature's interconnections is important for influencing it in the direction we desire. Biodiversity is the variety of life on Earth—plants, animals, fungi, and microorganisms—and the ecosystems they form. Healthy ecosystems rely on diverse species working together. A condition of high biodiversity has a high degree of resilience. A proliferation of a new species can be kept in check by predator-prey and decomposition-recycling dynamics. In monoculture farms of low biodiversity, there are no biological checks and balances to stop an invasion of pests. In U.S. cornfields, corn rootworms thrive because the uniform environment makes it easy for them to feed and reproduce. Human-created conditions favor pests when ecological balance is lost.

Understanding these complex systems, we can work within them to build systems that allow us to both get what we want and allow nature to flourish. When nature flourishes, so does humanity. That's leverage.

Watermelon Again

Return to the watermelon. Cut it open. The flesh is red and sweet. There are black seeds, and a scent that reminds you of summer. It's a product of a million little conditions coming together in just the right way.

It could just as easily not be. A drought could have dried the soil. A frost could have killed the flower. The bees might have died from pesticide exposure. The farmer may have decided to grow radishes instead.

And yet, here it is.

If we can see the watermelon in this way—not as good, not as bad, but as the result of conditions—then perhaps we can learn to see other things this way, too.

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This way of thinking does not lead to apathy. It leads to attentiveness. To see the world not as a ledger of moral balances, but as a living web of interactions, is to learn to pay attention to cause and consequence.

When we stop asking whether something is good or bad, we can begin to ask better questions:

What made this possible? What does it lead to? What actions can we take to get the desired result? What other effects might those actions have?

Everything that exists exists because something else made it possible. No event or thing is isolated.

To live with this understanding is not an excuse for nihilism. It is to become aware of how things came to be, and how your actions influence the universe.

You plant a seed, not because it is moral, but because you know it will grow if the conditions are right. And that eventual tree will provide you with fruit and shade on a sunny day. It will create a beautiful place for picnics and a tire swing for your kids, and a place to live for generations of songbirds and squirrels.

If it grows, it grows. And if it does not...

Not good. Not bad.

Just the way of things.

Don't despair about the way things are. They are that way because of conditions. Things will change. And if you want, you can be a catalyst for the change you wish to see in the world. You can't change everything, but you can change something. And that can change something else.

A thing is because everything it depends upon is.

Not good, not bad.

But damn...

How beautiful.

Questions for you:

• What is something you view as "bad," and what conditions enable that behavior, policy, or species to exist? And how might you be a catalyst for the change you want to see?

• What small, focused actions could you take that might create leveraged ripple effects in your community or ecosystem?

• If nothing is inherently good or bad, how do you decide what is worth working toward or protecting?

Author's request:

In this article, I tried to be a little more poetic compared to my typical ruthless factualism. Ironic, right? Maybe it's the Wendell Berry I've been reading. Do you like this more poetic style?