Green - 10/16/22

    Evan Eisenberg's The Ecology of Eden was the subject of me and my classmate's presentation projects, and I could not help but notice a theme that started in Chapter 1 and carried forwards. The presence of "allied species", or species that provided us a certain benefit, and the non-allied species that came alongside and were detrimental to us in some fashion. 

    I started by explaining how in my chapters, Eisenberg presented the way humans live alongside each other as a sort of giant human body. In our bodies, mites live in our eyelashes, gut bacteria thrives in our digestive tracts, and certain bacteria in saliva break down food. We exist as a habitat for many other species that benefit off of us, and that provide benefit for us. Alongside these, however, the gut bacteria can grow out of control due to certain illnesses or medication, making us sick. Staph, which naturally lives on our skin, can cause lesions and infections, and worsen illnesses such as pneumonia. We must take the bad alongside the good. 

    Now, Eisenberg takes this fact of life and multiplies it, looking at the way our bodies live closely alongside each other. The tightly-knit way of living in urban areas, the heat from infrastructure, and the close contact we come into with each other create the perfect ecosystem for pathogens that would normally live and die within a single person to spread. What once was a flu alone in your home, becomes an epidemic that spreads to your neighbors, to your neighbors friends, to their family from out of town, etc. The good that comes with living closer also means that we harbor more areas where disease can thrive. But is this a bad thing? For us it is most definitely a bad thing. But from the points of views of animals that can enter now-empty homes and eat the food? For plants whose natural habitats were mowed down to create unused golf courses? Eisenberg encourages looking at our way of life in a different light, stressing that what may seem as a bad thing to us is entirely subjective. An entire world exists that can benefit from our actions, or lack thereof. 

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