Life Out of Balance

I have been searching for weeks to find this video (see end of blog) after we watched a clip from Coppola's "Koyaanisqatsi." Several of the class members said that the cars moving on the video with their headlights and taillights looked like blood going through the body. Ever since Dr. Pace told us that the title meant "life out of balance," I've been thinking about it. I've thought about how our urban sprawl on the movie did look like the vascular system of our bodies, and it made me wonder if humans are the newest heart of the Earth, pumping populations, pollution, and technology instead of blood. Being a "tree hugger" as one of my high school teachers affectionately named me, I tend to think pessimistically when I consider how out of balance we are. If we are the heart and veins on the planet, then we're probably a cancerous organ. Maybe we're the enlarged heart which will eventually destroy itself. This makes me think of Edward Abbey's quote: "Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."



After watching "The Virus Hunters: It's Alive!" on the National Geographic Channel, I wonder if another species could have taken our place in some ways. The documentary is all about how viruses have altered life and actually sped up the process of evolution. Some findings of theirs were sheep which were not able to carry offspring to term without a certain virus, and rodents that were promiscuous and which happen to be just one virus away from behaving exactly like their monogamous cousins. The researches found that the males in one species of vole would mate until they killed themselves. Animal Plant actually has footage from "Animals Behaving Badly"of the little exhausted critters falling out of the trees and twitching on the ground, then going stiff-legged on their tiny backs. The cousin mated for life. The difference was a virus enabling receptors in the brain to function similar to the human brain in terms of its complex emotions. By giving the virus to the ever-mating vole, he became like the monogamous vole.



So, if another species had developed a different virus, would they in fact have been more emotional, devoted, and moody than humans? Maybe. I just wonder if an evolutionary virus gave us the privilege of being the Earth's heart and veins. Since it may have been a virus that developed us into what we are, then maybe we are indeed also the disease.



My point is that I hope we can find balance, because I do not feel like we have balance in the world. Maybe technology will allow us to find ways to achieve a better harmony with the planet and all its inhabitants. Maybe the next genetically mutating virus will actually make us care that we have life out of balance.

(DNA image from: www.3dscience.com)
(Vole image from: www.bio.davidson.edu)
(Brian scan from: www.nyas.org)
(Virus image from: www.guardian.co.uk)


Check out the viral/genetically altered playboy rats: