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The Swiss Army Knife Syndrome

Commentary

As humans, we like diversity. More places to eat, more ways to get there, a diverse

population of people to see and just as much land to meet them on. However, we have been

fostering a kind of anti-diversity sentiment that is quickly degrading not how we live, but

what we live on. Biodiversity is simply nature and all of her intricacies that make up the

forests, oceans, jungles and, on the macro level, our entire world. This diversity is critical to

our success as humans and the worlds success at, well, being the world. If biodiversity

became singular, the world would cease to exist because there would not be enough

intertwining ecosystems to support life. Consequently, humans have been moving toward

this singular mono-diverse planet by dipping their hands in deforestation, extinction and

technological revolutions.

Biodiversity is superficially all of the worlds natural actions that humans take for

granted. It rains in the midst of a drought because somewhere, some ecosystem has been

producing rain clouds to send over as life rafts. Going on a hike it is obvious that

biodiversity exists within the constant chatter of North Americas deciduous forests.

Humans are so fortunate to live with so much life, but constantly fail to make conscious

moves to save this life. Deforestation is quickly tearing down the prehistoric roots that hold

this system in place. Without natural homes, animals have a hard time reproducing and

furthering our biodiversity. This is only one small example, globally there are more

problems leading to the extinction of biodiversity that its hard to focus on any one issue.

Why? A great question, but one with a diverse set of answers. Humans are

destroying their environment for a number of reasons. There is limited space and resources

on this planet and in humans relatively short existence weve become greedy resource

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mongers. Anything that can display our opulence is a must have, money being the top

example, but also goods. The more, fast red sports cars I can pack in my garage the more

positive attention Ill receive from my neighbors. We want to feel good as humans but we

need to do it in a less environmentally harmful manner. Aside from our manifest destiny

to own all resources, weve created an underlying complex that usurps biodiversity on a

subliminal level.

No one is intentionally bad mouthing biodiversity because its understood that we

would not be faring to well without it. Yet, we do little more than stare at what biodiversity

has to offer instead of helping to heal its pinched wings. At our very core, humans crave

one thing simplicity. Why else would we have computers that can now perform hundreds

of tasks that required ten separate machines just a few years ago? Physicists are constantly

searching for the one theory that unifies all life, which would superficially simplify all life

into just one theorem. Where does this drive to create products that inherently do

everything come from?

The Swiss Army Knife. Not directly, but there is a large connection between this

simple device and our goal, as humans, to simplify everything. Almost everyone has, or has

heard of, the Swiss Army Knife. Its convenient, can do multiple things and puts all of the

outdoor cutlery into one small package. In essence this knife, or should I sayknives, is the

perfect simplification of diversity that once existed in our backpacks, as many different

knives and tools, now modified to fit into one hand-held package. Extrapolating this onto

society, this need for simplicity can be called the Swiss Army Knife Syndrome (SAKS).

Everything humans have created follows SAKS because no invention is finished until it can

consume all inventions that can logically be intertwined within the original innovation.

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There is no better paradigm for this than the iPhone. With that one device, thousands of

tasks are possible and thousands more are created each day to simplifythe way we live.

SAKS goes much further into human cognition that just simplifying the way we live.

On its most basic level it forces humans to look for shortcuts that are not naturally possible.

A small example would be a town, which is expanding at a rapid level and needs more space,

resources and waste removal. Deforestation starts in an effort to make more space, the trees

are then used to build houses and the small stream nearby is used to provide hydroelectric

power while also carrying waste downstream. Great, weve killed at least four birds with one

stone, but the repercussions of creating a natural Swiss Army Knife are yet realized. Life

incorporates biodiversity because it is essential life, our life; it is not a complex math formula

that can be divided out with no remainders.

Yet, humans constantly try to plug all the variables into this equation that will simply

our expansion, use of resources and somehow benefit the earth. In most cases life does not

work like this. Life needs seemingly small insignificant creatures to feed the larger ones or

produce waste that helps plants grow. By eliminating or taking a shortcut past just one of

these creatures weve simplified the process and intrinsically defaced the way it was intended

to work. Our earth and her ecosystems have been around quite a bit longer than our sparse

existence, yet weve convinced ourselves that we can do a better job of governing these

ecosystems for the earth. For humans this means SAKS, a need to simplify the earths

complex workings so that we dont have to focus on so many things at once.

On the one hand is our predisposed need to simplify things into one quantifiable

and manageable process and on the other is our assumption that we can run the world better

than whomever is currently the worlds CEO. This combination does not bode well for our

existence because we are biting off much more than we can possibly chew. We have enough

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problems just trying to reverse the repercussions of our mere existence. We should not start

trying to simplify how the earth itself works. SAKS speaks to our inherent need to put

things in order; an efficient, simplified order that just like the search engine did for the

Internet, physicists unified theory will do for life. Maybe its time to step off our pedestal,

though, take a look around and realize just how well biodiversity is doing without our

interference, but even that comes at a challenge when our massively clumsy is already in

everyones pudding.