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Hanqi (Isaac) Shao

CWR1A, Section 23
May 9, 2019
Discovering Our Role In the Web of Life

When talking about the web of life, most people probably think about the food chain – the

cycle of producers (mainly plants), consumers (herbivores and carnivores), and decomposers

(bacteria and fungi), which is the main part of the web of life. However, people often only think

about the roles of animals and plants, ignoring the resources that all lives depend on as well as

the link between our ancestors and our lives nowadays. Moreover, since humans have gotten

used to putting themselves in a superposition rather than at the same level of animals, people are

more and more likely to forget they are also an important part of the web of life. In Chapter 6 of

The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place In Nature, “Protected by Our Kin”, David Suzuki

explores the relationship between humans and the web of life. Through his analysis, I believe

that humans are an indispensable part in the web of life, and we are highly responsible for the

web of life.

We are one of the largest consumer groups ever in millions of years of the Earth’s history

-- according to scientist, we humans consume about six-hundred-million tons of food every day.

However, such a species would not be able to live on the planet without involvement of other

living species. In the introduction of Chapter Six, Suzuki uses a thought experiment to bring

readers back to “four billion years before life arose on this planet” (184). He points out that

everything our life depends on did not existed at that time. We need oxygen to breathe, while

oxygen was “released as a by-product of the capture of sunlight” (184) through photosynthesis,

but there would not be oxygen produced if plants did not exist. We need water to maintain our

life, but the poisoning heavy metals and other dangerous ingredients of salty water could not be

filtered by plants roots or other microorganisms as there was nothing alive at that time. We need
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food to restore energy, but there were no animals or plants for us to eat. We need soil to grow

food, but the organisms whose carcasses would “mix with the matrix of clay, sand and gravel”

(184) to form soil after their death did not existed. We also need warmth to keep us alive, but

there were no fuel or oxygen for us to burn. Through the imaginary journey, Suzuki successfully

emphasizes to readers that every living species that has existed on the Earth has contributed to

the environmental condition of today. Therefore, readers can easily see that “no single species is

indispensable, but the totality of all life-forms maintains the fecundity of Earth” (185).

Biodiversity is also an important part in creating the environment today. By asserting the

significance of all the living species that have existed on Earth, Suzuki opens his arguments

about the web of life, which we humans are never independent of.

Life replenishes the resources that we need to live, and so does death. Suzuki claims that

“life and death are a balanced pair,” which is totally opposite to “humanity’s age-old dream of

eternal life” (185). His attitude towards the dream of eternity and the fear of death is strong: he

claims that it is “strangely ironic” and compares it to “an evolutionary straitjacket” (185). Just

like straitjackets constrain prisoners’ bodies and limbs, the dream of eternal life ties up the

chances of evolution of life because it stops the natural selections of different genes - mutated or

original -- caused by changes of the environment (the gene types which adapt the change would

survive and pass on to allow their descendants to continue, while others would die out). The

plants, animals, microorganisms even humans today are the individuals that live and adapt to the

environment, and genes play an important role in their adaption. Using the vivid metaphor,

readers can see how the dream of eternal life eliminates millions of probabilities of evolution,

and if the dream were true for the earliest cells, humans would not even have had the chance to

evolve from prokaryotes, needless to say dominate the world. In fact, all those more than seven
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million or more living species that we can see today are the result of natural selection. By forcing

readers to consider the consequences brought by the old dream, Suzuki persuades them to admit

the effect of the flexibility that death brings with the adaptation to changing conditions,

reinforcing the fact that “individual mortality enables species to survive” (185) in millions of

years. Suzuki asks reader to consider the rules of life and death in natural world that have formed

and been self-revising over billions of years, which human should respect.

After claiming the importance of the contribution of every living species on Earth and the

value of their death, Suzuki arrives at his key point in this chapter, which is life forms depend on

each other, and every species that has existed on Earth are interconnected through the life cycle.

Plants depend on specific insect species to pollinate them, fish move through
the vast expanses of the ocean feeding and being fed upon by other species,
and birds migrate halfway around the world to raise their young on the brief
explosion of insect population in the Arctic. Together, all species make up one
immense web of interconnections that binds all beings to each other and to the
physical components of the planet (186).

Using these examples, Suzuki draws lines from species to species, and a web of life is gradually

imagining by readers. He has pointed out the importance of biodiversity in the introduction of

this chapter and it is representation in this huge web as well. We humans incline to ignore

biodiversity because we are used to focus on the animals we have domesticated, as they bring us

benefits -- a food supply and economic income. However, without diverse living species, the

web would be much smaller, and each extinction of whole species would totally tear the web

apart (186). For example, if there were only one bird species and all of the birds die out, there

would be no predator for insects and the population of insects would explode and cause great

damage to most of other species. But biodiversity provides the high elasticity for the web, so

most living species are still linked even if a few species die out. However, considering the
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extinction of species nowadays, Suzuki raises a question that humans should reconsider: Is that

caused by human activities?

With industrialization and the exponential growth of population, and habitat loss and

pollution, humans have become more and more damaging to the web of life. We are like

emperors of the natural world, restricting the living area of wild nature to keep species away

from us. We have formed our own unique ecosystem, the city, where humans hold absolute

control of the entire environment. Many people, including the readers, may think that we are

superior to other living species in the web.

But Suzuki points out that many animals who have advantages far beyond humans’

reach: the ability of dogs to recognize the information left by chemical signatures, the ability of

insects to react with pheromone, the ability of crabs to sense weather changes, the ability of bats

to detect high-pitched sound and seismic communication of elephants as well as the ability of

rattlesnakes to see infrared. Besides, humans often ignore the living world beneath soil which

contains an “estimated two thirds of Earth’s biodiversity” (120). As a geneticist, he points out

that “we are blind to the microscopic life from its number to its variety in a single drop of pond

or ocean water or a pinch of soil” (189), needless to say the miniature organisms on Earth.

Through these examples, Suzuki leads readers to think about the invisible world that humans do

not generally see, reminding readers that humans have not dominated everything in the natural

world, although we regard ourselves to be the master of the planet. But is it reasonable for us to

view ourselves in such position while our perception is so restricted compared with other

species? Suzuki leaves the seed of self-questioning to every reader, hiding his criticism of the

arrogance of humans.
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As a former genetic researcher, Suzuki holds a negative view towards genetic

experiments aimed at “improving” the natural world to meet our requirements. Suzuki states his

concern that the by-product of genetic techniques is unpredictable and tries to persuade readers

that people should slow down the pace of applying these techniques. In his opinion, “a gene is

part of a greater, integrated whole”, and “we are just beginning to tease apart and reveal” the

network of genes, which should be treated more carefully because “we don’t know how to

incorporate” the gene we change “into a new, more complete understanding” while “genes exist

in networks, interactive networks which have a logic of their own” (191). It is important that he

warns about unpredictable by-product might brought by manipulating gene because “industrial

folks don’t deal with these networks” when they are blind by economic interest. For example, the

twin sisters whose genes was edited by Qianqui He have been proved that they get rid of HIV

while they may lose immunity of other disease significantly. When he gets the “desired

characteristics,” the editing also “produces changes in the cell or the organism as a whole that are

unpredictable” (191). However, he was not prepared for the unpredictable by-product, nor did his

team who were aiming for economic interest care. Thus, the unpredictable result would not be

dealt with properly. Moreover, if the genes that have been edited are passing to next generation

without regulation, no one has any idea about the consequences could be brought to human

species even the whole natural world. Therefore, humans need to treat application of genetic

techniques and the results of experiments more careful when we explore the invisible world.

Through Suzuki’s systematic analysis and strong argument, we can draw the conclusion

that humans play one of the most important roles in the food of web, and that is the reason why

we need to recognize our position in the web of life, and then take responsibility of it to protect

our natural world and every living species.

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Work Cited

Suzuki, David, et al. The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature, Vancouver:

Greystone Books, 2007