{"id":21811,"date":"2016-09-24T08:58:07","date_gmt":"2016-09-24T13:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21811"},"modified":"2016-09-24T08:58:07","modified_gmt":"2016-09-24T13:58:07","slug":"survival-in-different-terms-a-healthy-ecosystem-is-not-based-on-survival-of-the-fittest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=21811","title":{"rendered":"Survival in Different Terms: A Healthy Ecosystem is Not Based on Survival of the Fittest"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/permaculturenews.org\/2016\/09\/23\/survival-different-terms-healthy-ecosystem-not-based-survival-fittest\/\">SURVIVAL IN DIFFERENT TERMS: A HEALTHY ECOSYSTEM IS NOT BASED ON SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"post-meta\">As I\u2019m working my way through and around\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.geofflawtononline.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Geoff Lawton\u2019s online PDC course<\/a>, I\u2019m pulling out all sorts of nuggets, things that spur my thoughts or twist a smile onto my face. It\u2019s great to hear about familiar ideas in a new light and to feel inspired once more with all the possibilities permaculture presents and all the possibilities to present permaculture.<\/div>\n<p>Somewhere near the beginning of the course, caught in the midst of a closing summary, Lawton said something that really resonated with me:\u00a0It\u2019s not survival of the fittest but survival of the most cooperative.\u00a0The idea seemed simple enough to me, not overly off-course to how I\u2019ve come to approach design, but it was just a moment where I felt the need to explore that trail of thought. Then, I thought you, dear readers, might like to, too.<\/p>\n<p><strong>STRAIGHT TO THE GARDEN<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Immediately with the notion of survival through cooperation, I\u2019m taken to the garden and the notion of guilds, including the wildlife (or domestic animals) that function within them. I\u2019ve never liked the survival of the fittest mentality, but it never occurred to me just how far away from it a permaculture garden is operating. It doesn\u2019t take much investigating to realize success in the garden comes from cooperation much more than domination.<\/p>\n<p>Guilds are, in essence, the opposite of survival of the fittest. The whole idea is to not compete but rather to thrive in cooperation, with root structures feeding form different sources on different dietary elements. Each plant in the combination is providing its own contributions that benefit the other plants. Animals come in and find comfortable habitats, often in rockeries or logs, under leaves or in the trees, that have been designed in for them specifically, and they feed on pests, turn the soil, fertilize, and contribute.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SURVIVAL IN DIFFERENT TERMS: A HEALTHY ECOSYSTEM IS NOT BASED ON SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST As I\u2019m working my way through and around\u00a0Geoff Lawton\u2019s online PDC course, I\u2019m pulling out all sorts of nuggets, things that spur my thoughts or twist a smile onto my face. It\u2019s great to hear about familiar ideas in a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1131,11500,622,14373],"class_list":["post-21811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-ecosystem","tag-jonathon-engels","tag-permaculture","tag-survival-of-the-fittest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21811"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21812,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21811\/revisions\/21812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}