Suzanne Simard of the Dept. of Forest Sciences at the University of British Columbia has a delightful short video reporting that multi-species forests are connected in complex communicative networks with “mother trees” serving as the nodes in these networks. Her faculty page lists publications for those so interested.

More and more the utter bankruptcy, both moral and scientific, let alone aesthetic, of the currently dominant competitive individualistic model of the world and everything in it, including ourselves, is showing everywhere we take the time to look. In the human world a system based on such an outlook seems to elevate sociopaths and psychopaths above all others in the effort to dominate others. The current Republican leadership is an excellent case in point, and the Democrats do not seem a great deal better.  But it is proving itself unable to maintain the best of modernity and unable to preserve the world in which it depends.

Hopefully science and genuine spirituality as well as many people’s common decency can yet move events in a better direction.