So tonight I just saw the Lion King in 3D, and there was a quote in the beginning of the movie, when Mufasa is telling Simba about the “Circle of Life,” and it instantly made me think of the “Mesh” which Morton describes in the Ecological Thought, and how we are all interconnected. Now, though the Lion considers himself the “King” of everything the sun touches, he recognizes that everything needs and depends on everything else. We, as “humans” can relate, even to the idea of being “King,” because lets face it....we think we own this world. So here is the wisdom of Mufasa:
Mufasa: Everything you see exists together in a delicate balance. As king, you need to understand that balance, and respect all the creatures, from the crawling ant to the leaping antelope.
Simba: But dad, don't we eat the antelope?
Mufasa: Yes, Simba, but let me explain. When we die, our bodies become the grass, and the antelope eat the grass. And so we are all connected in the great Circle of Life.
I think that this circular explanation, one many of us grew up with, leaves a little to be desired when we are talking about Morton's mesh. The explanation of ecology in a circular model makes it easy for us to understand the step by step cycle that it represents. The lion dying and becoming the grass that gets eaten by the antelope ignores all the more complex relationships that ultimately create the mesh. Overgrazing, drought, over-hunting, competition, deforestation, decomposers do not exist in this circle, which is why Morton created the concept of the mesh, a way to connect, and interconnect, endlessly the links between beings. Of course for a children's musical "circle of life" sounds more melodious. However, at a certain point I think we need to realize that like everything else, it is far more complicated than Disney made it seem.
ReplyDeleteIt obviously is more complicated than the explanation that Mufasa gave to Simba, but the thing that makes this significant is that he was saying that we all are interconnected in some way, so in essence, what we do can have an affect on the next person (or in this case the antelope). So I think that the importance of the simplicity of the statement is not to say, “Fix all the overgrazing, droughts, over-hunting, competition, deforestation, and decomposers,” but rather, just to plant the seed in one’s mind that we all are interconnected in some way, and we don’t just get to plow through the world thinking we can do whatever we want to it because we may have an element of control.
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