These weekly notes have been designedly short, but have touched on a number of topics that share complex, overlapping, interconnected attributes. For example:

There is a widespread lack of education about nature and biodiversity, and even less education about what that means in an increasingly crowded, technologically volatile world. While this situation might seem overwhelming, that needn't prevent any steps, however modest, to improve it.

Scientific literacy seems to be in broad decline while societies (both rich and poor) with ever larger populations generate problems which require scientific analysis and response. Rather than confront a complex reality, many people easily find ways to seek refuge in denial and distraction.

The misuse of language - intentional and unintentional - has been supercharged by the internet and social media. Terms like "Artificial Intelligence", "stakeholders", "ecosystem services", and "human nature" are used to frame and control discussion. People could always pay more attention to the terms on offer, and how they came to be presented.

There are no genes for values; values are learned over more or less time. Humans are always learning...something. When it comes to values, even the most enlightened societies often seem unable to distinguish between education and indoctrination - or they might even consciously choose the latter. People can also learn how to avoid being manipulated.

Complexity itself seems to create a negative reaction in many people. Does it imply too much work? Does it take too much time? Is its open-endedness somehow threatening? Is there no money in it? Again, education will have a significant effect on a person's approach to complexity.

Given the extent of the challenges facing contemporary societies, finding steps to improve things - however small - should not really be difficult.

The confusing notion of "human nature" persists for a number of reasons. It is an effective conversation and thought stopper. The conversational factoid "human nature always finds ways to mess things up" could either introduce or end a discussion. Everyone can shrug "knowingly" and declare: "Well, that's just human nature". That's handy when you want to move a conversation on to some other topic - or divert it from a closer investigation. That's also far, far easier than coming to grips with the fact that much of what gets dismissed as "human nature" is actually learned behaviour.

Human behaviour is shaped by what individuals learn to think of as "true", "false", "fair", "right", "wrong", and so on. Scientific, evidence-based analysis is the best method humanity has developed to distinguish between what is actually true and what is actually false. Unfortunately, many groups gather to embrace stories that deny any scientific evidence that those groups have learned to think is disturbing. Can it really be called human nature to believe in myths, when so many people do not? Children are raised on stories from an early age - so it is even questionable to claim that it is human nature to think with stories. The point is that most of what is attributed to human nature is more accurately described as the product of learning.

The loose colloquial usage of the term "human nature" is similar to the misuse of other terms in everyday language. For example, people might say colloquially: "I believe in evolution". However, that is not actually a "belief" in any sense similar to a faith-based belief, or a belief in magic or the tooth fairy. Like many other words, the single word "belief" gets applied to a number of different concepts that are not really comparable. What the colloquial language obscures is that a person who says they "believe in" evolution knows and accepts the explanatory evidence - from many fields of science - for the evolution of plant and animal species. Many details of this complex interaction of multiple processes have gradually been discovered, revealing an amazing world that no simple story can possibly describe.

Is such (mis)use of language expressing confusion, or causing it? I think it is doing both, and perhaps there is a kind of "linguistic inertia" that can delay understanding as vocabulary usage lags changes in evolving concepts. When we communicate with each other, we often cannot be sure which versions of key words are assumed to be employed by each party. Of course, those who feel threatened by complexity will want to keep their internal vocabulary as restricted as possible. A simplistic belief in "human nature" can make a lot of complex problems seem to disappear.

Last week, without any reference to the history of the philosophical concept of utilitarianism, I mentioned that most of us are "trained utilitarians". By that, I mean that we seem to have learned to evaluate natural processes in terms of how "useful" they seem to us humans. It's anthropocentrism all over again. Trees are seen to be valuable because they can be sold for money that can be exchanged for...eventual happiness. Trees can be fashioned into shelter for humans. Or trees might be valuable for aesthetic reasons - they look pleasing or calming to us, or provide shade on hot days. Forests might be valuable because they can provide medicinal substances, clean water, or game to hunt. And so on...nature valued for important or essential services it can "provide" to us.

Is it "human nature" to define our surroundings in such utilitarian terms? I find the notion of "human nature" to be very confusing. It does seem to be the case that many people tend to exhibit similar behaviour in similar circumstances. Often, enough people behave in concerted ways to establish a kind of social momentum that helps perpetuate practices that other related practices evolve to depend on. But of course, other humans don't share those values and practices, and don't behave in those ways. The idea of "human nature" seems like extreme over-simplification to me.

Much of what gets shrugged off as "human nature" seems to actually be learned behaviour. People learn that it is better to "get ahead", and then they try to learn the best ways to do that given the circumstances they are living in. One obvious way is to exploit the exchange value of "natural resources". Their values are learned as part of the process. Problems arise when their values become incompatible with changing reality.

For those who are concerned about the "well-being of nature", there is a fundamental flaw in relying on utilitarian valuations of natural processes. Clean water produced by healthy ecosystems is clearly essential, but some other greater "utilitarian good" for more people (lumber, hydro power, oil drilling) can easily take precedence. The incremental effects of this social process of value construction narrow future options - both behavioural and conceptual.

From along the ridges at the top of the watershed, above timberline, I can try to imagine a valley filled with glacial ice which then melts and floods the bare slopes with huge amounts of rushing water. Silt, clay, sand, gravel and tumbled-smooth rocks are washed down to settle along the low points. Down at the outflow of the watershed, after thousands of years, a forest grows on top of all the alluvial deposition. When I look at that forest I try to remember that I am looking at a relative moment in a long, slow process - long on a human time scale. Ten thousand years ago humans hadn't yet begun to imagine feller-bunchers, or even "ecosystem services".

The mountain slopes all around the alluvial fan are presently covered in forests of mixed species, which vary by elevation and slope exposure. In the valley bottoms, starting at about 500m, among other species there are maple, birch, cottonwoods, aspen, western hemlock, yew, western red cedar, Douglas fir, Grand fir, western larch, ponderosa, white, and lodgepole pine. At higher elevations there are Englemann spruce, subalpine fir, subalpine larch and whitebark pine. It took quite a while for all those species to reach their present locations.

For one thing, perhaps 6-8 thousand years ago, and long after the glaciers melted, there was an extended period of warming in the Northern Hemisphere called the Mid-Holocene Climactic Optimum. During this time of lower precipitation and higher temperatures, there is evidence that the lower elevations of the region's valleys became grasslands. The tree species mix and extent would have been quite different from that of the present, as would the undergrowth and wildlife. You can't see complex change on these time scales when you just look at a forest.
 
As trained utilitarians, we learn that the complexity of nature is overwhelming rather than reassuring, fascinating. What's it "good for"? It's almost as if we have been asking nature: "but what have you done for us lately"? There are so many trees! We have to do something with them. We simplify, and just call them another "natural resource". Much too slowly, we are learning that utilitarian values have unintended long-term consequences that are amplified by the numbers of people who hold them.