When we think about ecology, we think about home.

I am a fan of recognizing the fact that we are aware of what goes on around us but at the same time there are things going on that we never realize.  Our realization that home means different things to different people is a good example.  What we don't realize is that there is a certain way in which we think of home and organize our lives around it that is beyond our own personal notion of 'home'.

Oikos is the Greek word for house, which could then be expanded to understand home.  From oikos we get the latinate prefix eco- which is relating to those things around us which make home.  Ecology, the branch of science which deals with living organisms in relationship to their surroundings; economy, the disposition or regulation of the parts or functions of any organic whole, or an organized system or method.  Ecology and Economy act as two structures in which we, as humans, think about our home.  The relationship that we have between our surroundings and living organisms, and the exchanges that are present as an ordering system present in those structures provide most of what we need to know when we think about home.

Social structures which frame ecology or economy forget that the two insist each other when we think of home: ecology and economy.  We, modern animals of 30-second lattes and outsourced calendar keepers, seem to forget that home is both our interaction with our surroundings and how we order those interactions.  What we must remember in structuring our world that we carry with us values which need expression through close relationship.  A relationship understood as intimacy between ourselves and other humans; between ourselves and our immediate surroundings; between ourselves and the our resources; and especially in an intimacy with our own thoughts.  Reconciling our inner thoughts is the first step to reconciling ourselves with our oikos.  Until we recognize, within ourselves, what we want home to be we will not be able to manage its maintenance; in the case of ecology, we will be unable to steward its creation.

In a similar vein I see the loss of home as something which is unimaginable.  I think of those who have lost their physical homes to natural disasters.  They are devastated and nearly paralyzed by the concept that one must continue, either rebuilding their old home or making one anew.  There are lessons to be learned about our stewardship of ecological systems from those whose homes have been lost.  The greif that is felt is concrete and the steps they take to managing that greif are real and present.  That is the same greif that we are starting to feel about the loss of control over our own ecological systems.  But, like slowly rising flood waters our home is being lost room by room at the moment.  We have not yet been forced to action because some parts of our home still maintain their veneer.  The paint has yet to start peeling however, there is a black mold growing between amongst the plaster.