We were visiting a friend yesterday.
She was telling us, slightly stunned, about a group of people nearby who are teaching how to plant trees and plants in a very specific way — in bundles, in a certain order.
Only then, they said, each plant could fully unfold.
I found myself nodding, but also hesitating.
Because, of course — this is what you see in every forest.
In every ecosystem untouched by us.
Nothing stands alone.
Nothing is randomly placed.
Things grow into and alongside each other, in relationships we don’t fully understand — but that clearly work.
Her enthusiasm stayed with me.
This sense of discovery. Of learning how to assemble life so that it thrives.
And it made me wonder why this feels like something new to us.
There is a kind of order in a forest that is easy to miss.
Not because it is hidden — but because it doesn’t announce itself.
A tall tree stands there, seemingly self-contained. Solid. Independent.
But it isn’t.
It depends on what lies beneath it. And what surrounds it.
Another small tree below. On fungi, on moisture, on insects, on things too small to name.
Take one of them away, and the tall tree will eventually fall. Not immediately. But certainly.
Nothing in that forest feels hierarchical.
There is no sense that the tree is “more important” than what grows around it or below it.
Everything is precisely placed.
Everything matters.
In our societies, we’ve chosen a different way of seeing.
We rank. We elevate. We assign value.
In a bigger house, we assume more important people live than in a small one.
A doctor stands higher than a cleaner.
A professor higher than a cashier.
As if importance could be arranged in layers without consequence.
At the same time, we are the ones who remove things from the system.
We clear, extract, simplify.
We decide what is useful — and what is not.
In nature, this would be a disturbance.
In our world, it is often called progress.
But the effect is the same.
Take something out —
a species, a function, a role —
and the system begins to shift.
Quietly at first.
Then all at once.
We act as if we are outside of this.
As if the rules are different for us.
But they are not.
Nature does not argue for equality.
It practices interdependence.
It does not assign value.
It reveals it through function.
And when something is missing, it adjusts. Reorders. Finds a new balance.
Not perfectly. But persistently.
We, on the other hand, tend to hold on —
to our hierarchies, our ideas of importance, our ways of extraction —
even when the imbalance is already visible.
Maybe the question is not how to fix society.
Maybe the question is whether we are willing to see what we are part of —
and what we keep taking out of it.