There are many parallels I can draw between how animals behave and how human economics, marketing and politics work. Seth Godin’s book ‘The Dip’ explains how to be good animals. In actual fact, it’s about how to be a successful person but the principles are the same. From an ecosystem conservationWhy is animal conservation important? Animal conservation is important, because animals are the only mechanism to create biodiversity, which is the mechanism that creates a habitable planet for humans. Without animals, the energy from today’s plants (algae, trees, flowers etc) will eventually reach the atmosphere and ocean, much of it as carbon. The quantity of this plant-based waste is so More perspective, the rules make sense when we accept that our species cannot be master at everything.
About Seth Godin’s ‘The Dip’
Godin’s book is about knowing when to quit and when to press ahead. He identifies three curves, ‘the dip’, ‘the cul-de-sac’ and ‘the cliff. Both the latter are paths to failure and the dip is key to success but requires pushing through to become specialised, scarce and of value. The trick is knowing which path you’re on and when to quit. Successful people quit before they fail.
‘The Dip’ and humans as animals
Godin’s ‘dip’ is about people in an economy but what he’s talking about are different ‘species’ of profession. That might be the best law firms, baristas, mechanics or supermarkets. The word ‘eco’ in economy comes from the greek Oikos meaning the units that have to work together, to make a family function(Of an ecosystem). A subset of ecosystem processes and structures, where the ecosystem does something that provides an ecosystem service of value to people. More. It’s no coincidence that the word ecosystem starts with the same three letters.
In order to be successful, both as a species and to avoid falling off the cliff, so to speak, we have to quit now and reinvent our approach.
We presume (wrongly) that humans can dominate ecosystems but we can’t. We don’t have skills to specialise in everything. Humans can’t manage the ocean because we don’t have gills. We can’t fulfil the role of a dung beetle because we don’t eat poo. I doubt anyone would disagree with me on that.
Our species acts like a ‘jack of all trades but master of none’. That’s not good. The consequence is that we create a uniform approach to land and ocean use at the expense of every other species. Mediocrity, as Godin explains, is the path to failure.
How to be good animals and avoid the cliff
Among the reasons people don’t quit before falling off the cliff, is fear of abandoning rusted-on assumptions about the way things have always worked. It strikes me that the way we treat ecosystems is rife with mediocrity. It’s doomed to failure and humanity is heading towards one of Godin’s cliffs. The problem is that our species has unwittingly assumed that we are the best in the world when, without wildlife, we are only just ‘good enough’.
Most animals in an ecosystem fulfil very specific roles. Just like in an economy, not everyone is the best but our society depends on having a diversity of specialists in the family, in order to function properly. If we got rid of all the most experienced banking CEOs tomorrow, we would face an ‘eco[nomy]’ crisis, in the same way as we will face an ‘eco[system]’ crisis if we lose all the world’s tuna, elephants or reef fish you might never have heard of.
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How many animals does an ecosystem need? The results may surprise you.
How many animals does an ecosystem need? There is an article on the Australian Academy of Science blog titled ‘What would happen if a fish went extinct on the Great…
How ‘the Dip’ can help us avoid extinction
By explaining how to be successful, Seth Godin’s ‘The Dip’ also explains how to be good animals and gives us a new way to see our role on Earth. We have to accept that we are just one species among many specialist animals needed to stabilise whole ecosystems. That means accepting that we are an animal and have some equality with other animals. It means finding our special skill but not at the expense of all others. Only then might we be forced to honour the importance of wildlife conservation.
In order to be successful, both as a species and to avoid falling off the cliff, so to speak, we have to quit now and reinvent our approach.
But because we’ve broken so much of the land and sea, it is going to take some time. This means giving animals chance to push through the dip and become successful. We will have to endure some of that hardship with them, if we are going to end up successful ourselves and that is going to be tough. I’m going to write more on the relevance of this to so-called nature-based solutions soon.
Read an extract
