The Dialogue, the Ten Thousand Things and the Buttercup

The Dialogue,
the Ten Thousand Things
and the Buttercup
Geerat J. Vermeij
.
Robbert Dijkgraaf
.
Kristofer M. Schipper
.
Frans Lanting
.
Theunis Piersma, Sytze Pruiksma, Tsjêbbe Hettinga
.
Illustrated by
Joep Bertrams
..
The Dialogue,
the Ten Thousand Things
and the Buttercup
.
Essays on Man and Nature
.
Edited by
Johan van de Gronden
and
Monique Grooten
.
Johan van de Gronden and Monique Grooten
het gesprek, de tienduizend dingen
Het gesprek,
de tienduizend dingen kop weg?
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W
hat do a marine biologist, a Taoist master,
a photographer, a physicist, an animal
ecologist, a composer and a poet all have
in common? They were all, at some point in their
early lives, touched by nature’s beauty and vulnerability. The authors of the essays that make up
this booklet were born or raised in the Netherlands, left their nests and either settled elsewhere
or eventually returned to the lands of their childhoods. They are cosmopolitans with roots in the
Dutch clay. As adults, they’ve become masters of
their trades, yet they have never lost their childhood wonder and amazement.
The descriptions of nature by Geerat Vermeij,
who lost his eyesight at a very young age, are
so rich in imagery and so inviting that you can
almost smell the flowers and hear the buzz of
the insects. As a little boy, he engaged in a dialogue with nature; today, he continues this discussion as a marine biologist, but always with
the same disarming curiosity.
You can hardly imagine that renowned Sinologist and Taoist master Kristofer Schipper was
once an enthusiastic teenager who, in the
nineteen fifties, set out to explore the surroundings of Amsterdam with a nature study club for
youngsters long before he could decipher his
first Chinese character. His first impressions of
the enormous richness of species and refined
interconnectedness in smaller biotopes later
helped him comprehend the cosmology of the
Tao, where the same form of cosmic energy
flows in all living and non-living nature.
Self-taught photographer Frans Lanting recalls
how the natural estuarine environment near
Rotterdam played such a formative role in his
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The dialogue with nature begins, almost as a
matter of course, somewhere in one’s early
years: the experience of a familiar environment,
feeling at home somewhere, and the sense of
wonder about the abundance of so many different creatures. Vermeij sees the interaction of an
inquisitive, curious mind with nature as a conversation. To him, the path of knowledge and
greater understanding of the amazing interconnectedness of species and ecosystems leads to a
closer alliance between nature and humankind.
As we learn more, so we understand more about
our origin. We cannot afford the silence of a
broken bond.
het gesprek, de tienduizend dingen
life. He witnessed the dynamics of the tides
giving way to the rise of the petrochemical
industry. It made a lasting impression on him.
The Frisians Theunis Piersma, Sytze Pruiksma
and Tsjêbbe Hettinga saw their countryside
destroyed by that other branch of heavy industry, intensive agriculture. Physicist Robbert Dijkgraaf takes us back further in time and tries to
imagine young Charles Darwin’s thoughts as he
sat on a fossilized tree trunk in a petrified forest
high up in the Andes and began to grasp its
immense evolutionary age.
Kristofer Schipper’s essay has a touch of the
skepticism and irony of the old master Zhuang
Zi, whose writings Schipper was the first to
make fully accessible to the Dutch audience in
his beautiful, annotated translation. Let’s not
fool ourselves, Schipper seems to be saying,
along with Zhuang Zi, ecology and nature
conservation are as old as the Tao. Some two
thousand years ago, simple Chinese peasants
formulated practical guidelines that, even today,
would not be out of place on a notice board at
the entrance of Yellowstone or Kruger National
Park. The term “ecology” is barely 150 years old,
but the practice of protecting the natural environment goes back thousands of years. It would
be wise for us to follow vital cultural motives
that are as old as Methuselah.
The ten thousand things are as they are, as
diverse as they are interconnected. We should
focus on our own inner natural landscape
where we shall find a connection with everything living and not living. Classic Taoist texts
often promote the idea of “non-acting.” This
non-interventionist attitude seems a strong
departure from the saber-rattling of despots and
powerful rulers during the Era of Warring States1.
1
The Era of Warring States, or the Warring States Period, covers the
Iron Age period from about 475 bce to the reunification of China
under the Qin Dynasty in 221 bce.
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Zhuang Zi was a contemporary of Aristotle,
and it is strange that the former’s work is not
as well-known in the West. If Aristotle is considered the first biologist in the western world,
then Zhuang Zi is the first great scholar who
called for self-reflection to avoid disturbing the
harmony with the ten thousand things. There is
more that these two thinkers have in common.
A dialogue between them, walking around a colonnade of an imaginary Sino-Grecian academy,
would have lead to agreement on the virtue of
moderation.
In both the East and the West, finding the middle
ground and avoiding extremes have always been
essential practical strategies towards a harmonious lifestyle.
het gesprek, de tienduizend dingen
Almost certainly, Zhuang Zi would have been
skeptical of widely imposed climate and environmental targets. A growing group of disenchanted modern citizens will readily sympathize
with this attitude. They are not very hopeful that
we can trust political leaders to master the environmental problems we face today.
The consequence of our lack of moderation
becomes overly apparent in the closing essay.
The buttercup jumps out of the ten thousand
things as a symbol of the loss of flower grasslands in agricultural Holland and the disconcerting decline in numbers of meadow birds, such
as the godwit and the ruff. The authors rightfully
ask if this development could be countered with
a more sensible balance of interests. The Dutch
are not only European champions in agricultural
exports, but also northern European champions
in loss of biodiversity.
This booklet is a gift, a birthday gift from a
fifty-year-old lady who has invited friends and
family from all over the world on board an old
ocean liner in Rotterdam. Anniversaries, especially the ones with the round numbers, often
come with a touch of nostalgia. That’s why there
will be cake, balloons and streamers, also press
releases, commemorative coins, conferences
and even a concert. All these are important and
somewhat unavoidable. But once the glasses are
empty, the PowerPoints shown, the resolutions
forged into quantifiable, ambitious targets, then
all that remains is the quiet of our chamber.
het gesprek, de tienduizend dingen
The essays that follow are best read in a comfortable reading chair. There may be a distant
dog barking. The curtains are drawn. The streets
are quiet. What’s up, with us and nature?
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Johan van de Gronden (1963) is ceo of the Dutch office
of WWF (World Wild Fund for Nature).
Monique Grooten (1966) is Program Manager Footprint, Climate and Energy at the Dutch office of WWF
(World Wild Fund for Nature).
History of a Dialogue
Geerat J. Vermeij
“I
f you are like me ... hearing the word Artis
[the Amsterdam Zoo] brings to life a magical
world of amazing animals, far-away lands
and wonderful adventures.”
When I first read these lines with my tiny fingers,
they immediately struck me. With his captivating
imagery, this Dutch author, a.f.j. Portielje, evoked
in me a fantasy world full of surprise. The exotic
names were enough to send me on long, imagi-
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nary journeys through jungles, deserts, and
mountain ranges. I met colorful parrots on Jobi
near New Guinea, camels galloping through the
Gobi Desert and sea lions playing on the California coast. I could hardly imagine, or even hope,
that I would ever make any real journeys like
that, and have any remarkable adventures at all.
I have always been fascinated by nature. In the
polders around Gouda, in the woods of the
Huis ter Heide nature resort, or on the Scheveningen beach, I found not only everything that I
thought beautiful – acorns, pine cones, fragrant
flowers, and shells – but also a reassuring order,
a sense of contentment. It made for a sharp
contrast with my unhappy life at the institute
for the blind, so far from home. My parents and
my brother Arie let me feel, smell and hear
everything there was to be found and enabled
me to build on these experiences with books
they turned into Braille with slate and stylus.
My book about the Artis Zoo was one of them.
During my introduction to the natural world, I
never felt it to be in any way strange. The tiny
daisies in February, the sweet scent of pine trees
in the warm sun, the wind rustling in the poplar
trees along the dike, the nettles in the grass,
the approaching thunderstorm at the end of a
sultry day – I experienced them all as completely
normal. They merely confirmed the natural
order of things. The way in which a damp forest
was different from dry heathland, a muddy
ditch from a sandy beach, common butterbur in
spring from fallen chestnuts in the autumn, this
was almost a given to me. Things were the way
they were. There was nothing to doubt; there
was no reason to wonder why things were there
or how they came to be there.
Not until I ended up in the United States at the
age of nine did I become aware of the challenge nature could present to someone with
a scientific inclination. Even on my very first
night in the remote, wooded area of New Jersey
where we had moved, the buzz of hundreds of
tree crickets created inexplicably simultaneous
sound waves. We were based amidst a hilly wilderness filled with the scream of blue jays, the
clear song of the wood thrush, with thousands
of caterpillars building their silk tree homes
together and even poisonous snakes. Before the
icy-cold winter would cover the landscape with
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layers of snow, the magical forest was thick with
autumn leaves that made it feel like you were
walking on a down pillow. My whole concept
of nature as a familiar place had been turned
upside down.
My amazement over this new order became
even stronger when, a year later, my fourthgrade teacher in Dover brought back some
shells she had picked up during her vacation in
Florida. Compared to the rather coarse, yet finger-friendly cockles, razor clams and surf clams
found on the North Sea beaches, these shells
from Florida were stunningly diverse in their
shapes. Their forms were endless variations on
the spiral theme – which I was not yet familiar
with then. Smooth as glass on the inside, their
exteriors were decorated with neatly arranged
ribs, knobs and even spines. My imagination
took me to the beaches where such beautiful
objects could be found, and I dreamt of tropical
coastlines even beyond my imagination.
It wasn’t long before I began to feel a scientific
drive to explore wonderful shells and exotic
landscapes. The sense of wonder I felt for eve-
rything beautiful and surprising was developing into a deep need to truly know, understand
and explain the objects I had diligently started
to collect. And shells in particular attracted my
attention. I soon began to wonder about the
contrast between the tropical shells and those
that were common on the colder beaches of
Holland and New Jersey. I felt an ever-present
urge to explain, to make a connection between
the phenomena and objects I observed, and
what I read and thought. Arie and I pored over
atlases, books about marine life, and field
guides. Everyone in the family read these to me
and helped transcribe books into Braille, and
Arie and my father drew relief maps and illustrations.
Such a transition to a more scientific perspective may be impossible as long as everything
around you remains self-evident. These comfortable ideas need to be shaken off so the
mysteries of even what seems known can be
exposed. Like me, many people only experience
this when they arrive in a new and unfamiliar
place. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace
didn’t come to their understanding of the great
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diversity in plants and animals until they had
exposed themselves to tropical forests and
uninhabited islands. Had they stayed at home in
England, they probably would never have been
struck by the struggle for survival which seems
ever so more pronounced in the tropical regions
of the world, nor by the geographical distribution of species which doesn’t quite match any
static idea about the origin of species.
For a scientifically minded nature lover, unraveling mysteries becomes second nature. Curiosity, a thirst for knowledge, the need to find
coherence and clarity among the wealth of facts
and impressions – these become one’s basic
state of mind. This scientific approach is an
ongoing dialogue between nature and mankind;
the outside world offers ever-new insights
and notable phenomena, while the receptive
observer constantly seeks to answer ever-new
questions. In the end, it is about much more
than trying to understand living beings and
relationships in the natural world and the
geological past – it is about appreciating them,
preserving them, and protecting them.
The magical world Portielje so invitingly
depicted became a living reality for me.
My family, the Braille system, good schools,
and the support of a benevolent government
helped me turn my childhood nature wanderings into a highly satisfying career in science.
An event that stands out in my life is my first
visit to the tropical rainforest of Costa Rica, with
its overabundance of vines, its ever-present
sounds and scents, and where everything
always grows and moves. The shells I had once
picked up and treasured as beautiful, abstract
objects had become parts of mollusks; now
I understood how their exterior decorations
represented clever adaptations to the natural
environment. As I traveled, I was now able to
observe and collect these beings myself on the
coral reefs of Palau, on the endless sandy shores
of Panama, among the Madagascar mangroves
with their roots covered with spiky oysters, on
the cold and rocky coasts of Alaska and Iceland
and on the salt marshes and pebbled coast of
New Zealand. My growing interest in evolution and the history of life on earth took me to
the Miocene formations in Panama and Florida
and to the great collections and libraries of the
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museums of Sydney, Tokyo, San Francisco,
Washington, London, Paris and Leiden. These
experiences and the research in which they
resulted enabled me to share the insights I had
gleaned from nature with others through publications and lectures.
It is in everybody’s interest to keep such possibilities open for future friends of nature. This
requires not only the preservation of nature
and wilderness and all her workings in an everchanging world, but especially that we protect
the freedom to admire and explore this natural
system. The bond between ourselves and the
realm that brought forth all living beings cannot
be broken. The dialogue between man and
nature must continue.
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Geerat J. Vermeij (1946) is a marine and evolutionary biologist
at the University of California at Davis. He specializes in the
evolution of mollusks.
The Sublime
in Science
Robbert Dijkgraaf
I
celebrated the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species
in a very intimate setting. Sarah Darwin, the
great-great-granddaughter of the scientist who
had what was most likely the best idea ever,
read a captivating passage from the Origin while
seated on a tree trunk in the appropriately named
Darwin Forest. This is not a forest in the green
and lush sense. On the contrary, there is no sign
of life for miles around. Darwin Forest is located
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in the middle of the most arid desert in the
Argentinean part of the Andes and consists of
only some scattered fossilized trees from the Mid-Triassic period. It is 245 million years old.
To Darwin, the discovery of this petrified forest
in the spring of 1835 marked a turning point in
his thinking about time and the history of life.
He realized that those trees must have once
stood in a very different environment with a
very different climate from how he had found
them. By a twist of fate, a stretch of primeval
forest had petrified entirely complete. The trees
were still rooted in the ground and many of the
stems stood several meters tall. Darwin was
able to imagine the actual shape of a world
long gone by simply walking around in these
fossilized woods. It was this sublime experience
that helped him unlock nature’s greatest secret:
the creative force of evolution which has both
shaped and maintained the incredible richness
of life on earth. There, in the middle of the
Argentinean desert, a very modest plaque
commemorates Carlos R. Darwin, the man who
represents this monumental turning point in
the history of science.
I, too, was deeply impressed by my visit to
Darwin Forest. It is actually the meeting place
of two events in history. The first one took place
hundreds of millions of years ago – a small
patch of woodland was conserved entirely by
a freak of nature. The second event happened
much closer to the present. In the middle of
a desert, a young scientist was struck by the
dazzling depth of time – an experience he had
traveled halfway round the globe for. And all
this happened in this overwhelming setting.
Compared to the insignificant scale of a human
being, nature is beyond imagination – both its
size and its modifications. To grasp the interplay
of geological forces, water, ice and atmosphere,
we would have to speed up time and shrink
centuries into hours. But this also applies to
how human beings affect the earth. Humankind
may now be counted among the list of natural
forces and its effects are as astonishing as they
are irrevocable.
Can we, being the insignificant individuals we
are, no more than a blip in geological terms, still
relate to these gigantic phenomena? I literally
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saw the answer to that question one day when
looking down at the earth from the window of
a small two-engine airplane. I saw a tiny yellow
tent surrounded by immeasurable whiteness.
We were flying over one of those rare places
on earth where you can actually see creeping
changes in progress, a place no less desolate,
barren and remote as the Argentinean desert.
This was on a trip I took with other scientists,
accompanying the Prince of Orange on a
mission to explore the various aspects of arctic
nature conservation.
The Greenland ice sheet is, both literally and
figuratively, one of the last remaining white
spots on the global map. At the same time it
is one of the most vulnerable and unknown
territories on earth. In the Arctic, the effects
of climate change are considerably amplified.
The rate of ice loss in the region has roughly
doubled over the past years, which is more
than the climate panel ipcc had predicted.
Some glaciers are now retreating at a pace of
six kilometers per year. That is one meter per
hour. Not many generations have witnessed
the creation of an entire new ocean. A couple
of decades from now, however, we will see
the Arctic Ocean free of ice during summer
and all the economic, ecological and legal
consequences this will bring about.
For the armchair scientist that I am – my
favorite weapons being pencil and paper –
the distance from theory to reality is often too
great to bridge with one step. But the small
red propeller aircraft that took us from the
well-heated conference room to the biting
cold of the 2500 meter altitude ice sheet did
exactly that. Within minutes of our departure
we were absorbed by a white world in which
eventually even the horizon vanished. After
flying through this vast white void for over an
hour, suddenly, a lone tent became visible. The
airplane circled around, landed lightly on its
skis, produced a lot of sudden noise and, in
a matter of seconds, came to stop. So there I
was, bundled in ten layers of clothing, snow
crunching under my thick boots – a tiny black
dot on an immeasurable white plain. I was in
an infinitely large world that was, at the same
time, unimaginably small. Confronted which
such vast emptiness, my world involuntarily
contracted, from the encampment, to the tent
and eventually to the seclusion of my own mind.
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It is tempting to think, in this age of advanced
technology, that all scientific measurements of the
ice sheet can be done by satellites. But it’s easy to
forget that these numbers don’t mean much unless
someone goes out there to verify that the condition
of the ice and snow matches the computer models.
And that requires a lot, starting with someone
willing to camp out in freezing cold for a whole
month. At this nameless spot in the middle of
the Greenland ice sheet where our little plane had
taken us, we found two enthusiastic researchers
hard at work. Exposed to violent winds, they were
digging a deep hole in the snow to drive a pipe into
the ice so they could see how the various layers
had formed and changed over time.
How relevant is it for a scientist to experience
nature directly? The voyage is a familiar metaphor
for the adventure that research brings. Scientists
journey to explore the frontiers of our knowledge.
The excitement of this research is not easy to
communicate – and only researchers themselves
experience the frustration of dead-ends, fear
of failure and misconceptions. The frontiers of
what is known now lay far beyond the reach of
humankind, or, equally intangible, deep within
ourselves. Our adventure destinations are the
most remote galaxies and the tiniest workings
of the living cell. And the road to each is equally
long and treacherous. To share our experiences of
these voyages with a wide audience, we need an
approach that is radically different – an approach
inspired by the great naturalists from the present
and the past.
The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw an
amazing widening of public interest in science.
From the inner chambers of a handful of learned
men, science moved out into the public domain.
Curious citizens organized lectures where the
latest insights were demonstrated, preferably
with theatrical sparks and explosions. Naturalists
were sent on expeditions all over the world.
Museums displayed all manner of items from
the cultural and natural worlds: fossils, minerals,
musical instruments, taxidermied animals. These
activities were driven by the Enlightenment
notion that the fruits of art and science would
edify people and eventually lead to a better and
more just society. Knowledge was not the only
motive. There was room for wonder, for direct
confrontation with unfamiliar objects and ideas.
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With the rise of the large-scale practice of
modern science, the romantic enthusiasm of the
public began to wither. Science retreated from
the public domain, not back into the elegant
salons of the noblemen, but behind the safe,
solid walls of the new professionalism. How
can we once again involve the public in the
enthusiasm, the wonder that drives scientific
research?
This question is especially relevant concerning
the great issues that affect the earth today.
Climate change, overpopulation, worldwide
epidemics, and, naturally, the catastrophic and
irreversible loss of biodiversity will all have
a drastic effect on our world. To convince the
public of the urgency of these issues and to
involve them in the search for solutions, we
need to bring them in touch with the earth.
This can be done directly or indirectly, close to
home or far away. The sublime experience of
science can happen by the side of a local stream,
in a petrified forest in the Andes, or on the
Greenland ice sheet. Whether we read a page
from Darwin or drive a tube into the ice –
we show we care about the future of our planet.
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Robbert Dijkgraaf (1960) is President of the Royal Netherlands
Academy of Arts and Sciences (knaw) and Distinguished
University Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University
of Amsterdam. He has been appointed Director of the Institute
for Advanced Study in Princeton with effect from July 2012.
Kristofer M. Schipper
1
njn, Nederlandse Jeugdbond voor Natuurstudie.
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I
n amsterdam in the nineteen fifties, only specialists knew the word “ecology.” But we knew it.
“We” were the members of a pretty informal
youth club 1 that was entirely dedicated to the study
of nature. Joining was easy: one had to be over
twelve years of age and younger than twenty-one.
Membership fees were more than reasonable. The
only thing one needed was enthusiasm, and we
had plenty of that! Every weekend, every holiday,
in fact every free moment, we would get out of the
city and go wherever there was something to see
and to study: grasses, mosses, flowers and trees,
worms, insects, amphibians, birds, and so on.
het gesprek, de tienduizend dingen
Nature and
Environment
in Ancient China
We went for the small and seemingly insignificant,
more than for the big and spectacular.
In due time each of us would choose a specialty and
become “an expert” in a given field: wild orchids,
marshland ecosystems, rushes, flies, worms, you
name it. Some, of course, would forever remain just
amateurs, and that was fun too. Quite a few went on
further and later became professional biologists.
As to me, I went into Chinese studies. That is, as
Confucius has said, more about reading books
than about crawling around in swamps looking at
frogs. Yet I found that in dealing with historical and
archaeological data my acquaintance with nature
observation and analysis of field data stood me in
good stead. Especially what I had gleaned from the
study of ecosystems helped me to understand how
everything in the world connects. This, I was to
discover, was also a notion that also sat at the very
core of Chinese classical philosophy.
Both Taoist and Confucian traditions recognize universal interconnectedness as a key concept. Nature
– ‘what is thus by itself’ (ziran) – is the intrinsic
characteristic of the Way (Tao), the transcendent
and immanent principle that constitutes the very
source of the “ten thousand things,” the totality
In the past, the woods on Buffalo Mountain were beautiful.
Being situated in the immediate vicinity of a large city, it was
attacked with hatches and cleavers. Could it be that it then
became more beautiful?
Next, after the mountain had been quiet for some time and
had been moistened by rain and dew, it became fully covered
with sprouts and grasses. But people came driving cattle and
sheep and let them graze there, and the mountain became like
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At an early date, Chinese philosophers preoccupied themselves not only with mystical thought or
ethical considerations, but looked at the state of
the “ten thousand things” in a pragmatic way. They
already had reasons to bewail the harm done to
the ten thousand things and what they saw as the
loss of their original nature. The 4th century bce
philosopher Mencius (Meng Zi) wrote to this effect:
het gesprek, de tienduizend dingen
of phenomena that constitutes one great organic
whole.
According to this way of thought, there is no ontological difference between humans and animals,
or between humans and plants, stones, water or
anything else. Everything is animated, as all matter (and that includes what we call the spirit or the
soul) consists of the same fundamental cosmic
energy (qi) and participates in its endless transformations.
it is now: completely barren. When people see it in this state,
they think that there have never been any trees on this mountain. But let me ask you: how could the original nature of the
mountain have been like this! 2
Here Mencius not just deplores the destruction of
the natural environment, but also loss of the original nature of the human being. He considered that
the two were intimately linked. In other words: the
destruction of the mountain forest was caused by
the fact that humans had lost their own original
nature.
Zhuang Zi, the great Taoist philosopher who was a
contemporary of Mencius, shared this view and expressed it by looking at the way humans treat horses:
Now for horses: as long as they can freely roam over the land,
graze the grasses and drink water, they manifest their joy by
entwining their necks or by rubbing their bodies against each
other. When they show their anger, then they turn their behinds
against each other and kick. That is all they know to do.
But when they are harnessed and put into line by means of
beams, then suddenly they know how to break their headcollars, wring themselves out of the harnesses, destroy wagon’s
canopy, spew out the bit and bite through the reins.
2
3
Mengzi, chapter 6A, paragraph 8
Zhuangzi, chapter 9. The text adds: “such as Bole. Bole being an legendary
expert in taming horses.
Therefore I say: “to make horses misbehave in this manner, that
Zhuang Zi and other Daoists considered that animals
were indeed the same as humans. The most explicit
statement in this respect is by Lie Zi, who wrote:
So why would the minds of wild animals be any different from
those of humans? Sure, the bodies they have and the sounds
they make are not like ours. […] But there are examples enough
that show that, in terms of intelligence, nature made them just
the same as humans. They want to keep their life intact, and
for doing this they are not inferior in intelligence to human
beings.4
That was written at a time that China was yet a
confederation of states and agriculture was not
practiced on such a large scale. Whereas animals
were held captive, human society was still relatively
open and people could move freely from one place
to another and settle in the region or country of
their choice.
But with the advent of the unified empire in 221 bce
and the development of water engineering to make
irrigated rice paddies, this was to change. More and
4
Liezi, chapter 2. The present version of the Liezi was only compiled in
the 3rd century ce, but many parts, such as the present one, are of the
same date as the Zhuangzi, 3rd century bce.
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het gesprek, de tienduizend dingen
is the crime of humans.” 3
more land became cultivated, and not only became
the life of animals, but of humans as well, constrained by the massive production requirements
and taxation systems. Already overpopulated, the
agricultural heartlands of China became easy targets for oppression, epidemics and raids by robbers.
These dire circumstances were at the root of the
first non-official communal organization of China
as it appeared in West China in the 2nd century ce.
This movement, called the Way of the Heavenly
Master (Tianshidao), developed the first clearly
focused and consequent ecological policy.
In ancient China, mountains, streams, seas and
uncultivated natural reserves were considered to
be sacred and to be places for mental and physical
wellbeing. They offered sanctuary for humans as
well as for animals. Now, with the vast development of agriculture at the expense of animal husbandry and the construction of irrigated rice fields
even in mountainous areas, these sanctuaries were
threatened. Therefore the above-mentioned popular
Taoist movement began to establish on a number of
holy mountains which they called “places
of healing.” The earliest of these protected areas
– we would nowadays call them natural parks or
reservations – were made in what is now the
northern part of Sichuan province (the region of
Shu). At first there were some twenty or thirty of
them, but the movement spread, and some three
hundred years later similar “places of healing”
were to be found all over the country and numbered in the hundreds. The Way of the Heavenly
Master remained a strongly vital, popular organization until the 11th century and the beginning of the
modern, urban-based, market-oriented society that
engineered the great economic expansion in East
and Southeast Asia during the following centuries.
The “places of healing” were not meant to be hideouts for hermits, but quite the opposite. In normal
times they functioned as gathering places for local
communities to periodically – at least three times
a year – gather there in order to effectuate retreats
and thus regenerate their health and vitality. In
times of crisis, famine, war and violent oppression, they functioned as sanctuaries: places to flee
to and survive. For these extraordinary times, they
developed special surviving techniques and diets
that enabled the communities to find food and
shelter even in the most extreme circumstances.
To function as needed, the preservation of the
natural environment was a great priority. Therefore
the Way of the Heavenly Master adopted a code of
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one hundred and eighty rules or precepts, regulating in detail the behavior of the communities in the
mountain reservations. Among these rules, those
concerning the protection of the natural environment were particularly numerous. Here follows a
sample, chosen from a great many of similar ones:
You should not:
• burn [the vegetation] of uncultivated or cultivated fields or of
mountains and forests;
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
wantonly fell trees;
wantonly pick herbs or flowers;
throw poisonous substances into lakes, rivers and seas;
w
antonly dig holes in the ground and thereby destroy the earth;
dry up wet marshes;
fish or hunt and thereby harm and kill living beings;
in winter dig up hibernating animals and insects;
wantonly climb in trees to look for nests and destroy eggs;
use cages to trap birds and [other] animals;
throw dirty things in wells;
seal off pools and wells;
set plains on fire;
d
efecate or urinate on living plants that people will eat or in
water that people will drink;
• wantonly or lightly take baths in rivers or lakes;
• fabricate poisons and keep them in vessels;
• disturb birds and [other] animals; wantonly dig lakes, etc.
The general idea then is: “not too much,” “not
unnecessarily” or “if at all avoidable.” The main
theme is that of respect. The simple folk who created the very first self-regulated, that is: democratic, communities under the autocratic imperial
environment of their times were not utopian
dreamers. They were thinking in terms of sustainable exploitation of the natural resources that
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en de boterbloem
One notes the frequent use of the word “wanton”
in the precepts. This means that all remains a
question of evaluation and adaptation to circumstances. Only abusive behavior is proscribed, and
the possibility for using natural resources whenever really necessary is left open. Human beings
being animals, they have a right to live like other
animals, taking from the bounty of nature what is
necessary for their survival, but not more.
het gesprek, de tienduizend dingen
In these rules we find, in fact, the pragmatic application of the ancient Chinese nature philosophy.
It can be seen from the text sample given above
that this is not a kind of legal code, but that the
one hundred and eighty rules retain something of
a philosophical approach to the problem of preserving the natural environment. We can see that,
in general, there are no hard and fast rules.
remained at their disposal, being aware of the absolute necessity to preserve them.
The text of the one hundred and eighty rules of
the early peasant communities never made it into
the official literature of China, and after the Way of
the Heavenly Master disappeared, the codex was
forgotten. It was only rediscovered recently among
the texts preserved in the Daoist Canon (Daozang).
This is a vast collection comprising almost fifteen
hundred books, the bulk of which have not yet been
scientifically studied. Also the popular ecological
movement that produced it remains to be studied
in detail. When that can be done, we may well discover even more ample resources in the wisdom of
ancient China that could be useful to us today.
In the meantime we have already gained some
important insights. First of all: we should perhaps
temper our self-satisfaction with the realization
that we today are not really doing anything new.
People long ago already realized that the natural
environment should be preserved and thought positively about ways to do so. That these people were
not academics or politicians, but humble peasants
from the plains of Sichuan, may also inspire us to
be modest. A second issue that, of course, must be
Kristofer M. Schipper (1934) is an emeritus professor of
Oriental studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands and at
the Sorbonne in Paris. He also teaches at Fuzhou University and
Zhangzhou College, both in China.
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en de boterbloem
But we also should look at the evidence here as a
reason to give us hopes. It shows, I think, that the
awareness of the need to protect and preserve the
environment is universal. Because of this, we may
feel confident that it will prevail and that we can
save the planet. To conclude then, let us image for
a moment the old philosophers and their peasant
friends looking at us here today from wherever
they now may be, saying to each other, “Wonderful! This time perhaps the whole world will understand!”
het gesprek, de tienduizend dingen
mentioned here is that after so many centuries
the problems they tried to cope with still exist.
They have not been coped with. They remain very
much the same and are, indeed, much larger.
Sometimes
It’s a Question
of Thinking
a Bit Further 44
45
Frans Lanting
T
he salty air of the north sea meeting the river
water in the Nieuwe Waterweg canal: that’s
what defined the region of my childhood.
I grew up in the town of Rozenburg, close to
Rotterdam. In my early days, my hometown
was no more than a tiny hamlet on the border
of a natural coastal area. Dunes. Birdwatching.
Wide beaches. Waving beach grass. I thought it
was wonderful – and indestructible.
And yet, I witnessed all of it disappear. In 1957,
progress came to the area in the shape of the
Europoort project, the expansion of the Rotterdam harbor. The natural sandbanks were taken
over by smoke stacks shrouded in the grimy fog
of petrochemical plants. It’s not my intention to
make accusations. After all, the only valid considerations in post-war Holland were economic.
Still, this was my first direct experience of loss of
nature in my own environment.
Decent Education
I originally wanted to become a biologist or a
geographer. But, being the first to go to college in
my family, I was required to aim for a real career.
So my parents made me choose a “decent education” which translated into Economics.
I did find some leeway in the end by graduating in the subject of environmental economics,
which was taught by Professor Peter Nijkamp.
He was a pioneer in quantifying the value of
nature. In the mid-seventies, this was not just
new; it was radical.
Then, I went to the United States, and there I encountered an entirely different concept of nature.
I heard about activists like John Muir, who, as
early as the late-nineteenth century, campaigned
against the ruthlessness of California gold rush
pioneers in brutalizing wilderness areas. His activism resulted in the instituting of great national
parks like Yosemite and the founding of the Sierra
Club, still one of America’s leading environmental
organizations. It was – and still is – driven by artists, scientists and activists campaigning for the
protection of the natural environment. This was
something unknown in the Netherlands at the
time.
A Nice Stroll, and then Back Home
The grandeur of the American wilderness inspired
a more dynamic awareness of nature on the West
Coast. This attitude appealed to me enormously. It
was so entirely different and so much more intense
then the way I had experienced nature back in
the Netherlands. Nature in Holland to me was the
pastoral picture the Dutch naturalist Jac. P. Thijsse1
had made available to the masses. Nature was
there for a Sunday stroll. Then it was time to all go
1
Jac. P. Thijsse (1865–1945) was a pioneer of nature conservation in
the Netherlands and a co-founder of the nature conservation society Natuurmonumenten. He was a teacher and teacher trainer by
profession but is mostly known for his wide contributions to field
biology, nature education and nature conservation.
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back home and not bother with it for the rest of
the week. I vividly remember staring at the large
classroom posters of “the natural world of the
ditch.” That was as far as nature went in Holland.
Sometimes people ask me, “Why do you take
those wonderful nature photographs?” These
images are my way of showing how things interconnect. I see myself as a storyteller, a “visual
journalist” who joins forces with scientists and
activists. My work does not romanticize the
world. It shows a reality of nature that isn’t always a polished picture. It doesn’t only show nature’s beauty. It’s dynamic, enabling me to tell my
story through a photograph. Sometimes, you just
have to think a bit further.
National Geographic commissioned me to visualize the concept of biodiversity. It didn’t take me
long to discover that this doesn’t have much to
do with iconic species like penguins or tigers.
The bulk of species diversity is found in small
organisms nobody has ever heard of. The assignment took me to places like the North-Atlantic
coast of the United States where I photographed
the horseshoe crab. This animal is a living fossil
which, for the past 300 million years, has been
coming ashore en masse when the moon is full.
It was a gripping scene that made me feel like I
had traveled back in time. My photos could easily
have been taken millions of years ago.
life: A Journey Through Time
That’s how the idea for life: A Journey Through
Time was born. I set out to capture the origin of
life on earth in images, including not only interrelationships of nature in the present, but also
in the past. The project culminated in a multimedia symphony called life: Music which connected my imagery with music composed by
Philip Glass. Music combined with images creates
a powerful experience, as music and nature are
one – they have rhythm, they are dynamic, they
are layered. This symphony has been performed
many times in support of scientific and nature
conservation events.
Humankind, no more than a flash in the history of life, doesn’t enter the stage until the sixth
movement of the life symphony. We show human feet to symbolize the frailty of our own existence. This is followed by photos I took of the
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human brain and blood vessels in human hands
to illustrate how patterns in our own bodies resemble patterns in the natural world – the veins
of a leaf, a meandering river, the roots of a tree.
A Head of Lettuce
In our short history as a species, humankind has
assumed a place on earth with seemingly no connection to nature, as if we are a solitary life form
that has transcended its own origins. I believe we
need to work toward a new awareness of nature.
It is often pointed out that we share 98% of our
genes with chimpanzees. More amazing is that
we also have 50% of our genes in common with
a head of lettuce. We are not really so independent of the rest of life on earth as we would like to
believe.
Those involved with nature and the environment
find plenty of reasons to feel disheartened. But
let’s not forget that our current approach to protecting nature only started developing 50 years
ago, in part driven by the founding of the World
Wildlife Fund. A few men in good suits had the
radical idea to look at the world from a wider
perspective. And look how we see nature and the
environment now! Where 50 years ago the focus
was only on protecting species and habitats, we
now see nature as something much more comprehensive, a system of which humans form an
integral part.
True, a lot is being lost today, but I am convinced
that there is also a lot to gain in the next fifty
years. We shouldn’t look backward, but forward.
And sometimes we just need to think a bit further.
After all, we, too, are part of nature.
Frans Lanting (1951) is a nature photographer. His work is
exhibited and published in books and magazines worldwide.
He lives and works in California.
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Theunis Piersma, Sytze Pruiksma, Tsjêbbe Hettinga
The Buttercup
e grew up in what you could call, in retrospect, an idyllic setting – the villages
of southwest Friesland, a province in the
northern part of the Netherlands. It was a time
when more godwits bred in Dutch fields then ever
before. As young boys, we never questioned our
world of farms, cows, horses, ditches and fields
soft pink with cuckoo flowers one month and gold
with buttercups the next. When purple announced
the presence of sorrel, we chewed until our jaws
were sore. And by the time everything was in full
bloom, haying would start, first hesitantly, and
later with full force. That was the time when the
air would fill with the sweet scent of freshly cut
grass mixed with herbs and flowers.
W
de koning, de grutto en de boterbloem
The King, the Godwit
and the Buttercup
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53
We took it all for granted: the heavenly song of the
skylark – when the sun was out you’d see them
wherever you went and wherever you looked – the
search for peewit eggs, the ruffs performing their
mock fights on a summer dike, the thousands of
godwits and ruffs flocking together on the shores
of a lake on the eve of their departure for the faraway south. This was our fertile, agrarian background – we who became a biologist, a musician
and a poet. It has remained our reference point for
the change of seasons and for our experiences of
landscapes.
We grew up in a time of prosperity in the Netherlands. Hunger was eradicated, infrastructure expanded, healthcare and housing improved in quality and became more readily available. Everyone’s
life got better.
In short, progress had arrived.
What was common in our younger days, however, has become increasingly rare over the past
three decades. This is probably why the occasional
buttercup-filled field, cow listlessly drinking from
a ditch, godwit alighting on a gatepost and exalted
song of the lark can move us so deeply. Brief moments of nostalgia, and brief moments of concern
– How much longer will it last? The sharp smell of
cow slurry injected in the wake of the heavy-duty
harvesters – the blessings of large-scale farming –
leaves a lingering trace of pain and betrayal.
High above us, a bird sings, “The bigger the egg,
the easier it cracks.” There is no doubt that living
standards in the Netherlands have improved tremendously. But at what price? Which values do we
ignore when we choose only the tangible side of
what we call progress? Do we give those soft pink
values of the cuckoo flower enough attention in
considering our landscape, or have we made ourselves hostages to the economic rat race? What do
we call progress?
The Godwit
Let’s discuss our black-tailed godwits more. They
are long-legged slender birds with long bills and
wonderful, soft, orange-brown plumage in spring
and summer. As if embodying modern jet fighters, they like to steal the show by swooping down
dare-devil style. But they can also hold still in
midair, only just keeping themselves from stalling.
In that phase of their flight, they make their characteristic weeka weeka weeka call. The males also
use this call from an elevated position in the lowlying lands to keep their territory free of intruders.
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This lends them an especially majestic air. A century ago, Jac. P. Thijsse 1 called the godwit “the king
of the meadow birds.”
Godwits migrate to the Netherlands to breed in its
wet meadows, which are rich in herbaceous plants.
Historically, these meadows were a typical creation
of the Low Countries. Unsuitable for arable farming, drained peat bogs became ideal cow pastures.
The abundance of godwits here are a direct result
of the history and economics of dairy farming.
With the better part of European black-tailed godwits within its borders, the Netherlands offers a
rather unique contribution to global biodiversity, but
even though the godwit’s family life takes place in
our country, it spends most of the year abroad. From
August to December, the godwits are hosted by the
small rice farmers of Senegal and Guinea-Bissau.
They spend January and February in the rice fields of
Portugal and Spanish Extremadura. That makes the
godwit a year-round farm bird. In the Netherlands,
it takes its nourishment from earthworms in March
through July, then feeds on rice, supplemented by
chironomid larvae, the rest of the year.
1
See page 47.
Godwits usually fly their five-thousand-kilometer
trek from the Netherlands to western Africa nonstop. They set off at the end of a sunny afternoon
and continue for three or four days – and nights.
Their flight across the Sahara Desert to Portugal
or Spain is also a single trek. What remains unsolved, however, is the mystery of their trip from
the Iberian rice fields to the Netherlands, though
we know some details. The Frisian godwits travel
via Laag-Holland National Landscape in the
north-west of the country, and many spend a few
days near Ouderkerk aan de Amstel in the Landje
van Geijsel close to Schiphol Airport.
An old Dutch proverb teaches us that in May, all
the birds lay their eggs, except for the cuckoo and
the godwit. In Thijsse’s day, godwits laid their eggs
in June. When we were boys, they didn’t usually
depart until mid-July whereas today they leave the
dried-out Frisian lands for Guinea-Bissau before
the month of May is even over. In our days, godwits were able to fully fledge their chicks, which
takes about three weeks of parental care. They
also used to delay their departure to replace part
of their plumage, which was not a luxury, because
a hole in your wing doesn’t make for a very comfortable flight. In those days, agricultural condi-
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tions in the Netherlands were adequate for godwits
to afford to do most of their plumage maintenance;
now they postpone this until they arrive in Africa.
The earlier departure of our Dutch godwits has hit
the Balanta rice farmers of Guinea-Bissau hard.
Godwits love rice sprouts, and they now eat more
freshly sown rice by arriving earlier in the planting
season. Not wanting to sacrifice the rice, the Balanta changed their cultivation practices and started
sowing under the palm trees close to the villages.
They transfer the young shoots to the outer fields
when the plants are large enough to no longer be
attractive to the godwits.
The King
Casually ignoring the extra work imposed on the
Balantas, here in Western Europe we did everything possible to speed up our food production.
If the land was too wet, we drained it. If the soil
lacked good structure, we brought in heavy machinery and improved it. Fertilizers of all kinds
were used in ever-larger quantities to increase crop
yields. Local roads were paved, enabling heavy
machines to replace human labour. The countryside was robbed of its jobs and steadily depopulated.
Struggling with all this loss, we asked the question – did we really have to pay this price for our
progress? Was there another way? Was it possible
to increase our food production, improve our public health, connect our villages with the rest of the
country and fight the battle against water, while
retaining the biodiversity we once had? Did we focus too single-mindedly for the last half century on
creating as much agricultural growth as possible?
Along with European Sicco Mansholt 2, who revised
his dream of large-scale industrialized agriculture,
we believe the answer is “Yes.” We think the Netherlands could indeed have become a flourishing
European country with a minimum loss of biodiversity. We could have made a life for ourselves
with an ecologically and economically prosperous
countryside whose greatest threat was being run
over by tourists from other wealthy parts of the
2
Sicco Mansholt (1908–1995) was raised in a socialist-minded family
of wealthy farmers in the north-eastern province of Groningen.
He started a farm in the newly reclaimed Wieringermeer, but entered
post-war politics soon after. As Minister of Agriculture, he sat in 6
governments and became the driving force of large-scale farming. He
was a member of the European Commission for 15 years and became
regarded as the founding father of a common European agriculture
policy. After his retirement, however, he had second thoughts about
introducing farming subsidies and large-scale agriculture.
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world. Instead, now only those Dutch people who
can afford it, seek out the peace of nature – far
across our borders. We could have become an ecocultural retreat serviced by a small-scale tourist
sector: the Netherlands as a source of inspiration
for those who live in worlds where progress had
trampled all soft values. This is where the buttercup, the godwit and the king come together,
because emancipations of the past century mean
that all citizens are now kings. We ourselves are responsible for electing the local councils, provincial
officials, regional water authorities, parliaments
and governments that show such a lack of interest
in the most vulnerable qualities of our country.
The Netherlands is ranked at the top of countries
with the lowest remaining biodiversity. It was
our own choice, but it is not too late. There are an
abundance of opportunities to correct the situation. There is still time to find ways for new agricultural systems that emphasize the quality of both
the products and the environment, systems that
work with, not against, the water. In the lowest
parts of the country, we should have water farms
instead of cattle farms, water storage instead of
pumping stations. It is indeed still possible, like
the old poets sang, to turn stones to bread.
It grien fan ’e fierte
Yn in wynslaan fan rûzjende fearren wurdt
Us sjongen in hoedzjen fan ljurken en skriezen,
In fleanen ûnder ljippen en tjirken as
Ingels fan goud mei eagen grôtfol fierten, grien.
Green is the Vista
In a rush of wind-ruffled feathers our songs
Serve as a gathering call to godwits and larks while
Soaring among the lapwings and plovers like
Angels of gold whose eyes have seen great vistas, green.
Theunis Piersma (1958) is a biologist and a professor of Global
Flyway Ecology at the University of Groningen and at the Royal
Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (nioz) at Texel.
Sytze Pruiksma (1972) is a percussionist, composer and filmmaker. His work builds on his landscape symphony Lân
(2008, Frysk Festival) and includes the great themes of global
bird migration.
Tsjêbbe Hettinga (1949) is a poet and performer. He studied
Dutch and Frisian language at the University of Groningen.
In 1971, he made his debut by entering – and winning – a Frisian
literary contest.
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Acknowledgments
Realizing this publication has been a true
pleasure. We would like to thank the authors
and illustrator for spontaneously accepting our
request to contribute.
Jo-Lan van Leeuwen was our liaison with the
authors and timekeeper of the deadlines.
Lot Folgering edited the interview with
Frans Lanting.
Susan Massotty translated the poem by
Tsjêbbe Hettinga (page 61).
Publisher Paul M. Kemmeren warmly embraced
the idea of assembling a collection of essays.
Thanks to all of you.
This booklet is dedicated
to all of our wonderful colleagues in Zeist.
Zeist, the Netherlands, May 2012
het gesprek, de tienduizend dingen
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en de boterbloem
Joep Bertrams (1946) is a political cartoonist. He also creates
animated cartoons, designs puppets and illustrates books.
www.yoopdeloop.com
Colofon
Translation
Ron de Klerk
Design
x-hoogte, Hans Lodewijkx
Published by
knnv Uitgeverij
Printed by
Dekkers van Gerwen
© World Wide Fund for Nature, Netherlands, 2012
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print,
photocopy, microfilm or by any other means, without the
written permission of the publisher.