The Foraging Station Experiment
Share this:
This flagship experiment can contribute to:
- reducing the economic loads on health and social systems thanks to a new ecology of health that can reconcile people with their primate body and humanity with nature;
- a complementary approach in rewilding the planet to face climate change and rising resource demands;
- a way for two opposed human tendencies to collaborate; and
- a new way of societal inclusion for people who suffer diffuse syndromes induced by the demands of social integration to large-numbers systems, without undermining the fabric of society and economy.
Preparing for the Foraging Station Experiment and attempting again to describe the topologic ecology research methods for scientific dissemination, has deeply changed my view of the ecological role of humanity on the planet, and of my place in the world of humans. The disheartened isolation is slowly turning into looking forward to a future together. Perhaps after all, we do have a chance to improve our collective ability to act before it is too late, in concert rather than dissonance, leaving no one behind, even those hidden to society, and to heed the call of the world’s children for a safe and sound future.
In addressing apparently less urgent, but more global problems, the original approach used in this pilot experiment provides a new lens on several generic states of human affairs, which are connected and give rise to more specific problems that generalise. It combines the short-term and long-term approaches.
The goal of the Foraging Station Experiment is to develop a proof of concept that could be transferred to other settings as a useful operational mode for a distributed approach to global problems. The concrete setting of this research station is a piece of land, where three researchers reside over a period of years; they experiment to rewild both health and environment, while also forming unusual and fruitful societal connections. Other implementations of this operational mode could be very different to address other issues, and in Obama’s words, to ‘get busy and change what needs to be changed’. We need everybody’s participation, in the varied ways they can.
Barack Obama at COP26 (1m10)
This research and the field experiment are challenging to explain in words, but I am passionate about defragmenting knowledge and establishing collaborations. For the last 25 years I have been engaged in a multi-domain investigation, to get to the bottom of some poorly understood aspects of Homo sapiens behaviour, physiology, mind, and creations in the world. The theoretical basis of the experiment lies in a geometric way of understanding global and local situations without separating them (Ph.D. 2008). This website and field research are a means of making the theoretical findings more accessible, rather than forever talking about theory. However some understanding of the unusual approach of this research is necessary for the experiment to make sense to the reader.
Short-term and long-term always seem to be in conflict, whether in economy, in people’s lives, or in managing planetary resources used by humans, and this paralyses unified decisions. In particular, the opposition of immediate survival and long-term viability does not make sense to a wildlife carer as I was. Both are necessary for life. The opposition is not inherent, but related to the modelling of adapting to and compensating for environmental conditions as separate from human systems and body.
Some people often respond to such pressures without this paradox, by changing states and matching internal and external conditions. They do not do well in over-stimulating urban settings, where their internal homeostatic regulation can become overwhelmed, inducing temporary crises and damaging their physiology. They can sometimes behave like a bewildered kangaroo startled by a fast car’s noise and glaring headlights. This makes it hard to fit in with organised society, which is based on stability, and their contribution potential is left unexpressed.
On the other hand, their characteristics make them ideal experimenters to use the non-separate approach of the topologic ecology methods (described in ‘Essentials of Topologic Ecology’). The Foraging Station Experiment represents an option for them to contribute, but also an opportunity to bring out broader possibilities of resolution.
Wild biology properties are not just those of physical ‘biological’ bodies and material systems, but those of BioLife deployment
The ‘stress’ notions of fight/flight and rest/recovery are now well known. They correspond to two compensatory function of the Autonomic Nervous System, which regulates ‘strain’ rather than ‘stress’ (a notion currently associated with the ‘stress hormone’ cortisol). But this is only a regulation of survival mechanisms. Living beings not have only a Survival instinct; they also have an instinct of Viability: without viability, survival is sharply limited. For example, a wildlife animal to be released from care has to have survival skills; but these can be useless unless the animal has recovered from injury, and for that, it needs to be ‘viable’ in the wild ‘in the first place’ (e.g. a deaf dolphin my be skilled at hunting fish and have recovered from an injury, but will not live if it cannot use echolocation).
Living mammals – humans included – have a survival instinct, and mechanisms for regulation and recovery, but it also has an instinct. to preserve the integrity of its beig ‘a living being’: its structure (body-brain), which includes connections, its functions, which encable its operational mode. Survival is only one operational mode; it is culture that has made people believe that it is the “only” instinct.
Viability, the one-oriented activation of SURvival, and the dualistic regulation mechanisms have coloured cultures for millennia, being expressed behaviourally as individual tendencies, and in ideas as (a) the notion of ‘Raising’ or activation, (b) dualistic thinking (e.g. ‘anti’-anything in medicine) and (c) two philosophies of life: the Philosophy of Human Advancement in one direction UP, and the Philosophy of Nature (in its more fundamental form, it is about viability, or sustainable use of both body and external resources so that BioLife may continue). The cultural frameworks that we learn oppose the 2 philosophies of “Life”, or represent them as in ‘balance’ physically or mentally. This leads into framing conflicts: health or sustainability as a short-term urgent need to develop or grow/regrow to survive, versus a long-term need to slow down, calm the mind and restore the body to remain viable. We also learn these by framing them as cycles: using up and replenishing resources, recycling and cyles of life, or as activation and deactivation such as stress winding-up and winding-down. These strategies are at work in both health and collective human behaviour, and consequently in general human behaviour globally. They result, for example, in pitting brain or mind against the body, humanity working against nature rather than with it, or opposing human ‘advancement’ and intelligence or creativity (which uses nature and body as ‘resources’) to ‘preserving’ nature (against humans). This has countless consequences, and these are now dramatic. The price for not understanding the limitations of these framings, and not acknowledging what is ‘something is deeply wrong’ with them (our representations, mental and sensory), is ultimately the total freeze in implementing the global change in human behaviour (both human and physical) that has been known about for at least 40 years.
Yet, 8 years of my fieldwork observations in the Australian outback have shown clearly that the worldview of survival is narrow and fragmentary.
• Biology requires both instincts to cooperate toward the same outcome of maintaining the well-working and integrity of living things, as well as the structure and function of the environments that sustain their life. Separating these to maintain only body or environment, or pushing one or the other to limits, does not maintain well working life. The general drift in human health and biodiversity loss are witness to this. Menopaused women may be the best example: increasing numbers of them go to the outback alone, just to breathe and move, walk a lot more than suburban environments allow (walk without straining as their husbands tend to do), to let nature calm their system’s reactions, reawaken breathing, shift appetite back to fresh foods, straighten the posture, stop over-focusing. Doing this limits the exponential deterioration of their health and reduces the need for compensatory medical stimulation, and frees them from the sharply limiting adaptations (e.g. reducing activity, reducing ranges of motion). It is not just about her body; her environment is a key factor; nature’s ability to completely ‘Un-Wind’ is very different from the civilised ‘wind-down’. Increasing numbers of young people also crave ‘green-hands’ jobs outdoors in nature as opposed to building jobs and industrial or office jobs in ‘green’ industries; and they crave the non-separation from nature.
• In a severe rain storm, a camper has to work hard to protect the tent, activate the brain to enable the body to work fast, and activate the mind to work out how to stop its poles from being bent and its sheets torn and robbing him of safe shelter – but this is temporary, not a chronic lifestyle. There is also a limit: if the disturbance goes too far, animals and humans get hurt, trees break or uproot, soils are washed away, tents swept off. How far this ‘too far’? It depends, on local as well as global conditions and on the amount of effort, cannot be generalised; yet biological living, and the Topologic Situation Modelling© method, can guide action by modelling the ‘too far’, not as a human or physical condition but a topologic property: how to limit disturbance. This can be represented with a simple geometry, independent of context; but some common sense ‘sayings’ also formulate them.
• Living is not a chronic matter of survival in every instant or of perpetual recovery from injuries or insults — animals mostly just live their lives. Birds in arid areas just walk around picking up seeds peacefully, mostly without being pushed to their effort limits, or their exploratory curiosity being limited. Only in more intense situations, might the resources be depleted and then need replenishing, whether in the outside environment or inside the body, or genetic adaptation might be required, but not constantly. In other words, apart from the invasive survivors, under most conditions, wild biology in nature economises.
To understand a situation at hand, we habitually fragment it, measuring disturbance in physical terms, evaluating it through human deformations. This way, we frame our explanations and experience in physical and human terms. It can also be apprehended without separating or framing it, as a property of geometric distortion, independent of both types of representations. Reducing biology or life to human representations or to physical bodies, material objects, and internal-external activities misses something significant. It loses grounding in the outcomes mentioned — under most conditions, wild biology economises and altogether limits disturbance, in both body and environment.
“Wild biology in nature economises and altogether limits disturbance in both body and environment, under most conditions.”
Experimenting with a topologic ecology of health
The individuals who respond to disturbance by matching the pressure are easily disturbed and say they need nature to function well. The over-stimulating urban environment induces in them chronic syndromes with diffuse symptoms (e.g. autonomic, chronic fatigue, digestive). These difficulties, and the apparently strange behaviours, do not occur if they live in nature, but do in “the world” (of humans), and can step up to autoimmunity for example. They crucially depend on nature for a co-regulation effect. The regulation problem that confronts them when disconnected from wild nature (in urban, industrial, agricultural and most parks settings) is also at work in general human behaviour disconnected from the planet’s wilderness: the co-regulation no longer occurs. These individuals are therefore particularly suited for the task of exploring how wild biology and nature co-regulation can support a topologic ecology of health valid at both scales; based on modelling disturbance and deformation as geometric distortion, it points to not breaching limits nor inducing limitations, economising. The station puts this into practice.
What is involved in the experiment?
The previous fieldwork determined a number of elements of health ecology, working from a mobile laboratory. For the next stage of the research program, the key point is that land is now required in order to implement these elements, and to include growing wilder foods, foraging, creative societal involvement, and other aspects. The Foraging Station Experiment depends on gaining access to a few hectares of reasonably arable land (previously disturbed by humans, not wilderness) in a climate suitable for growing temperate and subtropical foods. It can begin operating with 3 small cabins as separate living quarters and primary facilities (water, sewage, electricity, internet…). Apart from the lead researcher, an experimenter specialised in wildlife biology and rehabilitation has been secured; a third needs training in plant biology and nutrients. Sub-projects are chosen according to their specialisation and interests. Other expertise will be sought externally.
The work at the station consists in rewilding several aspects:
- food sourcing/species, through a prehistoric ‘Wild Gardens’ technique (leave the best & pick the rest)
- a wildlife-inclusive ecosystem brought to being nearly auto-sustaining (low maintenance, unlike gardening and agriculture)
- human biological health through foraging, walking without load and other activities in daily life such as ‘green-hands’ work outdoors (not ‘green jobs’ in industry/office for green economy)
- a small-scale economy of maintenance with a circular approach to all resources, less driven to expansion than an income-base
- some of the human ingenuity through small grounded technologies (at human scale), to help lift the load on centralised large infrastructures.
Outback travellers are often adept at finding bright and resourceful solutions for practical problems. New, small technologies can help economise without limiting activity; they can be grounded in low disturbance, and meeting needs for local independence. The station can contribute to innovations and field testing them. International contacts have begun for an artificial tree producing energy and to set up a pre-medical center for early health monitoring with small technologies designed by two American physicians and medical inventors.
The multi-modal presentation through the interactive mind maps below helps to envision various aspects of the station research in more detail.
What this pilot field experiment is and is not
Is this experiment a form of return to nature, or biomimetism? How different is it from sustainability? The mind map ‘Questions?’ provides some answers and examples of inadequate frameworks to understand this work. This station is one particular implementation of the topologic ecology methods, but they could be implemented in many ways and contexts, so this is not a set model to copy, nor a ruled program to spread, but a way of operating, with emergent effects.
Is the station a result of a set of principles? Disturbance and signs of deformation, for example, are an approximation to topologic distortion. This and several other approximations of topologic properties are presented in the ‘Operational Guide’ as known principles the reader might relate to, close to but not quite the topologic properties themselves, which are geometric. However, others remain culturally as questions, and are figured as such, with a question mark – they are answerable through the topologic modelling.
One advantage of the topologic approach is flexibility. The station will take shape according to the situation as it presents, rather than as imagined, as plans according to rigid principles or a fixed model’s rules. For example, what accessory buildings are on the station is not pre-determined but depends on enabling resources, realisation of sub-projects, and the modelling. This is similar to the Australian outback attitude, where arbitrary road signs for set speed rules are modulated by warnings about the weather and indications to ‘Drive to road conditions’ — i.e. according to the actual situation on that day. The central mind map ‘Foraging Station Experiment’ sketches various possible developments of the experiment.
Humans and Nature: are the conventional anthropo-centric and biophysical-centric biases the only way?
Climate change is not an easy issue. Institutions and businesses argue that the economic system cannot bear all the financial costs of the great works to adapt cities to it, and even less the potential loss-of-gain associated with rewilding the planet. Yet we are told that to stop adding to climate change and preserve economic civilisation, humanity must return some previously disturbed lands to nature (e.g. for conservation in parks). Topology provides a way around this double-bind. For this fieldwork to be a topologic experiment, the access to land must be gained through a generic economising exchange rather than a give and take economic transaction.
Human developments effectively advance onto wilderness, driving away wildlife (e.g. agriculture, enclosures, building) or eliminating wild biology altogether (e.g. mines). On the other hand, returning lands to nature excludes humans from staying and living in natural surroundings, although they may visit. We need another approach than these anthropo-centric and biophysical-centric biases.
The Foraging Station Experiment proposes to test, in the field, the practical feasibility of a third option that has not been explored — working with both nature and modern human advanced ways simultaneously, without ‘give & take’.
In using a modelling method that addresses what gives rise to generic pressure, before crisis arises, the station represents a complementary option to the existing adaptive, advancing and reversing strategies used to respond to the already increased pressures and most urgent crises. This field experiment is a small but crucial part of the global solution to not break limits of recovery.
A future in which we can invest in a new way, sans frontières
To enable this future, I invite you to take action now, together. If you are curious to see how this unusual investigation could change our views of each other, change what we do and how we do it, please do engage with this pilot experiment. It has many aspects that could benefit from your collaboration for expertise support, basic resources, your patronage or sharing to your network. You are welcome to be creative in supporting this research in any way you feel might enable its aim. I look forward to seeing what happens.
Dr Marika Bouchon, October 2021
For details, please explore the mind maps below (click on the images to access them)
Kindly support this research and the Foraging Station Experiment
Share this:
Mind maps to explore in more detail
