From an abstract perspective, I find it curious to watch how so many fragile systems interact in the world to make this a habitable planet. For example, follow the chain of events that leads to having a loaf of bread on your table:

1. Farmer plants seed in soil full of hearty nutrients that nourish and foster a seedling to grow into a plant.
2. Clean water and energetic sunlight fall down from the sky and land on the plants allowing them to survive and prosper.
3. Complex cycles and cascades of chemical interactions spur plant cell differentiation leading to a plant forming a delicate flower.
4. Flower blooms, one among billions, and an army of honeybees swarm across the land to facilitate pollination of the plant.
5. Pollination leads to seed formation, and another chemical cascade leads to the growth and maturing of the seed into a harvestable grain.
6. Grain is gathered by farmers and sold for production into flour, which is then baked into bread.

Remove one step in that chain, say for example all the honeybees suddenly disappearing for no readily apparent reason, and then ask the questions: does the cycle go on? Will nature adapt? And if nature adapts will the adaptation include our needs as a species?

Funny how it’s never the disasters we think: terrorism, earthquakes, floods. It’s the little things that will doom us.