Prince Charles and the Gaia Hypothesis

Now some people are very much against the idea of royalty and disapprove of the fact that Prince Charles will some day be the soverign of a significant portion of the world's landmass. Some people think he's not fit to be king, but I think he is very well suited because we can show Prince Charles to school children and say, "This is why we vote," and the value of democracy will immediantly become clear. In the United States it's a little more difficult. There they show George Bush to the children and say, "This is why we vote," and the whole issue becomes extremely confusing.

One of things Prince Charles apparently likes to do is talk to trees, and this is all fine and well and a bit of a royal tradition. However, confusion can sometimes arise when he talks to people. I haven't paid a great deal of attention to his public announcments on account of how I'm easily bored, however I think that he, or perhaps just some of his friends, are supporters of the Gaia hypothesis.

The Gaia hypothesis is the idea that all the different forms of life in the world cooperate together to form communities and ecosystems, and each organism is actually just part of a greater whole. Now someone with a degree in zoology, or possibly a five year old, may point out that lions and antelope don't really cooperate, in fact the antelope tend to run like hell away from the lions, and sometimes put out a lion's eye with a hoof when they get caught. But a supporter of the Gaia hypothesis might say they are cooperating in a greater sense in that if the lions didn't hunt the antelopes, the antelope's population would explode and soon there would be no grass left and they would be worse off than they were with the lions, and so they are actually cooperating together in much the same way as different parts of my body cooperate together to create me. Personally I don't find this idea very convincing on account of how when my liver gets hungry for nutrients, it never leaps up through my neck and eats my brain.