What Did You Learn In Church Today?

One feature that seems to be different in most (all?) Asian cultures, compared to the European or USA, is that the focus is in groups, not individuals. You are not seen as an individual but as a representative of a group. What you do or how you dress is not just your way, it is something that may bring honor or shame to the group where you belong. People are expected to make their choices for the group, not so much for themselves.

Overall, the value of an individual is less in a Buddhist culture. If an individual dies, what does that matter? The person just reincarnates to another phase of life. And the person is anyway not much more than an illusion.

The missionary claimed that some level of indifference regarding the health and life of humans stems from the Buddhist worldview. He told that around 5000 children die yearly because of poor air quality in the wider region of Asia but that does not cause strong reactions because according to that worldview, these children just move to their next incarnation.

And how about being a sinner? Well, if you have been born as a human instead of a rat or cockroach, that shows you cannot be a bad person.

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We had a project where we studied how the invasive alien plants affected the vegetation and fauna within the patch that they had taken. It seemed that the strongest impact came through the toxic chemicals that these plants contained and released. The toxic chemicals were one of the key reasons why these plants were so successful - very few herbivores could eat the toxic plants and the toxic chermicals that the plants released to the ground inhibited the germination and growth of the natural competitors (allelopathy). Dense growing form that blocked much of the light during summer was another factor that inhibited the germination and growth of the competitors.

Patches of the invasive alien plants had an increased number and cover of other alien species. Apparently, the other alien plant species were better adapted to live with the invasive alien plants than their native competitors.

Despite the toxins and a lowered diversity and abundance of animals within the patches, litter did not accumulate beneath the alien plants. Some of the toxins possibly evaporated or were transformed in the dead plant material and earthworms took care of the withered leaves.

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That’s one of the few benefits of scotchbroom: the seed pods decay rapidly and add nutrients. The problem is that the seeds themselves just lie there waiting for the right growing condition!
Their big detriment is that their roots chase the water table, so every time there’s a drought native plants die off because the scotchbroom draws water from deeper than the native plants. That makes an issue for planting native species: to an extent the scotchbroom provides shade for the young plants, but has to be killed and cleared enough to allow the young plants to get water.

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