{"id":2531,"date":"2019-05-11T16:52:16","date_gmt":"2019-05-11T16:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nevilleronan.com\/blog\/?p=2531"},"modified":"2019-07-21T16:53:59","modified_gmt":"2019-07-21T16:53:59","slug":"nickernuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nevilleronan.com\/blog\/2019\/05\/11\/nickernuts\/","title":{"rendered":"Nickernuts!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

No, I am not swearing, nor have I developed Tourettes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But yesterday morning before starting my day\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s work, I\ndecided to take an hour or two down by the bay to find these precious pearls of\nthe sea. Since I discovered them a couple of years ago, they have fascinated me\non several different levels. Apart from their use as jewelry items and good\nluck charms (which is what I sought them for), they have been used for\ncenturies as remedies for dysentery, malaria, and in medicinal teas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I studied them yesterday though it truly drove home the\naspect of intelligence and how humans generally walk the earth as if we\ninvented the whole concept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Certainly there are objects that exhibit complete lack of\nintelligence; rocks, sand, water, The White House. But the rest of the world we\nlive in has evolved to shine a wonderful light on the wildly varied forms of\nintelligence that there are. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those of you that don\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2t know what Nickernuts are, these\nphotographs might show how they grow on a tree, typically near coastal waters.\nTheir seeds are produced in spiny pods and when they mature, they burst open\nand the nuts fall either onto the ground immediately below or directly into the\nwater to get carried away to distant shores. Nickernuts from Florida and the\nCaribbean have been recorded to come up on the shores of Ireland and Scotland\nthanks to ocean currents. They have an extremely hard shell which is impervious\nto salt water (which is one of the reasons they have been earmarked for jewelry\npurposes) and a slow sea-borne trip of five or six thousand miles degrades them\nnot at all!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So as I was standing there yesterday studying the tree, I\nnoticed the great lengths it went to produce a seed that could survive its\nsurroundings. The tree itself was very thorny and so too the pod \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u00a6 good defense\nagainst creatures looking for a meal. The tree stood with its roots in salt\nwater, thriving in a way that us humans have failed to do despite our genuine\ninterest in processing salt-water to nourish ourselves. But this tree not only\nfilters the salt water, but it knows that its seed must be able to withstand\nthat very same salt water if it hopes to survive. So it places its seed in a\nhardened shell that is completely at home riding the waves to a new land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The world around us displays such magnificent intelligence,\nmuch of which is beyond our own abilities to comprehend. We murder creatures\nand destroy an environment from the premises of greed and the belief that we\ngenuinely know best. We place ourselves at the pinnacle of intelligence and\nlook down on everything else around us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s what allows us to \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cpave paradise and put up a parking\nlot.\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c2\u009d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have a thoughtful week and let\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s all work towards keeping\nthis wonderful planet around for our children and their children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n