The Integrated System of Nature

PerillaCove is an integrated system attuned to nature.

A bee seeks and drinks nectar from a flower that it unintentionally pollinates, and the flower goes on to yield fruit. The fruit attracts a monkey that then carries away and eats the fruit, spitting out the seed that germinates and grows into a new tree. Flawless.

And the unselected, rotting fruit still feed and seed the soil. It’s all integrated and accounted for … from the dead leaves to the fallen trees to the predators and prey to the wind, fire and snow … and nothing is out of place, in that waste approaches zero.

“This is so intricate, someone must have designed it.” We project our style way of engineering onto nature. We call nature perfect because it is the human who is fragmented and full of effort, piecing together isolated parts to create a whole. Nature isn’t trying.

Let me put it another way. Nature is integrated, but it didn’t strive for that. Integration exists simply because dis-integration cannot stand the test of time. Everything, seamlessly, seems to have a role, not necessarily by design, but because that’s just the way the cookie had to crumble.

There is a total harnessing out here, yet in flux, where waste approaches zero. It’s what I call a flawless turnover, and here, harmony is immanent.

We, on the flip side, are taught to make goals and chase them. We’ve built systems that are simply unintegrated, like industrial food production, held together by rules/incentives all while fighting, as opposed to aligning, with nature.

And in a system that lacks integration, there can only be fragmentation. What does this mean?

Tasty food vs healthy food. Work vs play. Learning vs living. Art vs business. Screens vs outdoors. Freedom vs security. Theory vs practice. Sustainability vs growth. The human mind has been mass-trained to divide and dissect; it too easily misses the oneness in things.

At the purest and most integrated level, there are no full-blown trade-offs. No, the best of this and the best of that can co-exist, yes, but also feed off and reinforce one another. The most delicious foods are also what is best for my body. My work is play. The bees and trees — honey and fruit — thrive together.

In other words, different worlds, even so-called opposites, are folded into one another; the “balance” is already baked in. At the truest forms, motion carries rest, nourishment carries lightness, and vice versa, and so on. Nature builds while it clears, and it clears while it builds. Think about a food that nourishes yet lightens, grounds yet lifts. This is what I call integrated gastronomy, and there are many such examples of this.

Today’s meal is the tastiest thing you’ve eaten all week and it’s also what your body was asking for. Why put up with any less? Your play sharpens your craft. Your craft funds your life. Your life deepens your play.

Consequently, it is about the Whole. Those who live Whole, they tend to float. It’s being in three dimensions as opposed to two …. perceiving the edges, the colours, the layers, the textures, the shadows, the faces, the orientation, and the spin … all at once … and attuning through the five senses, so directly, to the point of … maybe … unlocking a sixth, and dissolving things you once thought were true about, even, your very own self.

A Human is a microcosm who can think not merely with the brain but with every cell in the body. We don’t need rounds of training on pounds of data.

So instead of trying to predict the future, I look to restore the conditions under which I can meet the future … because the integrated system is the ultimate vessel for life in all layers, phases, and forms.

My focus is on present-tense integration, the moment, a continuity of movements each complete in itself that it resembles a sort of travelling fractal, greater than the sum of its parts. Additions may be made provided the system remains integrated. But inherent in the integration are connections so generative that the additions required to further complete the system become vanishingly small.