HOW IMPORTANT ARE ROOTS?

Everyone knows that roots are important to plants of all kinds, but are they important to people?  Oh, I'd say very much so, and for the same reasons most plants can't survive without them.  Take a tree, for instance.  I've studied trees some and was amazed at how complex they are.  In fact, the tree might well be the most dynamic living thing on this planet, and we pretty much take them for granted.  That's stupid on our parts because we can't survive without them, and that's because they are a part of our roots system - that part we're unaware of. 

We usually think of roots as our family background, our social status, our homes and jobs and other things that provide our basis of security.  Foundation, that's the word we most think of when it comes to roots, and that should include our environment and not just our physical setting.  I won't go into all the scientific reassons we can't live without trees.  My expertise in that are is shallow, but it's deep enough for me to know they are part of our root system.  And we are much like the trees, even from a nutritional viewpoint.  Some tree have roots that reach deep into the earth to obtain the nutrition they need, but others have shallow roots.  Would it surprise you to know that many desert plants don't have deep roots?  Take the creosote plant, for example.  It has shallow roots that spread along the ground so that it can catch as much mositure as possible from the infrequent rains that fall.  In doing that, it pushes out other plants that would compete with it for the water or other nutrients.

We're very much like the creosote plant, that little desert bush, in that we do the same.  Most of us have shallow roots that spread, and since there's just so much space available, that means we're in competition with others to get what we need to survive.  To do more than survive, meaning we want to actually prosper, we need to spread more, and that means pushing someone else aside.  It's the way of nature, I suppose, that survival of the fittest thing.  I realize that's the way it is, but I still don't like it.  Perhaps we do prosper by controlling as much space as possible, taking what we need at other's expense, but does that really make us prosperous?

I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this.  If in time we don't learn to conserve, to take just what we need, we'll end up in a situation where there's nothing left for us.  We're doing that because people are a much worse blight on the earth than is that little creosote bush.  It's greedy to a point, but our greed doesn't seem to have a point where enough is enough.  Think about that, and then take a look at what's going on around you.  Better yet, walk out into the desert and find a nice healthy creosote bush.  It looks pretty good, but there's quite a bit of bare ground around it.  It's healthy for the time being but in time that bare ground around it could be its doom.  Say, for instance, a rancher comes along who wants to graze cattle there, and he thinks the creosote bush is his enemy.  He wants
grass, not an ugly little bush cows don't eat.  Get the point?