Essays from West of 98: An Ecosystem’s Purpose
It is a key scientific tenet of holistic management that each constituent part of an ecosystem is interdependent on the other pieces of the ecosystem. They were designed to work in connection with one another, or developed over time to do so. Plants convert sunlight, water, and nutrients into energy. Grazing animals consume those plants. Predator animals consume the grazing animals. Removing one of the constituent parts will disrupt and negatively affect the entire ecosystem. For example, America’s grasslands are symbiotic with grazing animals—remove the livestock under the guise of “helping” climate change an d you’ll actually degrade the grasslands and make climate change wo rse, not better, but that’s a conversation for a different essay.
I am not a scientist of the hard sciences or the social sciences. I am just a hillbilly who cares about the future of rural America and spends a lot of time viewing our communities and their past, present, and future through different prisms to generate new ideas and new solutions to age-old problems. In doing so, I see clearly how our communities developed as ecosystems. Much like a specific ecosystem in nature—desert, forest, plains, whatever—each community is shaped by a unique set of circumstances. Each community ecosystem arose for a specific purpose. This fits communities of every size, even if you don’t realize it. Many of America’s largest cities are located where they are because they were a particularly ideal location for a trading settlement along an early road or a body of water that was important for transportation and commerce.
In short, all communities developed with a purpose. Whatever that purpose might have been (and it was likely economic), the constituent parts of the community developed like an ecosystem. The constituent parts—economic, government, social, and otherwise—developed in symbiosis with one another. That early café or movie theater in a farm town might not have had a farm-oriented purpose itself, but it developed to serve a farm-oriented clientele. Government institutions in a pioneer settlement were influenced by the unique cultures and government institutions of wherever the settlers came from, because those local institutions were oriented to serve the settlers, not to fit a bland rubric from some far-off capital. The local economy arose to serve the specific needs of the people who kept the economy moving and as the needs of the people changed, so did the local economy.
I don’t have the room today, but looking forward, I want to talk about how local ecosystems came to be impacted by larger economic forces. These impacted local needs and, as a result, they came to modify how much control the local ecosystem had over itself. That’s where the rubber meets the road in this conversation—how we can shape our own local ecosystem to ensure that each constituent part of the ecosystem prospers.
In the meantime, I would offer a book recommendation to local leaders of every stripe. In 2009, author Simon Sinek wrote a powerful leadership book called “Start with Why: How Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action.” In this book, Sinek identifies the “why”—a sense of purpose—as fundamental to lasting success in business or society. Too many companies focus on the “how” or “what” of their business. They effectively just sell a product or service because it has a market. When the market dries up or when the company is overtaken by a more powerful competitor, the purpose-lacking company is in trouble. Meanwhile, a company focused on “why” is selling a purpose—the product or service is just the conduit to the purpose. When the market changes, the “why”-oriented company is better prepared to adapt accordingly.
Have you ever stopped to actually consider your community’s “why,” whether historically or currently? Did your community develop with a purpose, or did it arise simply because there was a market in the unique moment that it was established? Did your community develop with a purpose that has since disappeared?
As we look at our local ecosystems, a fundamental issue is to identify our community’s purpose. If we lost it, we need to get it back. If we did not have one, we better find it. An ecosystem without a purpose is not an ecosystem at all.
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and podcast. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to West of 98 wherever podcasts are found.