Our world is diverse, complex and changeable. It evolved through billions of years, and during this process, it developed critical living webs to sustain life on its own. We, as humans, are just one small piece of this intricate puzzle.

We are animals able of thinking and reason about what surrounds us. From pure imagination to the construction of theories, humans can build an understanding of the natural world. Believe it or not, this wild world sustains our lives as species willing to survive like any other.

Looking at the ecosystem’s diagram, humans are mainly consumers and apex predators at the same time. Our actions can determine who lives or dies consecutively. Our fire and technology domination of tools made us susceptibly the most intelligent living being on Earth, although with restrictions.

On the one hand, we might be heavy consumers, productive and astute in our propagation. But on the other side, we may corrupt the whole ecosystem without minimal regard.

When you look around you, you might not understand what is going on. Our curiosity is the driving force behind the scientific based-knowledge of why we are here in the first place.

We are notorious storytellers. Through stories, the indigenous people; those who lived from the land and respected its continuous process of renovation and growth; those who dedicated their lives to understanding their position towards the ground; those who grew their knowledge foundation from what they saw, experimented and found to be the right way, ought to be considered the books of Earth.

Okay, you are probably lost at this stage thinking about what science has to do with it.

My initial instance about the indigenous people from any country shares a view of pure land connectivity. If you do not come from a native origin, this connection may as well thrive like any other.

The only thing you have to do is to touch dirt, spend some time around plants, watch birds flying above your head, follow a butterfly into the bush, observe ants working around their colony, watch bees in and out of their beehives, tiptoe into the forest and so forth.

Just then, nature may become your friend, and even without knowing about what you are experiencing, you may still compel and surrender to the beauty of the unknown, the beauty that is science.

Nevertheless, if you are not into nature, you may understand science or see science into action by just baking bread, eating ice cream, turning on a light bulb, grasping how you drive your car, and how the internet works.

These are familiar concepts thus distant from the natural world but still relevant for understanding this knowledge method called science. The technique that modern humans developed and indigenous people lived with it for thousands of years.

The people of the land never thought it could have a name, though. Survival was the only driving force to connect them between the soil and sky. Within modern society, both knowledge bases could move our understanding of the natural world to another level.

A level that no human being ever thought could happen in our future. We could use science as a collective intuitive to improve an individual’s life and sustain enough data to make us a less abruptly natural consumer.

Instead of destruction, we could regenerate. Instead of heavy consumerism, we could consume in moderation. Instead of greed, we could have more empathy towards nature, the place where every one of us belongs.

Respecting, understanding biodiversity is the other level of embracing science as a friend who knows that others around you, regardless of plants, animals, insects and bacteria, also have a living space. And this friend may tell you that we would not be able to live a good life, nor possibly exist at all without biodiversity.

You shall listen to this friend more often. And now and then, this friend might whisper that leaving nature alone is the best thing you can do. By doing that, you may remain as a consumer but now controlled and respectful toward different living organisms that, nonetheless, are there to keep everything in balance, including yourself, a “two-legged creature” who sometimes thinks too much.