I believe that individuals in both the natural and social sciences can add much to the overall dynamics of life in the universe, complementing those with security or religious backgrounds. Security people tend to be narrowly focused on threats which can bias them toward the greater perspective to the disadvantage of all. Those who adhere to established religions can view reality biased by their strong religious beliefs. In cases where individuals are involved in security and have a narrow fundamentalist religious perspective the bias are compounded. They are apt to mistake ET friends as enemies and ET enemies as friends. We have to look no further than to the present war in the Middle East to see the combined dangerous destructive effects of both security and religious bias.

In order to gain a full understanding of any picture extraterrestrial or otherwise, all elements of society must be involved. When certain elements of a society take it upon themselves to speak and act for the rest of society all within society are damaged. Ecologists and social scientists views have often been excluded or ignored when such views can add fresh insights into the dynamics of extraterrestrial interactions on earth and across the universe.

I grew up in a family of ecologists and their friends deeply involved in the natural world. Herb Stoddard was a close friend of the family, a mentor to my father and like a grandfather to me. He and his friend Aldo Leopold en.wikipedia.org could be considered two of the founding fathers of ecology while my father became the first true fire ecologist. My father Ed Komarek Sr. organized some of these friends into what became Tall Timbers Research Inc. http://www.talltimbers.org/ and the Komarek family plantation became Birdsong Nature Center birdsongnaturecenter.org organized by my mother Betty Komarek. Both these organizations are recognized around the world in the field of the natural sciences.

If we consider earth life as one sample out out of a vast universe we can infer that life will take hold almost automatically when the right conditions present themselves. More and more scientists are amazed at the extreme environments that can be colonized by life on earth. Even the bedrock miles beneath the surface of earth harbors microbial life that takes a thousand years to replicate itself because of the harsh conditions. Where the conditions for life are favorable then life does not focus on just basic survival within the elements but employs very competitive and cooperative strategies of interaction with other life.

Ecology is centered around and studies these competitive and cooperative strategies of both predator and prey. Both predators and prey, who can change roles even moment to moment, competing with each other for limited resources, Predators cooperate to attack prey and prey cooperate to defend against predators. Man is no stranger to this process and is both predator and prey in nature. Humanity is also composed of individuals and factions that are involved in human relations as both predator and prey. For this reason social scientists and ecologists really have a lot in common because both explore the nature of the complex relationships in their respective fields of study that are founded on natural and artificial evolutionary processes.