How can larger communication webs control the education of the smaller beings that create it?
You do it all the time when you might teach your muscle cells new tricks constant exercise or repeating certain motions again and again. Ecosystems, made up of communication networks between many different species, impose direct controls over the survival of the individual plants and animals that live within them. Not with the same kind of smug determination you might have in teaching your cells new tricks, but with the same long term inevitability that is far beyond the horizons of perceptions of your cells or their components. A more easily understood example of how larger systems modify evolution is the way our individual actions help modify the conditions for survival of other creatures and ourselves in the future. Humanity is really shining in this ability just now, modifying the world in large ways – destroying forests, the ozone layer, the surface of the sea, and thousands of species at an amazing rate. Moving species from one place to another and cultivating massive populations
