The Curious Case of the Strangler Fig

Considering the enticing nature of potted exotics

There's a tree that has adopted an interesting strategy for survival in an environment where there is severe competition for light. The adult versions of the tree produce fruit constantly instead of seasonally, meaning there are periods when it is the only dependable source of food, drawing animals in the offseason. These animals feed and defecate from the branches onto lower trees or in transit, spreading the seeds to the surrounding area. These seeds, wrapped in fertilizer, blossom in crevices and crotches of neighboring trees far above the forest floor, giving them substantially better access to rain and light.

The shoots and saplings drop roots from their elevated position down to the ground to tap into the necessary minerals and constant moisture pressure provided by the ground even as they exploit their elevated advantage to get as much canopy space as possible. Over time, they can completely encase the host tree upon which their advantageous start was predicated. The circumstance can be considered symbiotic in some ways, but really it's just that the host tree is large and formidable with deep roots and a large amount canopy space, so the strangler fig doesn't seem to be doing much damage. But eventually, it will encase the entire host tree from the dropped roots all the way up to its creeping crown. The host tree will eventually die, then rot out leaving an empty space in the core of the victorious parasite.

I find this whole progression fascinating and instructive. The strangler fig has some really interesting capabilities, from off-season fruit production to air dropped water/nutrient pipelines. The competition for survival in the jungle when it comes to plants is primarily about access to sunlight, given that moisture levels are high pretty much year-round and for the most part throughout all the layers of soil, and humidity is likewise consistently high. In temperate climate zones, things tend to grow conservatively because water access is temporarily and sequentially denied, and light levels change significantly. In subtropical and tropical climate zones, the light is consistent and abundant, and the water is a foregone conclusion.

If nature worked in the way women and progressives believe life is supposed to be, then we would see beautiful unions of super-symbiotic life-chains wrapping all around the equator, with the only division being the great halocline separating freshwater and seawater. It would be a woody, leafy, fertilizer rich organic belt strapped around the planet, and we would probably all wear loincloths and worship it or something silly like that.

Instead, what we see is a brutal, no-holds-barred environment where cunning and brute strength are equally viable methods for exploiting terrain and the weaknesses of neighbors. Ecosystems in the tropical & subtropical bands are in a vicious and continuous Hobbesian State of Nature; in every other climate band, there is a temporary but consistent détente as the axial tilt denies abundant or at least consistent sunlight, which in turn locks up the liquid water supply for some period of time¹.

It's not that the ecosystem isn't at war with itself in the temperate and subarctic bands, it's just that they are equally at war with scarcity, meaning every war is a two front war, meaning tactics & strategy favor endurance over rapid exploitation. Notice: there are still vine plants, rapid growers, and all manner of small creature & plant that frenetically exploits what it deems to be overwhelming riches. But these tend to have a very short life cycle, and exist entirely within the shadow, both literal and figurative, of the larger and slower beings.

Likewise, the jungle also has its large and strategic entities, but they cannot dominate with the same methods that evergreens dominate the taiga. I don't have enough at-hand information to state anything pseudo-authoritatively about the underwater areas in the ~7% of the ocean that supports constant macro ecosystems, but I comfortably rely on the consistency of life dynamics that it is probably more or less the same situation: availability of raw inputs dictate best possible strategies.

Climate and geography dictate type and method.

I have found that many of my fellow midwits encounter this axiom and come away forever scarred and embittered. Maybe they want it to be magical luck, or maybe an environment where any deciduous tree can become the evergreen it feels it deserves be. But the most-times-harsh reality is that unless some incredibly powerful entity is setting the circumstances, certain plants and animals just cannot survive, or even exist, in certain climates and geographies.

The "strangler fig" is actually a term used to describe multiple species in the genus Ficus. The modifier strangler is applied to all of them because they all deploy the same strategy of colonizing bigger and more stable entities by parasitic methods.

I don't think it's a stretch to presume that many people reading this are familiar with ficus, but according to substack I don't have much readership in subtropical and tropical regions, so most likely this is restricted to potted plants. There were more than a few notable ficus plants in my youth. Before I learned and adopted a "do not touch or break needlessly" policy regarding plants & animals, I discovered that one of my mom's potted plants had this really interesting response of emitting drops of radiantly white sap when you snapped off new shoots coming out of the trunk and branches.

Some White people have a proclivity for a general practice that can be described as "potting," even though it's not restricted to plants.

As a group, we demonstrate this dual tendency to put down deep roots & occupy a space very thoroughly, coming to understand and control the environment while simultaneously spreading far & wide, as far and wide as technology allows. This is curious because the former requires acorns and seedlings from the parent tree to stay close, while the latter requires tendencies and strategies that fling offspring well clear of the home range.

Diggers and Wanderers; settlers and explorers. Entities made of the same stuff but found in widely disparate places deploying dramatically different strategies.

We know that these two distinct types come from the same source stuff, because Digger families consistently generate Wanderer offspring, and Wanderer families consistently put down roots that, eventually, become indistinguishable from Digger communities. However disparate these tendencies and types may be, they are both parts that go into making the Whole.

This is going to sound like moral relativism, but as I have ascended to greater levels of right-wing extremism, I’ve found that I'm willing to call fewer and fewer things Bad or Good. It is not at all that there aren't concrete goods and bads, rather the tendency in society is to too quickly label things as such, and I feel this is the result of insufficient amounts of consideration and/or reflection. Many things we consider unalloyed Goods are merely advantageous in the moment. Likewise, many things we consider to be universal Bads are merely prohibitive or destructive over the short term.

Neither Digger nor Wanderer tendencies are necessarily good or bad. As with most things human, they have the equal capacity to be both. European Colonialism is a great case study in this. If the brown world didn't want to be colonized, they shouldn't have set up shop in the drum circle/loin cloth period of societal formation². At the same time, it's hard to think of a greater societal crime than initiating countless projects of rapid and forced social advancement on the teeming brown masses, then halting them just long enough to convert each of them into "kindergartenized" versions of themselves while propagating the demonstrably false notion of universal human equality.

Colonization never ended, it just underwent a foundational shift in motivations and methods concurrent with a total reorganization of managing personalities. Where before the Wanderers involved were more than happy to move in, set up shop, and stay for the long haul, now the Wanderer types involved treat it as a paid vacation with the primary purpose of feeding their collective pseudo-moral delusion. In this way, we get all of the negative aspects of colonization with none of the long-term benefits.

I know "kindergartenization" is an atrocious formulation, but I remain convinced it is currently the best term for what happened. Where before we had societal constructs that initiated colonization and dictated the terms with the two possible goals of occupying the territory and/or subduing the territory, we now have pseudo-moral crusades that maximize wealth redistribution and minimize cultural matriculation.

European colonization went through a number of stages before it transmogrified into a very efficient and successful system of raising primitive societies both culturally and technologically while enriching the Wanderers that did the work and rewarding the Diggers that made it possible. But it was discovered that different proto-societies develop on different timelines, and there was no universal method for achieving rapid development. Some proto- or micro-societies were able to waltz right into modernity, while others disappeared within a generation of contact with modern humans³. If the great project were to succeed, it would take centuries of firm and consistent commitments to both methods and mindset, not to mention significant amounts of blood and treasure⁴.

Imagine you take a crowd of 100 illiterate boys ranging from ages 3 to 17. Each is primitive, each speaks a slightly or very different language from each other, and each is quite capable of effective physical violence. You are told that your job is to institute a program that will churn out as rapidly as possible literate, civilized, and useful men by the age of 18. Only a fool would even consider building a single program, so you would need a distinct program for each one, with multiple teachers for each one, and most likely separate facilities for each one, at least at first.

Let's say you take on this challenge, however daunting it appears, and you start running the programs. Almost immediately, you're going to fail with the 17-year-olds. There's just not enough time. And you don't have an unlimited budget, so you would have to keep triage in the forefront of both mind and method. But you are pretty good at this, and your various programs are showing demonstrable success, particularly with the young and the inordinately capable savages.

Then Karen the Socialist Hausfrau enters the chat. Karen finds your methods questionable. Karen finds you personally distasteful. Karen is pretty much convinced that this whole process is bad for the young savages, regardless of results. For no discernable reason, Karen is put in charge of managing you and all your projects. Her first "contribution" is to get rid of all your teachers and replace them with her friends from college, but instead hiring them they are brought in as consultants & advisors. She also throws out the various curricula you meticulously designed through trial and error, and replaces it with an award-winning teaching program for multi-ethnic, multilingual, multi-sex kindergarteners that’s never been used before. Above all else, Karen is consumed with the drive to fairness in all things, so she puts every savage in one classroom using this one curriculum.

This metaphor, cumbersome and expansive though it may be, is intended to demonstrate how European Colonialism went wrong. The history of European Colonialism is a lot longer than many people seem to realize; the scramble for Africa was at the tail end of hundreds of years of concerted and concurrent efforts by many countries for many reasons. And it was largely predicated on the many previous efforts by classical societies, both Roman and Greek. The lessons learned were written in blood, steel, and time. Colonialism was imperfect but effective when its management was taken from the elites that it enriched and given to elites only concerned with a moral crusade of equality⁵. This initiated a bureaucratic civil war that culminated in the decolonization wave of the 1960s.

European Colonialism was a massive and distributed project with myriad dependent and associated events, issues, and practices. It was the most expensive and longest running thing Greater Europe has ever undertaken, and it spawned both unconscionable horrors and incomparable benefits for all types of humans all over the globe. One of those things is the Potting of Exotics.

I can't say whether or not potting is good or bad, but I can say that it is not universally appropriate, and there is no universal method for it. Throughout the history of European Colonization, the urge towards potting is present in both Wanderer and Digger types. When some Wanderer finds a ficus, he pulls it out of the jungle, puts it in a pot, and ships it overseas to his Digger cousin. When certain Diggers encounter an exotic in a pot, they simply must have it for themselves.

Over time, whole industries were born to commoditize both sides of the potting proclivity. Wanderers identifying and collecting exotic specimens that appeal to Diggers was raised to an art form. In every single colonization home country, potting became very fashionable, though the preference and degree varied widely. Sometimes it was plants, other times it was animals, and oftentimes it was the most interesting & sophisticated human specimens that were desired and pursued by both Wanderers Diggers⁶.

Again, this may be good or it may be bad. When potting was rare, it was fascinating and productive, giving Diggers the experience of encountering exotics with little to no obvious detriment to their nation and society. Likewise, the potted exotic was extracted from its quite often brutal & challenging natural environment and put into circumstances largely free of danger & want. Some were unable to survive while others flourished. Right alongside the proclivity for potting is the tendency to breed where able⁷, so in addition to potting trends there was also an interbreeding trend, though it must be said that it was in no way common⁸ and almost exclusively restricted to the frontier areas.

I don't know if the Liberal Impulse led to potting, or if potting was just a preferred vehicle for liberals to immanentize their eschaton, but regardless of the proper chicken/egg orientation, potting eventually became instrumental in the antiracist movement⁹. Potted exotics became much desired, so the pipeline for bringing them home from far away places expanded. Where once you may have had a few interesting examples sitting in a cozy corner, soon you had whole arboretums stocked chalk full of incongruent specimens with no relation to each other and no connection to the land. In all cases, these exotics had no hope whatsoever of naturally becoming a part of the ecosystem, so boundaries and focused & continued care was required.

This essay is very much a "Yay Science!" thoughtsploration with mere wisps of academic characteristics. I have once again crossbred questionable metaphors to illustrate my schizopoetic perceptions. You are free to dissect and extract or dismiss out of hand, I'm not the thought police¹⁰. That being understood, I think potting as an interesting component of a rhetorical framework, or maybe even a distinct rhetorical framework unto itself, is valuable and instructive for both historiography and crafting future policy¹¹.

Seeing subcontinentals deluge Canada, watching as MENA mongrels drag down the UK, feeling ever more embattled as the public spaces of the United States turn into a filthy and chaotic sociocultural flea market, one might arrive at the conclusion that the Great Replacement is now an inexorable component of our shared demographic reality. Substantial amounts of media and entertainment work overtime to convince you that the migrants are kudzu.

Thankfully, this is not the case. Every single creche of transplanted colonizers in the Occident survives and thrives through expensive, concerted, and constant interventions & maintenance by persons and institutions fully ensconced within Western Society. There may be a great whacking lot of them, but they remain potted exotics. Without gardeners, without social welfare greenhouses, they will wither if they aren't returned to the climate and geography in which they belong.

This doesn't mean things can't be ruined or destroyed in the somnolent liminal space we are currently enduring. Places like Ireland and Canada cannot tank the damage a place like the United States can. We are not in a circumstance where we can triumphally sit back and wait for things to fix themselves. Nonetheless, it is important to keep in mind:

They are potted exotics, and we control both water and light.

1. I am playing fast and loose with Nature facts here, but you can’t stop me.

2. It was free real estate.

3. There’s a fascinating book I am reading called Sick Societies. I cannot recommend it enough. In Chapter 3 on pages 47-52, the author R. B. Edgerton documents the curious case of the Tasmanians. This story deserves it’s own essay, so I will tease you with this: after thousands of years of muddling through a threadbare existence, the Tasmanians traded their women for dogs, spent a few years enjoying their companionship while hunting, then disappeared from existence.

4. Here is a fun & informative wikipedia page that is a good reminder that, lie though they might, pinko wiki editors eventually pull the trigger on the foot cannon they laboriously construct. Galeano explicitly recanted his demonstrably incorrect Dependency Theory, but the fat, sexless (pr)editors are no less committed to pretending it’s a real thing.

5. This is a fascinating event, and I am certain many will disagree or push back on my interpretation here. I have an essay under construction that will delve into this assertion.

6. Did everybody get the story of Squanto jammed down their throats in elementary school or was it just us GATES rejects?

7. Looking at you, Spain and Portugal…

8. Sorry BBC writing department and British libtards; there were no blacks in the UK until you potted them.

9. In all cases, you can swap the term "antiracist" with "antiWhite" and it changes nothing about the original formulation or the intentions behind it. I'm curious to see if someone can find an exception.

10. ...yet.

11. Rhetorical Framework == Memeplex