I suspect you are right, that we get confused about the messages Earth gives us about what is optimally and sustainably healthy and inclusive of full diversity, including full-diversity of our anthro-centric neural systems, and degrees and oscillating waves of comparative mind-body health v. pathology.
When we measure the health of our political and economic forest, it would seem confusing and misguided to compare lifespans of the average organism within one forest to those of another, and thereby determine anything germane to comparative diverse “health-robustness” optimization of inter-species cooperative relationships . Although it might be interesting to compare the lifespans of the median organism–but maybe that’s what you meant, because the outcome measures are of trees, which should be about right in terms of the comparative internal diversity of Earth systems, but would be entirely wrong with regard to average lifespan of the entire incarnate biosystem within an ecosystem. We are essentially measuring the robustness of our temporal-Elders with median levels of regenetic-diversity balance in their endosymbiotic information processing and embryonic storage systems.
I think in Permaculture Design we learned that the old dead trees are best cut down and burned for fuel to heat our homes, allowing more room for a nearby medium tree to flourish, grow more robust, or perhaps even two or three trees to share this newly accessible ring of photosynthetic fuel.
What the forest seems to be saying to our “burn management” school of forest management, is to include age diversity in our measure of biosystemic diversity as a positive, and to assess each individual gift of the forest for its highest and best use, rather than trying to micromanage from on high. Facilitating trees of all ages and digestive-breathing diversity of interrelationships is complex, requires considerable listening and discernment, and sitting together, showing up and showing to each other what we need to survive together.
The real measure of robust sustainable health is probably universally inclusive and unitarian-intended diversely welcoming, inviting political/economic environments. With trees and meditators and therapists we call this Basic Attendance, setting aside nutrient/neural-assumptions of cognitive/affective dissonance/pathology.
I suspect that mental health is mind health, and I suspect that our “mind” is not rationally reduced to a synonym for “brain” or even “head.” I further suspect that the combination of economic ecological health and political-private relational anthro-centric health are, for each of us, and for all of us. as cooperative co-mentors of health (because that’s what DNA is positively designed to do, that is DNA/RNA’s vocation, if you will, regeneratively sustainable health), the real-time currency of optimized Continuous Quality Improvement currently emerges, co-arises, as cooperative healthy-wealth care and perpetuation toward future healthy regenerators of all species.
