Societies should be thought ecologically; and indeed, thinkers such as Jane Bennett, Deleuze and Guattari, and Timothy Morton think about societies in precisely these terms. This is neither a metaphor nor an analogy. We have an unfortunate tendency to immediately associate ecology with the study of natural ecosystems such as Amazonian rain forests. In that context, we think about various relations between organisms and physical features of their environment, how one organism depends on another, how they render each other possible, which organisms dominate the ecosystem, the cycles of feedback between the various organisms, and so on. We think about how worms, insects, microbes, and rotting fauna and creatures make the soil possible within which trees and plants grow. We think about how these trees, in their turn, provide food for a variety of animals. How those animals provide food for other animals. We think about the different niches these…