guns germs steel geography
Lately, as I've avoided writing my novel (go NanoWrimo!) and avoided doing proper work, I've spent much time thinking about religion, race, good/evil, and inequality. I have watched documentaries on Jesus and neuroscience, and the NatGeo program that came from Jared Diamond's book, and I've thought about the deep connections that all these stories share.
All our European life and power came out of a fertile crescent that we raped to death, and our American life and power came from a great fertile nation that we are even now beating the life out of. Our culture has denied people the brilliance that they deserve as human beings, and taught us that vanilla is not just the best but the only true flavor in life. Our food is cheap but it's killing us. Travel is cheap but it's killing us. Our technology is cheap but it's driving us to isolation and depression. But in all of that, the thread that thrills me is that of ecological farming. Farmers in the US talk a lot about feeding the world, but they really mean dominating the world through a complex triploid culture of corn, soy, and cows, which further enriches our industrial elite and debilitates all the world's poor. To feed the world we need to expand our definition of the world, because how can we continue to double and triple our agricultural productivity when we know that the current methods of duplication and triplication really only squeeze finite resources into a peak, like placing your hands on a piece of fabric and pushing them together. The fabric rises up in an ever steeper arc, but the other side has its own equally steep descending arc. If in feeding the world we truly attend to the whole world, with all its denizens great and small, with the respect that comes from understanding that we are each only as great the diversity of our connections and health of each point in our webs, then we can reach a glorious equilibrium.
I want to assist in creating this balance in the world. I want a farm that measures its success in the health of its predators, and I want to contribute to a nation that glorifies the richness of the earth rather than the richness of an elite few.
All our European life and power came out of a fertile crescent that we raped to death, and our American life and power came from a great fertile nation that we are even now beating the life out of. Our culture has denied people the brilliance that they deserve as human beings, and taught us that vanilla is not just the best but the only true flavor in life. Our food is cheap but it's killing us. Travel is cheap but it's killing us. Our technology is cheap but it's driving us to isolation and depression. But in all of that, the thread that thrills me is that of ecological farming. Farmers in the US talk a lot about feeding the world, but they really mean dominating the world through a complex triploid culture of corn, soy, and cows, which further enriches our industrial elite and debilitates all the world's poor. To feed the world we need to expand our definition of the world, because how can we continue to double and triple our agricultural productivity when we know that the current methods of duplication and triplication really only squeeze finite resources into a peak, like placing your hands on a piece of fabric and pushing them together. The fabric rises up in an ever steeper arc, but the other side has its own equally steep descending arc. If in feeding the world we truly attend to the whole world, with all its denizens great and small, with the respect that comes from understanding that we are each only as great the diversity of our connections and health of each point in our webs, then we can reach a glorious equilibrium.
I want to assist in creating this balance in the world. I want a farm that measures its success in the health of its predators, and I want to contribute to a nation that glorifies the richness of the earth rather than the richness of an elite few.