Thom,
Native Americans developed up to 70% of the food stuffs that the
current world consumes. The methods of agriculture and
forestry were built around the idea of relationship which is at
odds with most European language's concept of "object." As
Western science travels the well worn path of shamanism, there
is little to be learned because the young cannot separate from
the old and still venerate it. Freud and all of that "separation
and individuation" stuff.
I related strongly to your post on Theobald/Hutchinson and MD
Miller. I feel that the agriculture material relates because the
hierarchy of consciousness, so much a part of Western thought
as well as Patriarchy and Monotheism, ignores the success of
other species in their environments (one might even call it
'consciousness') and our total inability to do the same. Consider
how inept we are at being fish in the water or carrots in the soil.
Within their hierarchy we would rate next to zero.
But we might start by truly trying to understand the meaning of
a digging stick rather than the deep or shallow plow. We might
also consider why the Incas developed and used so many different
varieties of potatoes or why the buffalo were so important to the
plains as well as the cholesterol and and fat in the diet of the
Cheyenne.
After that, one might reflect on the meaning of art and culture
and why John Fire Lame Deer claimed that the only Europeans
capable of understanding the way Indians perceived(in developing
that 70% of the world's foodstuffs) were the European souls
found in the throes of artistic talent.
Yes Susan, the ground is alive and when we dance in the Spring
we must walk lightly for all of the babies who are being born
and grown that we might also live. And when you kill to eat, always
sacrifice a part of your meat and drink to the spirit of life and all
who now will live through you.
REh
PS: am reading a wonderful book by an MD named Leonard Shlain
called "The Alphabet Versus The Goddess, The Conflict between
Word and Image." Viking. Shlain has an interesting view on the
"why" of what you have been ruminating upon so admirably.
Thomas Lunde wrote:
> I am reading a most interesting book! (see subject line by Evan Eisenberg)
> He starts by talking about the alliance of man and grasslands and how we
> favoured annuals over perenials to get their seed which was good for food
> for humans. This of course led to farming and farming led to an expansion
> of humans from a mere 5 million to close to 6 billion. But the joker is in
> the soil. After 20 mind numbing pages detailing the amount and variety of
> life within a cubic meter of topsoil, I feel almost too respectful to walk
> on the land. So let me take a few minutes to share a few paragrapghs with
> you my friends.
>
> Quote: Page 33
>
> While different kinds of farming do different kinds of damage, the basic
> problem inheres in farming as we know it: the alliance between humans and
> annual grasses. Annual grasses, remember, are pioneer species which throw
> their energy into setting seed, rahter than into their root systems. When a
> hillside that once hosted trees or perenials grasses is cleared and planted
> with annual grasses, the earth loses its moorings. For the soil comunity,
> it is like having one's city plucked away by a giant hand and replaced with
> cellophane tents. And since annual grasses do best in "disturbed" soil, we
> as their allies are bound to keep disturbing it: the more so in that we have
> to keep disturbing the other annuals - the ones we call weeds - that thrive
> in soil we have disturbed
>
> NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE FAILURE
>
> How can an alliance that is so successful be so unsuccessful? How can an
> ecosystem spread so quickly when it is so unstable? - when it is not really
> an ecosystem at all?
>
> The alarming fact of the matter is that in ecology, as in other realms,
> nothing succeeds like failure. It is often the most unstable systems that
> expand most ferociously. A stable system by definition, does not need to
> expand - though it may do so anyway, at its leisure. An unstable system is
> like a giant with tiny legs who must keep running just to keep from falling.
> An obvious example is fire, an aerobic creature that quickly wolfs down the
> food around it and lopes outward in search of more.
>
> Agriculture is such a system. (TL: And so is capitalism!) It depletes the
> soil it is on and moves out in search of more. The more destructive a form
> of agriculture is, the more quickly it expands. (TL: The phony capitalism of
> investment, return on investment, financial instruments, stock and profit
> also share the quality of the need for quick expansion of the money supply.)
> But even relatively benign forms can expand fairly quickly, because the
> number of humans can rise geometrically. (TL: Not only to the rich get
> richer but there gets to be more of them and the collary of this is that the
> poor get poorer and there is more of them too.)
>
> A similar logic guides parasites and pathogens. A pathogen is most virulent
> when it is able to move easily from one host to another, for then it can
> kill with impunity-milking one host dry, then moving on to the next. (TL:
> In this analogy, globalisation could be considered a pathogen.) When it is
> confined to a small population, or finds its movements blocked in some way,
> it is forced to moderate its demands. It must exploit the host more gently,
> making sure that he stays able-bodied enough to keep himself-and his
> pathogens-alive. (A likely example of this can be seen in Japan, where the
> scrupulous use of condoms may have led to the evolution of milder forms of
> human T-cell leukemia/lymphoma virus type 1, or HTLV-1, a relative of HIV.)
> (TL: This could also happen in an economy with such devices as a Tobin Tax
> and other legislative adjustment that would moderate the speed and force it
> to "expoit it's hosts more gently".)
>
> In their expansion, most life forms follow the same rule as parasites. The
> greater their demand on their "host"-for which read "environment," both
> living and nonliving-the greater their need to expand. Conversely, the more
> room they have to expand, the more crippling the demands they can make on
> their suroundings. To reduce it to a nursery rhyme: The more you demand,
> the more you expand. The more you expand, the more you demand. (TL My
> posting yesterday, in which I was ruminating on the concepts of Theobold and
> the capacity of capitalism to create more goods than there is a demand for
> creates the need for more expansion, ie jobs, new products, new markets,
> etc.)
>
> Sooner or later, you run out of room. At that point, you either learn to
> treat your host more politely, or you drag your host with you to extinction.
> (TL: Has that point been reached in both population growth and economic
> growth?) Has that point been reached by the alliance of grass and man? In
> parts of the world where peoples were confined by geographical barriers or
> by the pressure of other peoples, it was reached some time ago. In some
> cases the result was amore careful husbandry of the soil, in others famine
> and the extinction of cultures. The same point will soon be reached by
> human-kind at large, and the same choice will have to be made.
>
> Some scientists and economists tell us not to worry, as there is still
> plenty of virgin land that can be brought under cultivation. They are
> wrong. Much of the soil in the humid tropics is lateritic, and bakes as
> hard as brick as sson as it is stripped of its forest cover. In drier
> regions, land can be made arable only by means ofirrigation projects that
> often cause grave ecological harm. Mountainous regions, when pricked by the
> plow, hemorrhage soil. Even when virgin land seems to invite our see, we
> had better think twice. We and or allies have already junked so much of
> nature that he machinery is starting to sputter. For the soil cummunity is
> not the only one that we have trampled, and whose work we do not know how to
> do.
