Among other species
February 1, 2013 § 1 Comment
Here’s a passage I came across in my reading yesterday that made me pause, re-read it, and ponder for a bit:
—-
Thoreau, and his many heirs among contemporary naturalists and radical environmentalists, assume that human culture is the problem, not the solution. So they urge us to shed our anthropocentrism and learn to live among other species as equals. This sounds like a fine, ecological idea, until you realize that the earth would be even worse off if we started behaving any more like animals than we already do. The survival strategy of most species is to extend their dominion as far and as brutally as they can, until they run up against some equally brutal natural limit that checks their progress. Isn’t this exactly what we’ve been doing?
What sets us apart from other species is culture, and what is culture but forbearance? Conscience, ethical choice, memory, discrimination: it is these very human and decidedly unecological faculties that offer the planet its last best hope. It is true that, historically, we’ve concentrated on exercising these faculties in the human rather than the natural estate, but that doesn’t mean that they cannot be exercised there. Indeed, this is the work that now needs to be done: to bring more culture to our conduct in nature, not less.
– Michael Pollan, Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education
—-
(thoughts?)
Perception
May 11, 2012 § Leave a comment
“Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language.” -Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
White Bread
March 16, 2012 § Leave a comment
I wrote a book about ultrasoft, mass-produced sliced white bread because I wanted to understand America’s fraught relationship to industrial eating in all its contradictory ferment. Over the past 100 years, few foods have been as revered and reviled as industrial white bread. -Aaron Bobrow-Strain
I’m eager to get my hands on this author’s new book, White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf. It sounds fascinating! And maybe a little depressing. Golly, the food-writing craze is just getting bigger and bigger, isn’t it? Here’s a link to Bobrow-Strain’s article “What Would Great-Grandma Eat?” which was adapted from his book.
Kinds of Honey 