Trusting Technology

When the subject of overpopulation and climate change come up, a popular response in most people's mind is, "Technology will save us!"

Yeah.... no. We can't count on that. If pressed, I will say that technology has gotten us into this mess int he first place. Sure, we have great and awesome things provided by technology, and wonderful progress and longer life spans and blah blah blah, but for all our greatness, we still have asthma, we still die of starvation and water-borne diseases, we still see crushing poverty, and we're not a fuck-of-a-lot happier in life. We work too much or are unemployed. We struggle. How is technology going to save us? It only turns us further away from Nature, which really would save us, except that there are too many of us anyway.

I've been looking at blog posts from past years, and this one from 2014 still holds a lot of truth. Which also proves to me that we are progressing at all. But that's another post.

I came across an article way back then that spoke right about all this. Interspersed are my thoughts. The article can still be found at the link below but is too long to add here, so go to it if you wish, I'm highlighting the most salient parts. The rest is what I wrote 3 years ago, and is still true.

Grow-in-the-dark plants could spark the next Green Revolution

 http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/09/06/ozy-grow-in-the-dark-plants/15128899/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=usatoday-newstopstories 

Pretty much everything in this article annoys me. Science is awesome and glorious, but this is just one more example in a line of many ways we try to stick wads of gum in the holes of a wall that is gushing water and threatening to explode. Let us begin ...

The new Green Revolution might look a little like this: peach orchards heavy with fruit in the middle of January, dense rows of corn flourishing in sandbox-sized plots, and grocers stocking persimmons in the heat of summer.

Sounds amazing, right? Who wouldn't want that? Solve all the problems, right?

And it might start with the phytochrome – a crucial light-sensing molecule that tells plants when to germinate, grow, make food, flower and age. Scientists have mapped and manipulated the phytochrome's structure, aiming to alter the conditions under which plants grow and develop. Eventually, they want to insert these modified phytochromes into plants to trick them into growing, and bearing seeds and fruit – even when they're not supposed to.

"Manipulating." See, that's where it goes wonky for me. It can only be considered hubris to think we can improve upon Nature. "Trick"? Since when is it a good idea to "trick" Nature?

"We hope to create a toolkit of phytochromes that can eventually be used to control agriculture – how plants grow, when they flower, when they die," said Richard Vierstra, a plant geneticist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

"Control." Yeah, also such a good idea. Trying to control Nature.

Vierstra and his colleagues have only just begun making these mutants and inserting them into the sprightly mustard weed ...

Anyone else have a problem with the word, mutant? Let's see what else they want to do.

Plants "don't like" cramped conditions. "We have to engineer plants so they do like being grown that way…. There really is a need to re-engineer the phytochrome system."

No, no there really isn't. There is no need to do that.

Scientists could even trick phytochromes into ignoring growing seasons. The ratio of active to inactive phytochromes reflects the hours of day and night, indicating the time of year, which, in turn, tells plants when to sprout, flower, fruit or go to seed. But researchers could, for example, insert plants with phytochromes that stay active all year. 

What could possibly go wrong?

... it sounds so crazy it just might work. But when contending with a swelling population and shrinking arable lands, a no-holds barred approach might be exactly what's needed.

No, it just sounds crazy. Here's what else is crazy: realizing and stating that we are facing shrinking arable land, and calling the manipulation of Nature the right thing to do, instead of the obvious answer of not letting the population swell beyond what is sustainable! We are not sustainable now! We will be even less so at 8 billion. A no-holds barred approach? How about not needing to get to that point? How about that whole "arable land" issue? Science for the sake of science much? We live in a society of ignoring the cause of of the disease and instead scrambling to come up with little helps for the symptoms. That is exactly and all this is, and it cannot end well. Remember the commercial from the '70s, "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature." It's really not. In that case, ironically, they replaced her butter with some crap-chemical margarine made in a lab. She was not amused. She won't be now, either. That I can promise.

I am all for science. I love science. Science is awesome. But this is not progress. This is hurtling with eyes wide open into disaster. And don't insult me by couching it in "green revolution." I'm not falling for it. Technology will not save us. It might prolong this failed experiment called humanity, but it won't ultimately save us. Only Nature can, and we've turned too far away from her. She's done with us, and that might be the best all the way around.

Feminine Wisdoms

Scrolling through my Facebook feed, I come across a sponsored link for one of those pages... you know the ones, full of love and feminine wisdoms. In fact, the page is called Feminine Wisdoms. I will add here that spellcheck hates the word "wisdoms." It is not an existing word. That tells me more than I need to know right here. Hell, I make up words, too, though, so I can't be to harsh. But I digress.

 I note that some of my friends like and follow this page, and that tens of thousands of people like this page. The post is full of loving words, quotes from a book on Gaia. I read it.

orupsia.deviantart.com

Sister, trust your vibrant inner knowing,
that lucid vision that speaks
to you. The truth you cannot
deny.

Nourish the fertile gardens of
your wild inner terrains knowing
that time of harvest will come... all things
flower in their time.

Beautiful, right?

Sure. Evoking all those images of Mother Earth, drawings of a woman all flowy and with a full swell of the Earth for her womb, looking all serene and demure, her arms lovingly wrapped around that swell. Surrounded by wildlife, all looking as serene and demure as she is.

I hate it.

This is why we aren't taken seriously by and large. That first part is pretty nice. But then, ya lost me. All this gentle and nurture-y shit? Mother Nature is FIERCE. She gives and gives freely, but when she needs to be cold and hard, she will destroy. She is all about balance, and if something is out of that balance, BOOM down comes the hammer. She is flowers and rolling hills and she is tornadoes and hurricanes. Let's not forget that part. People get all surprised when our neglected mother allows entire communities to be wiped out in an hour. Why surprised? Why shouldn't she? What do we do for her?

I digress. The point here is that the flowy gentle lovey stuff can come after we warriors, the carriers of her wrath, are done. We go first. Then we'll need you and your fertile gardens.

But for now, step aside. There's work to do. We don't have time. Let the front line go through. Join in or move aside.

Taming the Ground Beneath Our Feet

The squirrels were active today. It was a little warmer, and they were running amok. We like to throw stuff in the yard for them to gather. I will walk through the yard and discover little holes they have made in random areas.

It occurred to me that this bothers some lawn owners. You know those guys .. the lawn has to be completely perfect. Blades of perfect grass all at the perfect height. Weeds are not tolerated or permitted. No amount of chemical soup is too much to keep that pristine green. Gophers, moles, squirrels? The enemy!

No matter that those very weeds can feed, nourish, heal us. They are to be poisoned out of existence. Never mind that those chemicals suck into the skin of the children for whom we think that perfect lawn is necessary. Keep control.

There's nothing better looking than a well-manicured lawn. Large green blades of grass, clipped to the proper height is the dream of many homeowners. With just a little care and these tips and techniques for lawn maintenance, you can be sure to get a lawn you'll be proud of and the neighbors will envy.

Ah. There it is. At the smallest scale. Do you see it? This is the very beginning of control over Nature. Maybe we don't start out thinking about it that way, but that's what it is. Exerting control over the ultimate female, Earth. We plant grass in climates where it shouldn't be planted, and we water it when there isn't water to spare. We poison the earth to kill what would grow there naturally, to make room for the perfect lawn. And why? Because a company that made Agent Orange needed to keep making profit after the war and started selling the same stuff to us wrapped in a dream of perfect Suburbia?

Growing up, I recall my neighbor faithfully had ChemLawn come to treat his lawn every year. Our lawn just across the driveway was full of dandelions, because my father wasn't one to spend money on things like chemical treatment of a lawn. Our dandies let their seeds go all over the neighbor's treated lawn all the time. Even as a child, I saw the ridiculousness there.

We've made long practice and profit in trying to tame Nature in "our" little patches of earth. We compete to be the best, to look the best, to have bragging rights of ... what, exactly? Our yard is a mess, by other people's standards. It's full of weeds, which I personally cherish because I use them. When it's freshly mowed, it looks as nice as any other that is choked with herbicidal poisons. And when it's a little overgrown, it's still green. I bet I have more weeds than actual grass. Bees and squirrels and groundhogs and bunnies any and all birds are welcomed. Lightning bugs love our yard. In fact, those bunnies and groundhogs never go into my garden, because they have enough wild stuff to eat in the regular lawn. Maybe things wouldn't eat your garden if you didn't poison the rest of the stuff?

Let's give it a rest. Let's stop trying to control Nature. Let's work with her for a change and see what happens.