I just watched "The Omnivore's Next Dilemma" on Adobe Media Player. It is part of the TED Theme: Inspired by Nature series. Hopefully I can figure out how to put a bookmark here.
Author Michael Pollan gives a talk about "What if human consciousness isn't the end-all and be-all of Darwinism? What if we are all just pawns in corn's clever strategy game to rule the earth?"
His talk covers the wonderful connectedness of nature, and how man is starting to rediscover how to use that connectedness to his advantage. Man is starting to discover that the legacy of chemicals, and thinking we are different than nature, and that the fittest companies are measured by gross output and profits obtained by any means, are not sustainable ideas. It is unfortunately that Pollan repeatedly tries to claim that it is Darwinism that gives us this frame of reference. He decries a notion which he claims as a cartesian system the idea that we are somehow different from the animals because we have a consciousness.
The book of Proverbs talks about how conceit and pride go before the fall. The fact that man for the last 150 years has accelerated the pursuit of knowledge almost to the point of ruining the earth, is no surprise given that we spend so little effort to slow down and ask what our Creator would want us to do.
The reality is that the idea that we are intimiately connected to the earth was there in the Bible all along. According to Genesis we're made from the dust of the earth, which exactly agrees with science. Our Creator gave us advice on what to eat, and what not to eat, showing us how to maintain a connection with nature that will help us, and not hurt us, and many of the notions of the Genesis diet are now being "re-discovered" by scientists. We didn't need Darwin to confuse us for 150 years into forgetting the importance of the truth of the Genesis account, and its application to our lives.
Pollan talks about a farming method that uses different animals in syncronization on a farm for their unique abilities:
- Ruminants clear grazing a field, and leaving behind cow pies
- Exactly three days later the farmer brings in chickens, which pick through the manure and spread it around, while eating the maggots which would have hatched in 5 days. The almost mature maggots are the chicken's favorite source of protein.
- The chickens leave their own nitrogen rich manure.
- When the grass is cut down by the ruminants, the grasses shed roots, which are decomposed by earthworms, fungi, etc., to create more soil.
- The grass then goes into a lucious growth spurt.
- 4-5 weeks later, the rancher can bring back more cattle, and start the process over.
This farm produces a tremendous amount of food, way more than would have ever been thought possible. He says that all it needs is a few fences, no greater technology than that. It could make Africa green at little expense.
Pollan keeps refering to how it was Darwin that helped us understand we are related to other life. That consciousness isn't great just because consciousness says so. He asserts that bees and flowers have evolved an intricate dance where the flowers are manipulating the bees to harvest their pollen and perform agricultural services for the flowers, eventhough the bee probably thinks it is in charge.
He says that corn is playing a game on us to get us to want to clear cut forests so that there can be more corn. We are just pawns.
Again, he keeps saying all these species evolved to use each other in all these ways.
The talk is wonderful, if only he didn't feel the need to resort to Darwin and claiming the wonderful design we see in nature is somehow the result of the blind chance of evolution. The talk would still have the same value if he refered to the Creator making all these creatures and this ecosystem to work harmoniously.
He doesn't blame Christians, or Biblical beliefs directly for having wrong ideas about nature. But when he asserts Darwin is who helped us to understand that we are a part of nature, and about all these species evolving together, and 150 years since the revolution of Darwin ideas, I think he is speaking against the previous paradigm, which was that we were created by a Creator.
Sadly, his talk might cause one to think that non-Darwinists can't understand the beauty of nature, and the interrelatedness of man with nature. It's a shame that he has to give Darwin's hypothesis the credit for the design work of our Creator. None of what Pollan says about the beauty of nature is opposed to the idea of a Creator.
If people had a wrong idea about their relationship to nature, it's an affect of sin, and the separation this has created between us and God. God created us to be a part of creation, there was no separation of us from nature in the beginning. Man got confused along the way, especially when he didn't pay attention to the Bible.
Pollan claims that the great success enjoyable on the farm is a contradiction to the ideas of major agribusiness, and he is right.
"If you think about it, this completely contradicts the tragic idea of nature that we hold in our heads: For us to get what we want, nature is diminished. The more for us the less for nature."
He talks about how those farming methods create more soil, more fertility, more biodiversity.
"No technology, except for fences." We can take the food we need from the earth, and heal the earth."
"This is well beyond organic agriculture, which is still a Cartesian system, more or less." He is against Cartesian systems... Des Cartes was someone who believed in God, although I can't tell you anything about how Biblical the theology of Des Cartes was. Unfortunately, Darwin gets a lot of credit for things that his theory can't explain, because it's easier for man than humbling ourselves to understand our place relative to our Creator.
"When we begin to feel Darwin's insights in our bones."
But it didn't have to be Darwin's insights to get these things through to us! Man was created to tend the earth, to work the earth in a way in which all the species would be harmoniously used! Evolution wasn't needed to have the grass or the corn manipulating us. If we properly believed in the Genesis creation account, we would see the importance of our proper place in nature. If anything, the horrible abuse of the earth in the last 100 years is the real fruit of Darwin's ideas of the survival of the fitest which has been applied to corporations, and nations, human races, political systems, and tragic scientific developments devoid of morality, all of this with horrible results.
Pollan's awe of nature, and how much better things can be if we are proper stewards of the earth, is very insightful. It's also very Biblical, if only we'd be willing to believe the Bible. It's sad that Pollan needs to salt the talk with giving credit for the notion of interconnectedness to Darwin. Man's place to properly shepherd the earth is right there in Genesis 1, written long before Darwin was ever thought of. Pollan needs to be looking elsewhere for the reason that man has become blind to the Creator that created us, and role that the Creator has for us.
