Fire and Knowledge

Without humans to plant it every spring, corn would have disappeared from the earth in a matter of a few years. The novel cob-and-husk arrangement that makes corn such a convenient grain for us renders the plant utterly dependent for its survival on an animal in possession of the opposable thumb needed to remove the husk, separate the seeds, and plant them.

Plant a whole corncob and watch what happens: If any of the kernels manage to germinate, and then work their way free of the smothering husk, they will invariably crowd themselves to death before their second set of leaves has emerged. More than most domesticated plants (a few of whose offspring will usually find a way to grow unassisted), corn completely threw its lot in with humanity when it evolved its peculiar husked ear. Several human societies have seen fit to worship corn, but perhaps it should be the other way around: For corn, we humans are the contingent beings. So far, this reckless-seeming act of evolutionary faith in us has been richly rewarded.

–Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006), pp. 26-27

Today, nine thousand people will die of HIV/AIDS. And almost all of them will be poor…. Today, fourteen thousand new people will be infected with the disease, most of them in poor countries. Forty-two million already have it, twenty-two million have already died…. The world has never seen a public health crisis like this.

–Jim Wallis, God’s Politics (2005), p. 287

Much of the obscurity of our effort so far against terrorism originates in the now official idea that the enemy is evil and that we are (therefore) good, which is the precise mirror image of the official idea of the terrorists.

–Wendell Berry, “A Citizen’s Response” in Citizenship Papers (2003), p. 5

Greatness has no reality in nature, but is a creature of the fancy, a notion that consists only in relation and comparison…. There is, in truth, no rising or meridian of the sun, but only in respect to several places: there is no right or left, no upper hand, in nature; everything is little, and everything is great, according as it is diversely compared.

–Abraham Cowley (1618–1667), “On Greatness” in The Art of the Personal Essay by Phillip Lopate (1994), p. 121

The quest to eradicate pests with DDT and similar poisons has been a colossal failure. Each year more than 2 million tons of pesticides are used in the United States alone. Americans use 20 times more pesticides today than they did in 1945, even though the newest pesticides are up to 100 times more toxic. And yet the fraction of crops lost to insects has risen from 7 percent to 13 percent—thanks in large part to the resistance insects have evolved.

–Carl Zimmer, Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea, p. 202

“Happiness always seems a matter of persons not of places.”

–Graham Greene, The Human Factor (1978), p. 333

Though we insist on speaking of the “invention” of agriculture as if it were our idea, like double-entry bookkeeping or the lightbulb, in fact it makes just as much sense to regard agriculture as a brilliant (if unconscious) evolutionary strategy on part of the plants and animals involved to get us to advance their interests. By evolving certain traits we happen to regard as desirable, these species got themselves noticed by the one mammal in a position not only to spread their genes around the world, but to remake vast swaths of the world in the image of the plants’ preferred habitat.

–Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma (2006), pp. 23-24

Let’s define terrorism the right way, and allow no double standards. Terrorism is the deliberative taking of innocent lives. It applies to individuals, groups, and nations alike—all of which can and have supported and committed acts of terrorism. Those who turn airplanes into missiles to attack skyscrapers full of people, those who become suicide bombers, and those who order military strikes against apartment buildings full of civilians and children are all terrorists, not religious devotees, martyrs, or defenders of national security.

–Jim Wallis, God’s Politics (2005), p. 106