"The old people, the old cultures, knew something about consequence that the new ones don't...[They] knew in their bones that death exists, that all life eats and kills to eat, that all lives end, that energy goes on. They knew that humans are participants, not spectators."
Alas:
"The new ones all want to evade death and deny it, legislate against it, transcend it. They run, bicycle, network, and pray. They stare into their screens and buy their vitamins. Here, they want the street drunks locked up, cigarettes banned, drunken driving met with more severe penalties than armed assault. They fear guns, cowboys, Muslims, pit bulls, whiskey, homosexuals, and freedom. Strong smells offend them...
"[They] disapprove of, cannot comprehend, hunting. How could anybody but a sadist cause death voluntarily, again and again? That they also do so escapes their tender consciences and consequence-free brains."
This distinction seems to me the great theme of this blog, and perhaps a good excuse for (yet another) "occasional series" here at Querencia: on the new ignorance of consequence.
This is perhaps a mild example, but it struck me. Evidently, ecologists and chemical engineers were recently surprised to find that "Roundup Ready" golf course grass (a strain created by Scott's Miracle-Grow Co. and Monsanto) has "escaped into the wild."
"Grass that was genetically engineered for golf courses is growing in the wild, posing one of the first threats of agricultural biotechnology escaping the farm in the United States, a new study says.
"Creeping bentgrass was engineered to resist the popular herbicide Roundup to allow more efficient weed control on golf courses. But the modified grass could spread that resistance to the wild, becoming a nuisance itself, scientists say."
My question is not how this breed of weed managed to jump the fence, nor even if "more efficient" weed control on golf courses is a pressing societal concern. I want to know why no one seemed to see this coming; as if "the rough" along the edges of a fairway was some impenetrable barrier between its cultured greens and "the wild." ...As if we are all not living in the wild!
"'There could be consequences,' said Steven Strauss, who heads the biotechnology issues analysis program at Oregon State. 'But they're not catastrophic because there are Roundup resistant species out there---I have them in my back yard right now,' Strauss added."
3 comments:
Gah, the word Monsanto makes my eyes roll and my jaw lock.
Didn't anybody hear about the farmer in Saskatchewan who brought his grain to the elevator and within minutes he was being fined for having stolen Monsanto grain? You know, the field across the road had the GMO grain and some ended up in his field?
Or is this just a rural legend whispered between Mennonites at sunday school?
There are always consequences but living in a world lacking in common sense, we don't think in results.
Heidi: NOT a rural legend at all. There has been a continuing battle between farmers in (I believe-- would have to look it up) North Dakota and Monsanto over just that issue. Check Orion magazine.
Nothing is as successful as success, so maybe one day our human designed grass and crops which are immune to our human designed herbicides will overtake our human designed subdivisions and with no place to live we'll all get sick with some super strain of anti-biotic resistant bateria and we'll all die. I say piffel to intelligent design and say YEEE HAAA to human design!
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