markpasc: October 2007 Archives

Speaking of documentaries, the new film King Corn is about the huge proportion of our national diet that we derive from corn.

The exposure of corn as the fuel in our food system was one of the most compelling parts of the hugely acclaimed The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Author Michael Pollan introduces us to George Naylor, an Iowan struggling to run the farm his grandfather brought into the family in 1919, early in that section on “industrial” food:

The day I showed up was supposed to be the only dry one all week, so George and I spent most of it in the cab of his tractor, trying to get acquainted and get his last 160 acres of corn planted at the same time; a week or two later he’d start in on the soybeans. The two crops take turns in these fields year after year, in what has been the classic Corn Belt rotation since the 1970s. (Since that time soybeans have become the second leg supporting the industrial food system: It too is fed to livestock and now finds its way into two-thirds of all processed foods.) For most of the afternoon I sat on a rough cushion George had fashioned for me from crumpled seed bags, but after a while he let me take the wheel.

Back and forth and back again, a half a mile in each direction, planting corn feels less like planting, or even driving, than stitching an interminable cloak, or covering a page with the same sentence over and over again. The monotony, compounded by the roar of a diesel engine well past its prime, is hypnotic after a while. Every pass across this field, which is almost but not quite dead flat, represents another acre of corn planted, another thirty thousand seeds tucked into one of the eight furrows being simultaneously etched into the soil by pairs of stainless steel disks; a trailing roller then closes the furrows over the seed.

The seed we were planting was Pioneer Hi-Bred’s 34H31, a strain that the catalog described as “an adaptable hybrid with solid agronomics and yield potential.” The lack of hype, notable for a seed catalog, probably reflects the fact that 34H31 does not contain the “YieldGard gene,” the Monsanto-developed line of genetically engineered corn that Pioneer is currently pushing: The genetically modified 34B98, on the same page, promises “outstanding yield potential.” Despite its promises, Naylor, unlike many of his neighbors, doesn’t plant GMOs (genetically modified organisms). He has a gut distrust of the technology (“They’re messing with three billion years of evolution”) and doesn’t think it’s worth the extra twenty-five dollars a bag (in technology fees) they cost. “Sure, you might get a yield bump, but whatever you make on the extra corn goes right back to cover the premium for the seed. I fail to see why I should be laundering money for Monsanto.” As Naylor sees it, GMO seed is just the latest chapter in an old story: Farmers eager to increase their yields adopt the latest innovation, only to find that it’s the companies selling the innovations who reap the most from the gain in the farmer’s productivity.

This new film is by Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, who undertook their own corn adventure: they grew their own acre of corn in Iowa, to discover that same life cycle from field to plate. The film was the first topic in a recent episode of Boing Boing TV:

The film seems to cover much the same area as and Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation. It’s already caused some controversy, but hopefully King Corn is a good film that will get more people thinking about what we put in ourselves.

In the Shadow of the Moon is not bad.

I saw it a couple weeks ago and a couple of points stuck out at me. The first was when one of the guys mentions that an atheist from Dallas sued for the astronauts quoting from Genesis during the first moon pass. (They don’t mention it was activist Madalyn Murray O’Hair.) I can sympathize, but it seems awfully inhumanist not to let the astronauts express their personal beliefs. Up there with the most amazing sight seen by eyes until then, they related to the splendor of the universe as they understood it. They were representing all of us up there, but they didn’t do wrong.

Mainly, the ending isn’t quite what I had hoped. They do explicitly point out that no one has set foot on the moon since Apollo 17, but Sington doesn’t leverage that into a value judgment. In the Shadow of the Moon is a retrospective, encasing these old men in amber. I had hoped it could also be a call to action for further moon missions, or at least explore the absence of swagger of these guys’ caliber nowadays. There’s little heroism in today’s socialized space program, but In the Shadow of the Moon shows it only in negative.

You might check it out when it’s on DVD.

Children are getting older.

This is another major theme I’d like to write about here. It’s been crazy around here this past week, so this may not be the cogent introduction I wish it were, but here goes.

Childhood as a phase of life is growing longer: adolescents are treated as children, and people in their twenties act adolescent. There’s a new book on exactly this topic, The Case Against Adolescence by Robert Epstein. As Jason Kottke quotes when talking about the book, Epstein has evidence that adulthood is now beginning as late as 27, which certainly makes me feel better about only just now entering what feels like the adult phase of my life. Hopefully I can grab a copy and share any insights it informs.

As Kottke also notes, Neil Postman’s The Disappearance of Childhood claims the idea of childhood itself comes and goes in waves. Part of the current swing may be the resonance of this pattern in popular culture. It’s similar to Devo’s core theme of devolution, the idea that modern society with its lack of true challenges allows us to become dumber, worse people; that society’s natural direction is downward. The same idea plays out in Mike Judge’s recent film Idiocracy: thousands of years into the future, America has devolved into a purely consumerist society run by cyborg corporations and a government that’s more a line-up of reality TV series than a ruling body.

There are several phenomena crucial to understanding our world today that seem (at least to me) related to this idea of bringing childhood into adulthood. For a convenient name for the general pattern, I like neoteny, the term in biology for keeping youthful characteristics into adulthood (“as among certain amphibians”). I keep seeing neoteny as the possible motive force in a bunch of phenomena, enough so that it seems like a hint to some underlying system of the world.

Neoteny is related to the fairy tale morality that currently polarizes our public discourse. It’s a child-like view to split the world into unambiguous virtue and vice, and the job of adults to discern the good intentions in bad acts and forge compromise. There seems to be precious little of this among the people we give power.

Another apparent ramification of epidemic neoteny could be the focus on materialism we see in our culture. We Americans are generally not so hot on waiting for things we want, and as a result spend $1.22 for every $1 we earn (claims the American Bankers Association in an undated statistic they ascribe to the Myvesta Foundation, a “consumer finance assistance” organization). That you can’t have everything you want is the basic axiom of economics, yet we’re extremely eager to except ourselves from it, assuming economics happens only to everyone else. It seems peculiarly adult not to partake of the “free money” credit card companies spam out.

Geek chic is another possible result of neoteny. Comic books and video games are adolescent media that my generation is bringing with us throughout our lives, to say little of the stereotypical nerd who lives with his parents ‘til 30, who is simply still adolescent. To be broadly generous instead, to be a geek about something is to show enthusiasm for it, and enthusiasm tends to be the province of youth; the cliché is child-like wonder for a reason.

The relationship we’ve developed with our corporations can put people in a child’s role at times. While science fiction still has a monopoly on corporations gaining sentience and acting independently, it rings like a bell the fear of superhuman legal fictions with rights. Focusing on corporate speech (which is, after all, one of the few ways we interact with them), we picture child-like susceptibility to advertising in other people. It’s in the interests of the corporations that want to sell us things to infantilize us into material consumers.

I’ve been reading The Authoritarians by Bob Altemeyer, a layman’s overview of his and others’ psychological research into the authoritarian behavior of both leaders and followers. (It’s available on Altemeyer’s web site.) He describes aligning with a strong authority as if it were an identifiable pathology. Some of the authoritarian behavior we see in contemporary societies (both leading and following, which Altemeyer takes pains to explain are quite different) can be explained in terms of the strong father figure, which allows it to map conveniently onto ideas of neoteny. While, as ever, the behavior of particular human people is more complicated, it seems like a useful metaphor.

Perhaps neoteny of itself isn’t a major thread in the fabric of our world; it could be a mere result of a more primal component, like positive feedback. Even so, it comes up enough in various guises that it’s worth understanding.