The Botany of Desire....Michael Pollan - has anyone else

[IconoclastIlene]

read this book?

[Lefta Dissenter]

1. does it count that

I bought that book, for my dad? :shrug:

[IconoclastIlene]

2. borrow it; its a good read

we have become slaves of agriculture!!! oh yeah!!

[bbernardini]

3. "You forgot about Pollan!"

Somebody had to say it. :)

[chaska]

4. Tell me more about it.

Is it anything like Daniel Quinn's books ('Ishmael', to name the most famous one)?

[IconoclastIlene]

5. How agriculture has enslaved mankind.

We went from a free nomadic life with no strings attached to an enslavement by farm, agriculture and property.....for flowers, potatoes, bread, and fermented goods, not to mention hallucinogens.

[chaska]

6. Well, that's kinda what you said before.

It does sound like Quinn. His 'Ishmael' is a far left icon. That's his area too. All of us must, and likely will, read that book at some point.

Wednesday is my birthday. I want all of DU to read Ishmael for my birthday.

Quinn sees the story of the Garden of Eden as the story of man being thrown out of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and forced to live a civilized agricultural existence. He tells the history of what actually happened in that region. If I remember correctly tribes in that area (Iraq basically) started to adopt an agricultural lifestyle and needing ever more land they literally forced the hunter-gathers from their land, not unlike how we did with the Indians in this country.

His take on civilization/agriculture is that it is based on power and heirarchy and he tells us how to throw off the yoke without returning to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle by re-adopting a tribal model for society. The example he often sites is the circus, not Barnum and Bailey, which is a corporation like any other, but the old time circus. This was an organization where no one was more important than anyone else. Everyone took care of his fellows. It was a lifestyle, not just a paycheck.

Bottom line: overthrow the corporation by walking away, by finding a way out of the heirarchy.

I'm doing a terrible job of explaining it, but it is a must read.

[IconoclastIlene]

7. Im left handed, too.

I am having a hard time trying to envision where, except perhaps Siberia or Lapland, one could in the present time frame, take up the nomadic life without getting arrested!!!

[chaska]

8. That's one reason I said I explained it badly.

There actually are people in this country that live a nomadic life, but that's not the point. Quinn doesn't advocate that we become nomads. His point is that we should get rid of heirarchy. No bosses, no stock holders, etc.; that we should work in something like worker-owned enterprises. Which sounds like very dull reading - it isn't at all. Quite the contrary, it's very exciting. And I repeat I can't do it justice.

To any intersted in the subject, do a search, there are various Ishmael oriented websites.

Tell me more about your book, Madame B.

[chaska]

9. Congrats on your left-handedness...

I bet you didn't even know you were a hyphenated-American.

[IconoclastIlene]

13. I dont like punctuation; but I love semicolons.

Especially after being a medical secty/transcriptionist, I love the freedom of typing all the typos I want.!@!!!!#@!!!!

LOL:argh:

[Shakespeare]

11. Wow--that's not quite how I saw Pollan's point.....

I just finished reading it this weekend--fascinating book. I think his point isn't so much that plants have "enslaved" us as it is simply that plants "use" us as much as we use them. A nice little perspective shifter whenever we fall into the trap of thinking we're the ones in control all the time. I think Pollan's right--the control goes both ways.

He's got a new book on the verge of publication that takes a closer look at farming and the abomination that agribusiness has made it. Can't find a title on Amazon, but I believe it's coming out within the next 12 months.

[IconoclastIlene]

14. This symbiotic little relationship is starting to kill us with pesticides

and unfortunately, we may all have to go back to the nomadic life sometime because of all the poisons which, no doubt; eventually will cause mutations of heavens knows what kind.

I look forward to Michael's next book.

My husband, who was a botany/biology major in college for whom I bought the book in the first place, thinks that the author had a little too much weed in his day!!!!!!!

[Shakespeare]

15. Yup, very true. Found that Chronicle piece on Pollan...

Good reading. And I agree with your husband! Not that too much weed is a bad thing, of course. ;-)

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/05/02/CMGE560U5I1.DTL

[Neshanic]

10. I heard the interview with the author on NPR. Sounds good.

[miss_kitty]

12. I'm reading it now

I just started so ask me nothing about it I am still on the Johnny Appleseed part