Book 311 - A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title: There Is Such a Thing as a Free Lunch!

Book – The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of 4 Meals by Michael Pollan (Part 2/2)

Book Description:

What should we have for dinner? Ten years ago, Michael Pollan confronted us with this seemingly simple question and, with The Omnivore’s Dilemma, his brilliant and eye-opening exploration of our food choices, demonstrated that how we answer it today may determine not only our health but our survival as a species. In the years since, Pollan’s revolutionary examination has changed the way Americans think about food. Bringing wide attention to the little-known but vitally important dimensions of food and agriculture in America, Pollan launched a national conversation about what we eat and the profound consequences that even the simplest everyday food choices have on both ourselves and the natural world. Ten years later, The Omnivore’s Dilemma continues to transform the way Americans think about the politics, perils, and pleasures of eating.

Reflection:

Life is not an assembly line!

It would be nice if there was an SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) on how to maximize your time here on this Earth. A guide on how to produce the most while maximizing your happiness.

Shocker…there isn’t. If someone every tells you there is, run as far and as fast away from them as you can.

We humans think we are so smart, and we are. We see a specific problem and think that all we must do is unlock the secrets of nature and we can craft a unique solution to solve the issue and we can move onto the next thing that pops up.

Think back to the book The Alchemy of Air which was about the Haber-Bosch Process for synthesizing fertilizers by literally taking nitrogen out of the atmosphere. Humans were faced with the problem that we may not be able to produce enough food to feed the world due to a shortage of natural fertilizers. So, what did we do? We turned to industry for our answers and found an ingenious way to literally take nitrogen from the atmosphere engineer a process to turn it into fertilizers to grow more crops.

Viola…problem solved.

In a vacuum, this looks like a massive success and win for humans and the planet in general. We devised a brilliant and innovative solution to tackle our problems. That is the genius of humanity. We will never stop using our imaginations to solve the obstacles we face. With this solution in place, we can now grow as much grain as needed to eat until our hearts content and feed the ever-expanding world population. Sounds like a win-win to me.

Well, that is never the full story with any of our industrial solutioning. There is never a free lunch, and we know it. Every new advancement always comes with a side of unintended consequences it seems. Every time we mess with mother nature, she fights back with a vengeance. Synthetic fertilizers are now known to be causing a lot of unintended negative side effects. They cause over farming which is harming soil fertility, it can cause run off that is poisoning our water supplies and marine lifeforms, attracts pests, can raise greenhouse gases, and so much more.

So, what do we do…stop solving problems? Just sit back and see issues happening in this world and let it be? Not at all, what I’m proposing is we think differently.

What if humans, instead of always combatting nature with our problem solving tried to embrace it? What if we shifted from our industrial mindset where problem solving is a zero sum game to more of a biological mindset where there is abundance for all? What might that look like?

I know exactly what that looks like and you’re not going to like this answer but… A BEAVER MUST DAM!

Let me explain. When a beaver is left to live its purpose, it will dam all day long. You may think, isn’t that bad? Not at all. Before you know it, there will be beaver ponds and damns all over the place. That means water everywhere. When there is water everywhere, now the salmon can do their thing. The deer and bears come down to the water to do their thing. The trees sprout up next to the water and do their thing. The wolves come down to hunt the deer that are doing their thing, and the list goes on and on.

Before you know it, you have a thriving and sustainable ecosystem where everyone and everything has what it needs to survive and thrive. When the beaver is doing what it does best and able to live its purpose everyone thrives from the byproduct of its meaningful work. It is the same with every other plant, fungi, and animal in this ecosystem.

Their meaningful work produces a free lunch for everyone else, and the list goes on and on in perpetuity. That is how a biological mindset thinks. A biological mindset is one of abundance and respect for every single things ability to live a purpose driven life.

We don’t have to solve all the problems with a biological mindset, nature will do it for us.

Mother nature is not an assembly line, mother nature is a beautifully orchestrated symphony of a lot of individuals sounds coming together to make one incredible song. We would do well to listen and follow that approach. It has worked for a lot longer than ours has.

Question: Are you thinking industrially or biologically?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan