WWU ENV202 Population Essay
Transcript of WWU ENV202 Population Essay
!Multilingualism For Symbiotic Human Population
Management!
!Language is the most powerful technology that has ever evolved on earth. It is not
human alone and is not to be owned alone: It is a universal co-creative and
collaborative intellectual property that creates life and enhances life. Poetry is a great
example of how we can see that language has been evolving and expanding and may
have begun to first form in humans: Poetry is a play with sound and semiotics to expand
points of view and relatedness. Biotechnology is not as important a technology as the
technology that is poetic multilingualism. Multilingualism can be better channeled to
manage human populations because as people learn more languages and use poetics,
especially children from 0-4yrs old, they learn more than one way to empathize with
others and they learn multiple was of knowing and experiencing life and their powers of
expressing and problem solving (executive functions) expands exponentially. Plus as
people’s minds and options expand they have less risky sexual encounters and thus
birth less children at inopportune times as they will desire to explore and live more fully
as a life like poem.
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! The primacy of language in the human experience is obvious and yet it demands
ongoing study of its influences on human populations and the biodiversity of the
biosphere. How does language diversity, human and other forms including molecular,
relate to and influence populations, biodiversity, and the self worth, self esteem, and self
security of a species and a habitat? This question is beyond the scope of a 7-12 page
essay and has unfortunately created a 25 paged essay, but I can’t find any other force of
nature comparable in power to language in shaping social animals such as human
populations. Lacking an ability to fully research this in a correspondence course, I’d like
to suggest a framework for understanding two upcoming socio-economic and political
decisions: First Initiative 522, the mandatory labeling of food containing genetically
modified organisms in Washington State up for vote November 2013 and Second the
delisting of the grey wolf in the lower 48 by the US Department of Interior. Both issues
will have some degree of impact either positive or negative on the self worth, self
esteem, and self security of at least one individual species and the habitat of the species
and the biosphere as a whole. What effect will the decisions made on these two issues
have on self worth, self esteem, and self security of all parties involved? Are there any
other technologies or techniques available that can do better? Yes. Multilingualism with
its influence on individuals and communities in a habitat creates seeds of more value
both real and potential and strengthens and encourages self worth, self esteem, and self
security of both the individual and the habitat culture better than genetically engineered
seeds can for human population management.!
! In this essay I will discuss how human language and all living communication
systems is a phenomenon that is not fully understood, but there is enough experience to
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suggest that it extends deep through the evolutionary track as a co-creative
phenomenon between species and nature via habitats. I am going against many
linguists and anthropologists and biologists, I’m sure, who claim that language as we
humans use and hear it is a uniquely human attribute that evolved within the confines of
the human mind, therefore it is a human intellectual property. I believe that this is a
biased anthropocentric assumption of logical thinking based on the current modern
human historical experience. When looking at the origin of a creative work of literature,
one would be hard pressed to find the source strictly in the author’s mind. If we can
come to a better understanding for the origins and structure of language I think we
might approach a structure for more “sustainable” socio-economic and political systems.
I will draw a brief comparison of the latest research in microbiology, most importantly the
discovery of the bacterium language “quorum sensing”, paleoanthropology, the study of
prehistory with paleoclimatology the study of climate history, the prevalence and
importance of multilingualism in indigenous societies, and the latest research in infant
language learning, lastly suggestions of an evolving socio-economic system based on
microbiology exist dubbed by one researcher as “microbiopolitics” that I believe could
be furthered for a watershed-based economy as experienced in ancient India and other
indigenous cultures. Finally to suggest a decision framework for Initiative 522 and
delisting of the gray wolf and in search of a symbiotic and poetic life in space with
pressures from Pop Culture, I’ll compare the the philosophy of multilingualism of the
eternally wild spirit as expressed in an icon of dead things: driftwood, to the essence of
that eternally wild spirit expressed in two icons of living social things: humans and
wolves.!
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! I believe that evidence from these areas of research suggests a co-creative
origin of human language that would mean that humans do not solely own language as
the intellectual property of one species. Most linguists and anthropologists or biologists
will claim that language is solely an evolutionary product of the rational mind, a logical
event of mutations in the human brain and larynx and ultimately becoming useful in the
logical human mind. To formulate my opinion, I compare the creation or attempt at
creation of a work of art to the origin of language and I believe that the creation of
language is a natural technology that co-evolved synergistically with various layers of
physical and intellectual stimulations among many hours of co-creative live cycles
between species and habitat. There are some linguists who are studying creole that I
have not investigated yet and I admittedly cannot discuss all sides of the issue in this
essay. E.O. Wilson, award winning critically acclaimed biologist, in his book “The Social
Conquest of Earth” quotes Michael Tomasello, American evolutionary psychologist and
Co-director of the Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology:!
!“What could it mean to say that language is responsible for understanding and sharing intentions, when in fact the idea of linguistic communication without these underlying skills is incoherent. And so, while it is true that language represents a major difference between humans and other primates, we believe that it actually derives from the uniquely human abilities to read and share intentions with other people...”!!“It seems logical that language did not create the mind, but the opposite.”!!“The rudiments of human language might have appeared as the essential enabling mental qualities that came together and co-evolved in a synergistic fashion. But it is highly unlikely that it preceded them.” (Wilson 228)!!
! Language feels to be a co-creative force to me; in a combined phenomenon of
how my body systems and microbiome bacterium “speak” among themselves
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regardless of my brain’s consciousness and how I shape what I want to say, pick up
sounds from the environment and learn culture, language feels co-creative and
therefore likely to have preceded “essential enabling mental qualities” and “co-evolved
in a synergistic fashion”, contrary to this educated thought. What absolutely seems clear
to me is that the origin story of mythology of language is the most important barrier to
human societies progressing beyond the religious dogma that Wilson warns is limiting
the society as a whole in achieving any sense of altruistic state of group selective
“honor”. If the use of language in tangible applications such as the labeling of food
products for customer consumption is not regulated and over seen by the governing
body of the land, than how can that governing body protect the customers, the citizens
and protect their self worth, esteem, and self security? Language thus seems to be the
true determiner of human populations and even all species populations both as a
consequence of human use of language to create a massive Pop Culture and as a
consequence of their own use of their own linguistics. Language thus seems more like a
phenomenon of co-creativity, an invention shared with habitats in Nature through our
experiences, cultures, interactions with other organisms and therefore because of the
complexity of connections between various species and their habitats, language as a
phenomenon encompassing human linguistics and other primitive linguistics,
multilingualism as a phenomenon of learning multiple ways of thinking and
communicating is a seed in the human mind and in Nature more valuable than genetic
engineering for its ability to grow self worth, self esteem, and self security in relatedness
to Nature and to manage populations in a biosphere.!
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! So what does poetry and the poet have to say about the co-creative nature and
origins of the phenomenon of language? Contrary to the strict, but understandable
desire to separate science from literature, looking at the scientific problem of how
language affects human populations could benefit from a look at literary thinking and
works of successful poets and could tell us much about the phenomenon of the origin of
language. E.O. Wilson approached this challenge in his book “The Social Conquest of
Earth”, but it seems as a highly disciplined scientist honed by the pressures of peer
review, he stopped short of a full emersion in to the potential enlightenment on the
mythic origins of language that a metaphysical literary work could provide. Four of my
favorite American poets express their craft as an art of interacting with words and a
moment in reality in Nature and in the mind.!
! e.e.cummings in a poem titled by the first line:!
pity this busy monster, manunkind, not. Progress is a comfortable disease: your victim (death and life safely beyond) plays with the bigness of his littleness --- electrons deify one razorblade into a mountainrange; lenses extend unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish returns on its unself. A world of made is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this fine specimen of hypermagical ultraomnipotence. We doctors know a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go !
! Mary Oliver, in her book “A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding
and Writing Poetry”:!
When writing, as nearly as is imaginatively possible (and that is very near indeed), one is undertaking the action, or has become the character (think of
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what Keats said), in the unfolding scene or action of the poem. Until interruption occurs, this feeling is as real as the desk on which the poet is working. For the poem is not nailed together, or formed from one logical point to another, which might be retrievable - it is created, through work in which the inter weavings of craft, thought, and feeling are intricate, mysterious, and altogether ‘mortal.’ (Oliver 117)!!
! Ursala K. LeGuin, award winning science fiction author in her book “A Wave In
The Mind”:!
“So much for trusting oneself. Now, to trust the story, what does that mean? To me, it means being willing not to have full control over the story as you write it... First you have to learn how to write English, and learn how to tell stories in general–techniques, practice, all that: so that you are in control. And then you have to learn how to relinquish it... For me it's not enough to be a good rider, I want to be a centaur. I don't want to be the rider controlling the horse, I want to be both the rider and the horse." (Le Guin 224)!!
! William Carlos Williams award winning poet and professional medical doctor in
his book of poems “In Spring”:!
"So long as the sky is recognized as an association!is recognized in its function of accessory to vague!words whose meaning it is impossible to rediscover!its value can be nothing but mathematical certain!limits of gravity and density of air!The farmer and the fisherman who read their own lives there have a practical corrective for – !they rediscover or replace demoded meanings to!the religious terms!Among them, without expansion of imagination, !there is the residual contact between life and the!imagination which is essential to freedom" (Williams 19)!!
! All three of these artists are suggesting a fragile relationship between their
intentional crafting of their use of language and words and letting the subject of their
inspiration guide them: “...a world of made is not a world of born...”, “the inter weavings
of craft, thought, feelings... all together ‘mortal’”, “...it means being willing to not have
full control over the story as you are writing it...”, “...the residual contact between life
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and the imagination which is essential to freedom”. These voices speak in contrast to:
“What could it mean to say that language is responsible for understanding and sharing
intentions...” as the evolutionary anthropologist says. It does not seem that poetry is just
about reading and sharing intentions. To say that language evolved without poetry is
possibly the greatest albeit likely unintentional crime against humanity and biodiversity
because it seems to be enabling the continual manipulation of minds and habitats for an
anthropocentric single, one-way language based economic system.!
! With the poet in mind, the origin of language, could mean that Nature helps
humans create diverse, poetic lifestyles and cultures that in turn help humans and
nature get along together, to manage population densities through naturally
encouraging diversity of thought in linguistic diversity like Nature encourages
biodiversity. And it could mean that when language is recognized as a co-creative
phenomenon between mind and matter it empowers a higher synergy and a higher
sense of value which inherently limits physical consumption and expansion while
enabling spiritual or metaphysical consumption and expansion with increasing layers of
self worth and security. It seems that the creative evolution of a work of poetry and
literature suggests a deeper meaning to the origin of human language that demands
further research before multilingualism as a natural force and phenomenon is
annihilated by “monocultural imperialism”, one way thinking, and genetic engineering
technologies that attack self worth, esteem, and self security by attacking the poetic
relationship between a species and their habitat, watershed, and biosphere.!
! In Thomas Malthus’s essay on human population he famously expressed the fate
of starvation because of “the difficulty of subsistence” and “the passion between the
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sexes”. Malthus suggested that these are forces uncontrollable, but I feel they are in
fact forces constantly subject to the affects that language has on self worth, self esteem,
self security, and ultimately honor among others. Malthus lacked the information we
have in 2013 about human nature and gene-culture co-evolution and the evolution of
the planet as well as the evolution of the single celled organism, but what he lacked and
that we still lack today is a full appreciation for the power of multilingualism in shaping
human populations and cultures. Because of what limits a researches point of view their
research is subject to rapid degradation and erosion of quality or relevance. But with
language and the multilingual organism especially, we see the fundamental power of
what lasts regardless of time: a desire to empathize for symbiotic survival. I will attempt
to express how language is the primary concern if only demonstrated by the feelings
within us and that human populations are not destined to mass starvation, but with
Multilingual “Ecomind” (Lappe) thinking social populations can self regulate hunger and
passion.!
! Multilingualism is essentially many languages in one mind and as such is a pro-
social shield for the altruistic “self” seeking group honor that is mightier than the sword
of psychopathic or sociopathic monocultural imperialism. Before the latter organizations
attempt to use the powers from the populations of the former to annihilate honor in an
altruistic society I suggest that members of the former unite fully using the
multilingualism phenomenon that would otherwise be suggested as a dis-unifying
phenomenon. While I have little empirical research of my own to support such a hopeful
mindset, I do have my body and experiences as exhibit A: I am a symbiotic organism
that maintains multilingualism in his cells, I am a product of symbiosis constantly
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upgrading and repairing itself with the autonomous actions of cells for as long as it can.
A self who has survived thus far not because of my own singular power, or singular
engineering feat, but from luck and the fundamental power of cooperation of different
people and species. My existence, however fleeting, is proof of altruistic society based
on the phenomenon of multilingualism which extends far deeper into biology than we
have dogmatically allowed; into microbiology:!
“Every plant, animal, and human requires a vast community of commensal microbes working 24/7 to keep it alive and healthy.... These vast communities of microbes – your “microbiome” – have effects on your metabolism, immunity, and behavior; and properly balanced, invisible interactions with your microbes are essential to your well-being. Microbes cover you in a thin biofilm that serves as invisible body armor protecting you from environmental insults. Microbes help digest your food, provide your vitamins, aid in the development of your blood vessels, and educate you immune system.” (Bassler 68-69) !!
! That our individual bodies are symbiotic systems that are constantly
communicating with our habitat is little understood and yet of utmost importance. Do
genetic engineers know how their product will affect this complex system of
communication? Do they care? If they do not, they appear more as enemies of global
peace than ethical agents of humanitarian aid. Our bodies are proof that cooperation is
the dominate form of survival on the planet, the illusion that our minds are in strict
control of our “self” is fading away like a cut to our skin as we gain more insight from
comparative research:!
“Within minutes of accidentally cutting yourself, the hemostatic flow has probably been brought to rest as erythrocytes attach themselves to fibrin threads...This is a process of meticulous and self motivated coordination and is something we have rarely admitted in our discussions... These are subtle, powerful forces at work here and they are testimony to the regulatory mechanisms on which all life depends.” (Ford 140) !
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! The study of microbiology suggests that the desire to talk began not in the
human mind but in bacterium, the single celled organisms that survived billions of years
of catastrophic change and the organism who’s networking abilities enabled
multicellular life. Microbiologist Bonnie Bassler, discovered the language of bacterium
called “quorum sensing” while working for Princeton University and expresses how she
felt upon the discovery:!
“I spend half my time thinking, “My God, I can’t believe they do this!” and then the other half thinking, “Why did it take me so long to figure this out? Of course they do this!” I agree, it’s obvious in retrospect.
I often think, “Why is it that my lab that’s doing this?” Bacteria have been intensively studied for 400 years. How could this have been missed for nearly 390 of those years? I guess there was this sort of snobbery — among bacteriologists and among scientists in general — that because bacteria seemingly live this mundane primitive life, and they have so few genes, and are so tiny, that we could not imagine they possessed this level of complexity and sophistication.
But think about multicellularity on this Earth. Every living thing originally came from bacteria. So, who do you think made up the rules for how to perform collective behaviors? It had to be the bacteria. (Bassler Nova Interview)
! It seems reasonable that from this recent discovery we can speculate that the
desire to talk as a necessity of survival and coordinate effort is not just a human
phenomenon, but one that spread to the human mind from the hungers of the body. The
human fossil records back this speculation up. !
! As there is now an awareness of the depth of communication technology among
microbes, the ongoing study of the human fossil record and the geologic climate record
of the earth suggest a communication between the earth and the biosphere and each
species via unique habitats. Humans are the only species to travel to the moon, as far
as we know we are the most well traveled species. How does this travel affect our
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language and how did the pre-history of travel affect the development of our language?
Is language a product solely of the human mind or a co-creative product of the human
mind interacting with and being influenced by habitat? What does the fossil record and
climate record suggest for the evolution of human language as a co-creative
phenomenon? If language is inherently a product of a sort of conversation between the
earth, Nature and the species, does this imply that nature co-owns the intellectual
property that language technology is? Is this implication, that Nature has intellectual
property rights over human language important as whether or not human cultures
acknowledge this Right Of Nature to speak freely with and between species will affect
the direction of a rapidly evolving species that is fundamentally shaped by language?
These questions are difficult if not impossible to answer, but they are essential to
understanding the implications and potential consequences of human agricultural efforts
to feed billions of people on the planet. Initiative 522, the question of labeling
Genetically Modified Organisms and of the decision to delist the grey wolf as an
endangered species are two “Watershed Moments” socio-economic and political
decisions that will change life forever. We can at least see them towards us this fall of
2013 and we can prepare by asking these questions. They are issues of a lack of
multilingualism as a philosophy of action that will affect the self worth of the social
individual human as a species, the social individual wolf as a species, and the social
organization of the biosphere.!
! Paleoanthropology, the study of prehistory with paleoclimatology the study of
ancient climate provide evidence of the dynamic relationship between the creation of
innovative species and their technologies and the geologic events of the greater
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biosphere. With cranial endocasts and the vertical position of the larynx bone in hominid
species researchers help determine when language was achieved. Some think it
occurred nearly overnight, some think it took millions of years of evolution. (Johanson
106) Some think it occurred near the time of the breakout from Southern Africa after a
severe Ice Age. There is evidence that one of the other humans, Neanderthals had a
primitive language. (Johanson 107, Finlayson 106) While the exact time of the origin of
human language is unclear, it is more clear that it was finally brought fully about by
stress and tragedy. The catastrophic explosion of Mount Toba, on Sumatra, nearly
75,000 years ago is believed to have created a “bottleneck” in the early Cro-Magnon
Homo sapiens population and to have created a powerful need to speak and
collaborate. (Fagen xv) After this event Homo Sapiens traveled far and wide spreading
out across the globe creating many languages and mythologies and nearly hunting
many species to extinction. So does Mt Toba have intellectual property rights over
human language? That sounds ridiculous, but what sounds more reasonable is that, as
the archaeologic and paleoclimatologic records show, the bio-technologies of all species
are products of a co-creative relationship with Nature as a fluid and dynamic force
attempting to achieve an equilibrium in exchange across identities.!
! The origin of human language has been called one of the greatest scientific
problems ever confronted and is “the grail achieved in social evolution”. (Wilson) It is
therefore still a frontier of speculation and research with great meaning and implications
for human experience and for human populations. While it might be true that the
gardener who holds the seeds of an agricultural society holds the future of that society,
the future is first held by the gardener who holds the seeds of thought: Words and the
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power of suggestion, the power to place labels on Nature. Ironically this power came
from Nature and further energy exists to overcome catastrophe and stress as seen in
the evolutionary records. Language shaped the mind before society could exist to grow
to the massive numbers we see today. Researcher and scholar of geography Jared
Diamond discusses the individual and social importance of language in his recent book
“The World Until Yesterday”:!
!“...your language serves as an instantly recognizable badge of your group identity.” (Diamond 376) !!“...multilingualism is widespread or routine in traditional small-scale non-state societies... People regularly encounter and have to deal with speakers of other languages. To trade, to negotiate alliances and access to resources, and (for many traditional people) even to obtain a spouse and to communicate with that spouse requires being not merely bilingual but multilingual. Second and further languages are learned in childhood in the home or socially, not through formal instruction.” (Diamond 383)!!Multilingualism encourages self worth and improves cognitive function in children and prevents cognitive disfunction in elderly. (Diamond 383+) !!
! The human fossil and archeological record compared with the earth’s geologic
climate record reveals an increasingly detailed story of the “gene-culture co-
evolution” (Wilson) between human culture and Nature. In the light of this comparison
multilingualism becomes not just a phenomenon of human language, or interspecies
microbial communication, but of a communication between the biosphere and the
species. This would appear to further the argument that Nature has intellectual property
rights through the human language–habitat co-creative relationship.!
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! The origin of human language and the true potential of multilingualism to manage
human populations is being uncovered with recent studies of infants brain waves while
they are absorbing a person speaking. Patricia Khul, co-director of the Institute for Brain
and Learning Sciences at the University of Washington has discovered that,!
““Babies all over the world are what I like to describe as ‘citizens of the world.’ They can discriminate all the sounds of all languages, no matter what country we’re testing and what language we’re using.” “When babies listen, what they’re doing is taking statistics on the language that they hear.” (Khul) !
Her research was conducted using an advanced brain recording and mapping system
and has shown that babies need a person present in order to activate the statistics
taking which is important when considering the intense social nature of early human life.
Is this evidence of language as a co-creative phenomenon between the babies’ brain
and the habitat, social and ecological to effect meaning? One implication for this
universal skill is a survival tactic that enabled babies to survive with any culture they
happened to grow up in regardless of their parents culture. A programed cultural
survival skill appears to be a means of survival not just for the individual or the group,
but for the sake of social survival as well. !
! What can genetic engineering offer to all parties of this phenomenon that
multilingualism cannot and vice versa? How will genetic engineering affect the self
worth that language encourages in a person and in a species? How is genetic
engineering affecting human and microbe cultures? How is genetic engineering
affecting the human as symbiotic organism, a thinking and talking social being intimately
connected to microbial communities who are “thinking” and talking amongst themselves
as well for the greater good that enables our health?!
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! Another way genetic engineering may degrade self worth and esteem is in the
value of the regional food and wine protection designator system in Europe, the
Appellations of Control. One anthropologist, Heather Paxon suggests “microbiopolitics”
as a structure for socioeconomic systems that has been evolving rapidly in the artisan
cheese industry that can better help people shape human population issues of Pop
Culture by focusing on the “terroir” or flavor of geography and the uniquely tasting
personalities of microbes:!
“In the post-Pasteurian ethos of today’s artisanal cheese cultures—recognizing microbes to be ubiquitous, necessary, and, indeed, tasty— microbiopolitics is newly productive of modern craft knowledge and expanded notions of nutrition. It produces new materials (microbes) for thinking about con- junctures of cultural tradition and agrarian landscapes, along the lines of what the French call terroir (see Barham 2003; Trubek 2005). And it creates new alliances among cheese makers and among farmers, scientists, merchants, and foodies.” (Paxon 18)!
! It is likely in this arena, the artisan craft person’s arena, that human populations
with the aid of a multilingual philosophy, will find their greatest strength in developing
self worth, self esteem, and self security collaboratively with that of a watershed habitat.
Having worked for a relatively new artisan cheese creamery in the city of Port
Townsend, WA in 2010-2012, called Mt. Townsend Creamery, I can attest to the
dynamics and challenges of meeting a reasonable price point that enables a thriving
and trusted artisan food business. The scrutiny placed on such creameries in the USA is
severe to say the least and one must wonder how the term “artisan” can withstand the
scrutiny of a massive Pop Culture supported national government regulation and
inspection system. The size of the giant on the artisan’s shoulders is challenging their
own ability to maintain a unique “self” in the artisan economy that must interface with
the Pop Culture economy. The structure of the economic system that these artisan food
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producers are trying to maintain a living in does not reflect “microbiopolitics” or even the
nature of the water cycle, yet the flavor of their products will by necessity of
microbiology and the artisan way, reflect the flavor of the watershed. The artisan crafts
person in the USA is once again after a couple hundred years, back at the front lines of
cultural progress.!
! As the co-creative structure of the multilingual mind can enable greater empathy
in societies and greater control by individuals over their relationship to populations so
can the structure of the flow of water in a watershed as it has always been the physical
limit of sedentary human populations. One of the most important if not the final
assessment of a sustainable human population is: Who gets the water? Multilingualism
and diversity of thought help negotiate this challenge more effectively and empathically.
Activist Vandana Shiva has thoroughly researched and expressed this problem in
“Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit.” As a testament to learning from ancient
cultures in India, decentralized gardeners who worked with a watershed and listened to
it gained much more stability in a cooperative social flexibility with the flow of water than
centralized gardeners:!
“What Marx and Wittfogel failed to grasp was the freedom of cooperative management systems from dominant bureaucracies. That Indian irrigation systems relied on decentralized maintenance and not on centralized control was lost on these Western scholars. Wittfogel’s characterization of Asia’s water systems [in his essay Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power] has not gone unchallenged. Economic historian Nirmal Sengupta has pointed out that vast networks of irrigation systems are not necessarily large projects. They can be a close-knit and locally managed network of microprojects. Sengupta has also shown that stagnation was not endemic to these traditional irrigation systems but that flexibility was central. Cropping patterns changed annually according to water availability. With water resources under local control, decisions on land use were easier to make. Modern irrigation on the other hand, uses centralized water control and distribution. Agricultural systems using modern dams are also less able to alter their cropping and irrigation practices to
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suit the availability of water. In addition, these large systems erode human rights and cause serious ecological damage.”!!
! Shiva’s assessment of the inadequacy of western thinking and acting in working
with Asian cultures to manage human populations reinforces the theory that
multilingualism is a more powerful technology than genetic engineering as genetic
engineering is predominantly a Western, namely USA, thought process. The history of
“Water Wars” across the globe and especially in Asia could predict a violent future of
strife over water access. With a new generation of children becoming adults empowered
with a mind full of multilingual thinking options, maybe such wars will not have to be
fought regardless of who invented what technology to search for or find water and bring
it to the surface. Like the ability to find and express water into a biologically diverse
garden, the ability to find and express the right words in a conversation of infinite
variability, multilingualism and language is a technology co-owned with Nature. Words
are like drops of water and as a universal substance of social life and all life, both water
and words shape human populations as a co-creative phenomenon and thus deserve
certain inalienable rights as collaborators in the “self” of humanity to meet the lips of all
people in pure form. To violate this is to gradually if not rapidly to destroy everything
worth living for and being aware of. History does not necessarily repeat itself nor is it
written correctly and truthfully. This inadequacy of Western thinking that Shiva cites, I
believe could be remedied in reorganizing our western political and economic systems
to fit with watersheds and water cycles more closely represented by the cooperative
multilingualism of indigenous societies.!
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! Of those countries strapped with massive human populations that over burden
their habitats, China and India must access their ancient sources of self worth, esteem,
and self security via the vast resources of cultural diversity amassed over thousands of
years. While the task is daunting and population issues have created horrendous
pollution issues in Asia, these anciently endowed cultures should not be influenced by
the United States government while the US Constitution does not recognize the Rights
Of Nature. In the event that the US Constitution does reflect the Rights Of Nature it
could then have something legitimately profound to share in legal practices and
experiences in articulating and defending these rights among our watersheds. The US
Constitution does not currently reflect this kind of philosophy and therefore has no
authority over the relationship between human populations and their relationship to
ecological habitats and watersheds in Nature. As China and India have diverse linguistic
heritages that were also literate, they have the potential to demonstrate more directly
how the origins of language affect a culture’s relationship to the landscape and
biodiversity. They may have the opportunity to demonstrate the invention of language as
a co-creative process between the human mind and habitat and thereby begin to
reverse the destructive trend of a Pop Culture society even before the wilderness and
indigenous culture rich USA can muster the self esteem will power to do so.!
! Starvation is not as inevitable as Malthus suggested when human individuals and
communities work more directly together and creatively together beyond cultural and
political boundaries with a kind of multilingualism with the soil and with the plants or
animals of their agricultural focus within the structure of an entire watershed system. !
Modern industrial agriculture would suggest that old saying “go big or go home” and
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would suggest that efficiency should be followed to the smallest scale; the trend in
corporate food systems in America is shockingly mechanistic and essentially anti-
multilingual. What if “go big” meant ‘embrace the entire watershed as a co-creative
being to produce unique artisan foods’? This could bring new practical results to
“playing with the bigness of our littleness”... Right now the farmers of industrial
agriculture do not attempt to communicate with the plants and animals they grow, they
seek only to dominate and subjugate and humiliate them. (FOOD INC) That method is
suicide as the science of microbiology shows that the “self” is intimately connected with
other beings. !
! Organic agriculture and more specifically bio-intensive and bio-dynamic
gardening techniques of companionship planting have been honed over thousands of
years and in large part from some of the countries now struggling the most with over
burdening population concentrations believe e.e.cummings that “a world of made is not
a world of born”. The world of born is far more valuable and “the hell of a good universe
next door” is accessed through a multilingual mindset in gardens of biodiversity.
Intercropping is a proven technique of planting for biodiversity in space and in time.
(Riotte, Rodale, Jeavons) These techniques are a kind of multilingualism among plants
and soil communities where the farmer or gardener is working to achieve a co-creative
relationship with the soil, plant, and animal. This is the most important difference
between farming with heritage seeds or seeds saved from the garden or farm worked
and genetically engineered seeds, the former strengthens high self esteem and strong
relationships, the latter destroys self esteem and relationships. The people tending
biodiversity gardens appreciate what the landscape and the plant and the animal living
Curry �20
there have to say. Genetic engineers do not care, they do not listen, and they do not
want to know the language of the plant, animal, landscape because they do not want to
lose control. In all good human agricultural systems, like good conversations, like good
poetry, there is a tendency to let go of control and let the conversation flow co-creatively
between co-authors of speech. Genetic engineers feel that altering species is the best
alternative for dealing with climate change because species are not as smart as human
beings. (Genetic Chile, Technacolyps) This is a philosophy that will lead to more
problems because it is fundamentally against the flow of language evolution which is
moving species along a river of greater and greater complexity of awareness in
symbiotic relationships. It is shaping life as a co-creative phenomenon between multiple
forms of intelligence, the ecosystem habitat community, the species, and the water
cycle. If we assert the co-creative intellectual property rights that Nature deserves over
human language and all language systems, we will further prevent starvation and
ecologic collapse by encouraging greater cultural diversification which strengthens self
worth, self esteem, and self security of relatedness between societies and watershed
habitats. Starvation is more a tragedy of a lack of multilingual thinking or a diversity in
communications systems with and listening to the earth than of too much eating or too
much sex or not enough food.
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!CLOSING SUMMARY: !
Choosing poetic wildness in death and life: Driftwood, Humans, and Wolves in
Washington State!
!! On the North Pacific Coast of the United States of America a cold sea mist
drapes driftwood and sand as the surf pushes and pulls at the piles of bleached white
logs laying them up in haphazard tangled ways as a barrier between two worlds. The
wild poetry of dead trees on the beach has helped me understand something about the
magnitude of this genetic engineering technology and importance of Initiative 522. No
matter what happens in the human world of plant and animal engineering, driftwood will
always exist as long as cold temperate forest shorelines exist and will always be wild
and free in death. Driftwood in its bleached white glow in the moonlight on a sandy
beach is like the person with multiple languages in one mind, a soul alive and free
stretched between two worlds and a phenomenon of empathy that can more effectively
carry earthlings to explore the stars than unpoetic genetic manipulations. Nature is
poetic life and death and human culture should be too.!
! A label on a product such as on GMO foods is in a way like driftwood, a line
between worlds and in a way like the multilingual person an assertion of the value of
self worth and self esteem and self security that they have for other worlds. While the
genetic engineers may see the label as an attack on their product’s viability, are they
asking citizens of the democratic country of the USA to give in to an attack on their self
worth, esteem, and self security? Are they ashamed of their product? Does their self
Curry �22
worth depend on the annihilation of another’s self worth? Indeed, these corporations
apparently don’t care about the fundamentals of listening to the voice of another as they
don’t listen to the voice of Nature nor of the species they violate to profit from without
communicating with. These corporations are a virus-like mutation of human society
promoting individual selection above group selection, a group of selfish individuals that
depend on a philosophy of self degradation of the other for the improvement of their
own. Labels on foods made by the economic system are essentially a language
connecting the maker with the user, the producer with the customer. While the ancient
“customer” of wild nature, Cro-Magnon man, would have chosen products from Nature
without a label, he would have chosen carefully for the expected affect on his self
security or his seed would not have traveled far down the genetic line. Evolution on
earth has created increasingly complex systems of symbiotic relatedness pushing
selfish, parasitic gain to the boundaries as a check on the degree of multilingualism in a
species immune systems and self security. To advocate not labeling a product is to
suggest that the customer is worthless and unworthy of talking to. To vote for not
labeling a product is to vote to degrade ones own self worth. A lack of a label is a lack of
care for multilingualism which is a trait of monocultural imperialism and in the immediate
effect simply bad customer service.!
! This fall 2013 will produce an assessment of the degree of customer service
between human societies and Nature self worth of both the human microbiome and of a
watershed with Initiative 522 and with the decision to delist the grey wolf as an
endangered species in Washington State. While a person or an ecosystem can receive
insults and recover their self worth, esteem and security, there are points beyond which
Curry �23
the self is unrecoverable; there is a definite risk at stake. We will choose not just
whether to label a source as genetically modified or not and whether a predator is
healthy, and can be culled to protect private interest in cattle stock, but whether or not to
believe in the unity between the creative mind of nature and the creative mind of
humanity, we will choose to label self worth of the individual and self worth of an
ecosystem. Both decisions will be a physical expression of a metaphysical link of
human self and the self of Nature that language via multilingualism between species
provides. The label or lack of will be a symbol of self worth between species natural and
transgenic: Who’s creative self do we value more? What will be left of “us”? Will we be,
like driftwood bleached and beautifully strewn forever wild along the shore, but fully
beautiful and wild only in its death as an expression of the futile love affair between
water and earth? Or will we be like the grey wolf wild in a socially interconnected and
fundamentally multilingual life, free, a co-creative force with and of Nature with habitats
via a hunger not to consume everything in site, but to relate to the lay of the land and to
explore the furthest extent of social awareness? Wolves are a force of Nature that
through the trophic cascade effect balance and encourage the self worth and self
security of an ecosystem, indeed a mountain and river watershed. They are an icon of
wilderness that has been a fixture in the imagination of human mind and a legend of
how to survive in an arctic tundra environment. The wolf has multiple intrinsic values to
a habitat beyond human ownership of land for ranching. (Grambo, Lopez) If taken from
the perspective of multilingualism, ranchers may see the value of learning the
“language” of the trophic cascade effect to improve the self worth of their ranch land and
of their cattle. Could they gain a higher price in the market if their cattle are pushed to a
Curry �24
higher level of herd species health by wild wolves? Could their beef gain a price point
comparable to wild Alaskan salmon? !
! If we choose the former, not to label GMO foods and thus to proliferate
genetically engineered seeds and pollen and if we chose to allow hunting of wolves
without fist adjusting how our ranching methods affect the shared habitat with wolves,
we humans will be wild only in our rapid social death, our architecture and our bones
(with the exception of our plastic) will look beautiful strewn about worn in the weather,
but in life, we will be fundamentally degraded in self worth, esteem, and security as our
sense of relatedness to our habitat and the biosphere will be confused if not completely
lost. !
! We have an important choice to make that in essence demands the self to be
valued and protected via food labeling systems by political and economic systems. If we
choose the latter, to demand labeling of GMO foods and to forever protect and rebuild
wild species like wolves not just for numbers subject to political and economic
interpretation, but to a higher level of self worth and self esteem and self security of a
species, a habitat, a watershed in a sort of multilingual co-creative communication with
Nature, we might remain and grow and evolve even stronger as a human self, albeit
“civilized,” but more and more aware of our co-creative symbiotic relationship with
Nature as wild and as beautiful in life as the grey wolf, calling out to the stars and to the
universe as a whole with a definitely ferocious origin, and yet a powerfully empathic
desire to know the truth of the other in a universe expanding epic: a life like poem.!
!!! !Curry �25
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