Save the Wild Rice!
It’s not only the Vatican, of course. Perhaps I was too hard on the Vatican? No. I wasn’t. (I mean, apart from anything else – was their Jesus a huge fan of marriage and having children and family values? No. Was ‘Saint’ Paul? No. So what are they basing all that on? I mean, they’re not even consistent!) But that doesn’t mean I can’t be hard on other god-botherers and spirit-annoyers, does it. No.
PZ Myers has an excellent rant at Pharyngula about the latter group.
The editorial page of yesterday’s Star-Tribune was full of articles on a ‘controversy’, the sequencing of the wild rice genome. I read them all through twice, and I still don’t see what the problem is…other than that usual bug-a-boo of foolish religion…If you’re like me, you’re saying, “umm, what?” right now. For religious reasons, the Ojibwe are asking us to preserve their ignorance and to be ignorant ourselves. It’s a microcosm of the history of the conflict between religion and science—with superstition mixing up a stewpot of ridiculous slop, science lifting the lid and looking inside, and the religious getting all frantic and huffy about it…
Yes but they do it in such a profound, beautiful, spiritual way.
Today the traditional teachings of Anishinabe communities and Western science and genetic research are at an impasse. A tribal nation seeks to preserve and protect a sacred gift from becoming the next genetically modified agricultural crop redesigned for those who see wild rice only as another cash crop in need of modification so as to improve yield, pest resistance, uniform maturation, resilience and creating seed that assures these “improvements.” To Western science, the mere thought that something spiritual might impede scientific research is absurd, unnecessary and only would serve as an unnecessary obstacle to inevitable progress. To Anishinabe people, the sacred relationship with the manoomin is central and cannot be ignored in any discussion on the natural gift as it has been given.
Notice the non-mention of the fact that the sacred gift in question is, you know, food, and that improved yield and pest resistance for a food crop really isn’t such a silly idea – not so silly that it’s necessary to put inverted commas on ‘improvements’. But as PZ points out, a couple of academics do an even better job of spirit-stroking.
Should wild rice be considered as a crop to be domesticated for purposes of economic development, or as a sacred gift from the Creator? Is research on the wild rice genome a sacred obligation of our research universities or a continuation of five-plus centuries of colonizing? Is the role of humankind to subjugate nature with dominion and control, or to more humbly live in harmony with “all that is”?
What a bunch of idiotic questions! What’s with all this ‘sacred’ crap? Is that the only adjective these guys know? And as for living humbly in harmony with all that is – right, next time your fridge is empty, you guys will smile beatifically and live in harmony with that, right? Next time you’re ten miles from where you need to be you’ll just sit down and hope the Creator will give you a lift, right? Next time you want to watch a movie you’ll see that there isn’t one magically projected on your wall but you won’t turn the tv on because that would be dominion and control – right? You guys have no truck with modern technology whatsoever, right? Even to write that article for the Star Tribune, right? You didn’t use a computer, you didn’t phone it in, you didn’t scratch it on a piece of birch bark. I suppose you told a squirrel and the squirrel told the Star Tribune – yes? Or do you perhaps get some benefit from all this subjugation of nature yourself, but then you make yourselves feel in tune with The Wise Ones or some damn fool thing by talking this kind of nonsense. You and the Vatican have a lot in common.
So your argument is that we should commoditize wild rice? (“Commoditize” is economics jargon for rendering something readily and cheaply producible and thereby creating a generic mass market for it, as with PC’s or labor.)
Hey, if you can make it cheaper and nutritious-er…and throw it at Ojibwa weddings…
I can’t stand the term “sacred” either. Excessive looseness. But I was just noticing that it doesn’t seem like a real big diff between being a) just another interchangeable bit of biomass/wormseed because we are “all one in mother nature”, b)just another interchangeable laborer/consumer doomed to be discarded because my hands have given out, c) just another slave of an insane god whose followers are just as crazy. I guess it’s the politics that need to change…And yes I am not that comfortable with the way anything can be just bought and sold these days, and how mass markets are generated for products of questionable worth…but that is a whole nother story.
Sure. But there’s a difference between, for instance, commodifying sentient beings, and commodifying edible grains, surely.
No, my argument is not necessarily that we should commoditize wild rice – it’s that it’s not self-evident that we shouldn’t because some people choose to think of it as ‘sacred’.
Isn’t wild rice already a commodity? I can find several different brands of it at the local supermarket. If that’s not a commodity, what is?
I did carefully define the sense in which commodification is to be taken. The point is that wild rice is…er…wild. It has to be gathered by boat and by hand from the marshes where it grows. If you can find it for a price at a well-stocked store in places that can afford such stores, that’s still not the same as having it stuffed in chicken McNuggets.
But the real point was that the dispute is not simply reducible to one of science vs. religion. When one strips away any rhetoric about the “sacred”, -( and even there, is “sacredness” necessarily a religious concept, e.g., “sacred honor”, or, if it is, necessarily a supernatural one?)- what the Injuns are basically saying is that wild rice is a part of their way of life and perhaps a symbol of it. To which the reasonable response is that, well, yes, but it is a part of the way of life of others. But, so characterized, it is more of a political question and dispute, than an epistemic or religious one. (And why exactly would the genome of wild rice be sequenced for properly scientific reasons, rather than technological or commercial ones? Given the way the world, as it is, really operates, one can’t blame the Injuns for being suspicious, especially since I would guess these particular Injuns sell wild rice to the general market.)
The underlying point is that, while no one can decide, individually or collectively, about the objectivity of the world, one can decide about how the objectivity of the world is to effect one and what features of it are relevant for how one conducts one’s life. At what point does one simply accept the world as, and for what, it is, rather than trying to control or transform it? And from where do ideas as to its control and transformation derive? I don’t think that such questions can reasonably be ignored, nor that they can be decided on some sort of purely objective grounds.
“is “sacredness” necessarily a religious concept?”
No, but I didn’t say it was. But I don’t use phrases like ‘sacred honor’. I think ‘sacred’ is one of those words that are meant to incite rather thoughtless emotion without specifying why – not unlike ‘honor,’ in fact – as Falstaff noticed such a long time ago.
“But, so characterized, it is more of a political question and dispute, than an epistemic or religious one.”
Yeah, maybe, or anyway it’s all those. But the terms of the discussion in the Star Tribune were quasi-religious (or ‘spiritual’ not to say sacred), and that’s part of what I was addressing.
“The underlying point is that, while no one can decide, individually or collectively, about the objectivity of the world, one can decide about how the objectivity of the world is to effect one and what features of it are relevant for how one conducts one’s life.”
Hmm. That sounds like a dressed-up way of saying one can decide to believe any old thing. Which is true – one can; but it’s not necessarily a good idea.
“And why exactly would the genome of wild rice be sequenced for properly scientific reasons, rather than technological or commercial ones? “
Do the reasons really matter? Why shouldn’t the organisation that forks up the cash get something out of it? In a couple of decades when the patent runs out, that information will be free to all anyway. And the reasons behind the initial decision to sequence will matter not a jot.
From the Star Tribune editorial:
“Is science our only source of genuine knowledge, or might indigenous knowledge offer valuable understandings?”
This MUST be a spoof. My hunch is that there are dozens of Alan Sokal wannabes writing ‘Social Text’ garbage like this with tongue in cheek all over the place. If you ask me, it’s all part of a devilish conspiracy. An inner voice — my ‘indigenous knowledge’ which offers me such ‘valuable understandings’ — tells me that it kicked off with a meeting at midnight in the Jewish cemetery in Prague… though needless to say I don’t have any fuddy-duddy so-called scientific ‘evidence’ to back this up.
Some day, no doubt, all will be revealed …
Was the Golem there?
I know what you mean, but alas, I think they mean it, or think they do, or think they ought to.
“Yes, just transfer knowledge of naturally occurring things to the “intellectual property” rights of MNC’s and decades later, when their “rights” have further entrenched their oligopolist position,”
But that knowledge does not even exist until someone spends time and money on finding it out. It is NOT a transfer of knowledge. It is the creation of knowledge. (Or are you claiming the Injuns already know the gene sequence as part of their indiginous culture?). So the world is no worse off, and in a couple of decades time is better off. I certainly think that a lot of IP law is very odious, unfair, and counter-productive. However, there is no need to throw the baby out with the bath water. People that spend time and money on finding new things out are entitlted to some return on that.
As an aside:-
“Well “sounds like” and “is” are two different matters. It’s a clear formulation of a general point without specific application, but which application can readily be imagined.”
Your prose really is very, very hard to read. “Clear formulation” does not enter into it. Sentances should be shorter, and there should be fewer dangling clauses. It is not just OB that finds it difficult to understand what you are saying at times, I assure you. You should challenge your readers with your ideas and concepts, but not with your writing. It is possible for a good writer to write about (say) Quantum Mechanics, and have the reader understand what they are writing. It is possible for a less gifted writer to write about something humdrum such as a book review, and leave readers totally flummoxed. (“Pseuds Corner” in Private Eye often has some excellant examples of small ideas expressed in a totally incomprehensible manner).
JH
Yes – I understand what the complaint is that you have “tried to articulate before.” I understand it perfectly well, so you can save yourself the trouble of repeating it yet again. But, as I also have said before, you are articulating or rather pontificating about what I haven’t said and don’t do. Nor do you (yet again, as usual, etc etc) answer that objection – you just offer up yet more straw people. Such as “to assert the superior identity of your own reference group as the true elite of knowers.” Bullshit. I don’t do any such thing.
So, in short, you’re not only exceedingly tedious to read, as Chris points out, you’re also pompous, and evasive, and a dishonest arguer in the sense that you rail at what I haven’t said. As I have (again, again) said before, I wish you would either do better or go away. (Especially since you’ve now admitted that you can do better, you know how to do better, you know that the way you write is irritating and you can choose to write clearly. So all this droning is pure provocation. Go provoke someone else.)
OB:
Yes, I’m boring. This is not exactly news. Nor is it quite a criticism.
But if I am right that: 1) reason is basically a structure of norms, 2) reason of itself can provide no guarantee for those norms, their interpretation, nor their application, and 3) that reason is fundamentally tied to human finitude, without with it belies its claim to rationality; then there is more trouble there then you apparently can imagine or deal with.
Of course, such thinking might not accord with a properly “affirmative” stance, with a large assumption of the taken-for-granted, whereby attacks are authorized on others as necessarily, in accordance with a binary, either/or logic, either stupid, or delusional, or deceitful or sheerly self-serving or otherwise irrational. That the world is multi-sided and its reality denser than that and that people are variously distributed throughout it need be of no account. Nor need reason be contaminated by need, since there is no need for reason.
But then, with some things, there is no need for attack, since they just reveal themselves for what they are, in accordeance with your most cherished epistemological fantasies. But that needn’t stop you.
And since you are so concerned with the sovereignty of your intentions, does it ever occur to you that comments can be directed to the presuppositions that than seem to imply, or to the illocutionary form that they take?
John,
While Kant was a brilliant thinker and important philosopher, he also is not a perfect authority. Nor would he claim to be, but it seems you want us (us being the ‘positivist’ thinkers) to accept his core claim about the necessity of the ‘other’ to provide a true basis for empiricism as not only a valid claim, but a useful one. To my (admittedly non-academic) viewpoint, Kant was trying to prove the necessity of God, or more appropriately, wanting to define that which props up and gives weight to empiricism as God. While in sophistric circles this might be entertaining and critically useful, us ‘positivists’ try to keep a sense of utility handy, and, asymptotically, do not require a God or ‘other’ to provide a sand granule for our pearls. Just like with atheism, we also don’t feel we need to disprove God (or Kant) but that the burden is on you. You may call us ‘positivists’ (I keep using quotes) because you are a Kantian…but that’s a grouping you are creating.
OB wanted to discuss rice, not philosophy. We also, regrettably, don’t have the space to use full disclosures of assumptions and caveats before each comment. Let’s call it the argumentative principle of significant digits.
That said, I absolutely agree that if we are going to get anywhere, we do need to try to understand what is being said with the perspective of the sayer – attacking from the outside is not proper criticism. Anyone with respect for ‘human finitude’ will also understand that we will always fail, more or less, at doing that.
Lastly, I do agree that the indians have a justifiable distrust of the modern American scientific apparatus. While as an empiricist I can agree that all knowledge is good and that sequencing every rice grain is good, as a realist I can see the small, but real, possibility that the indians might eventually lose the ‘rights’ to their own rice due to corporate and political interests. They certainly have little historical evidence to assume western interloping will result in good for them.
JH,
“does it ever occur to you that comments can be directed to the presuppositions that than seem to imply, or to the illocutionary form that they take?”
Yes of course it does. In fact the subject interests me a great deal, and has for years. I guess the problem is just that you do such a bad job of articulating such comments. And as I said, you’ve now admitted that you do it on purpose. That’s peculiar. I wonder why you do that. It can’t be in an attempt to impress us, since we’re so obviously not impressed – but I have no alternative hypothesis either. Just a mystery.
Actually, on further thought, there’s more to be said about that – or more of substance. There’s an interesting hermeneutic issue here. “presuppositions that than seem to imply” – a lot of room for doubt in there, isn’t there. Seeming to imply – it can be a tricky business, figuring out what people’s intentions “seem to imply” – one where a good deal of modesty and care and tentativeness is in order. But what we see instead is a great deal of certainty, of flat assertion. That’s quite interesting, isn’t it. Seems to imply a good deal, in fact – but I won’t assert what. I’m too modest and tentative.
No but seriously folks. It really is interesting that you’re forever accusing me of purblind excess certainty and yet in practice you express more certainty about much foggier matters than I do. Is that the riddle? It is, isn’t it. It’s a charade, and you’re performing ‘Do as I say not as I do’ or ‘Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain’ or ‘Watch me enact a paradox before your very eyes.’ Well done; quite amusing. Okay we’ve got the joke now, so it’s time for a new one.
“…as a realist I can see the small, but real, possibility that the indians might eventually lose the ‘rights’ to their own rice due to corporate and political interests…”
I am very sympathetic to that danger. The problem is, that that very good argument is rarely used in debates about GM and related technologies. Instead we are fed a load of garbage about indigenous peoples’ rights*, and not messing with nature (what they hell do people think agriculture is anyway? Natural? Surely not).
* I am not saying that the notion that indigenous people have rights is nonsense. However, the specific rights that some would like to accord indigenous people (such as the right to be ignorant, and keep us ignorant) ARE nonsense.