Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Pete Vukovich <pvukovic1@yahoo.com>]

I'm not sure its not a flaw built into the species itself. Of course somebody like Berry would say science promises that in the future all the messes it makes will be cleaned up, and the next discovery will be the one that leads to understanding. Berry and I differ here in that I think we must 'do the science' a, the real culprit is in a survival mechanism inherent in the species that tells us we know enough to begin applying it. We act like science is a trip to the desert cart at a buffet, we see some partial pretty information and we decide we need a slice, only to find out later were in a diabetic coma.

The case of genetics is a strange one, when DNA (I should say RNA since thats the real engine for making things) was 'discovered' people decided they were on the verge of knowing how nature worked, 50 years later after they looked at it and had begun applying it they began to vaguely suspect that knowing a few isolated facts is not the same as knowing a complete picture. More than 40 years after Crick told everybody DNA was a right regular spiral, and we'd already begun splicing and mutating, it was suddenly realized that in vivo, its a left irregular spiral. But hey, we still mostly understood it, even if we didn't know the difference between a living cell and a glass jar.

Later without understanding gene _expression_ seriously we began mapping genes , and decided we were getting close once again, only to find the volumes of research and theories we'd bet the store on weren't gospel as we'd been told. At the same time, there was some suspicion created that plants may actually be different than mammals, and sometimes complex chemicals in different environments function completely differently. An amazing discovery, but it certainly didn't put a dent in the application side of things.

And then still more recently we discovered, that genes may not be important as we think, that instead the controller 'genes' so called epi-genes which we don't know about at all, may be the real key to '_expression_'. And oh yeah, it might be that the environment is what makes these tick, not genes themselves. Back to square one, everywhere of course except in the ivory halls were new and more sophisticated applications are dreamed up based on less and less understanding. Somehow it strikes me as no different than a poorly educated wall street mba who actually claims infinite growth is possible and laudable, so long as you have finite resources - because 'people are smart, and smart is a resource'. Think gold and it will appear , think water and it will rain.

All this gibberish of mine is leading to a point, and that is that I believe we have no choice but to accelerate serious study and investigation of genetics - because the 'visionaries' are committed to applying it, and the less they know about it the more justified they feel in doing so.

--- On Wed, 1/26/11, bob@4agoodauction.com <bob@4agoodauction.com> wrote:

From: bob@4agoodauction.com <bob@4agoodauction.com>
Subject: [Livingontheland] genes
To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
Date: Wednesday, January 26, 2011, 11:33 AM

As I look at the problem of humanity willing and able to understand what is
happening with the food chain there jumps to mind the question of how to
simplify the explanation of the mortal danger that is at the doorstep. To me
genes are the language of nature. That language has always been truthful and
incapable of untruth. All of nature is held in balance by this balance of
truth to the natural world The "Post It Note" of the natural world truth is
writing found in natures' genes. 
Changing the genes for profit increases the idea man can control nature
better that nature can. Greed mixed with nature---that is a recipe for
untruth in nature. Greed has devastated our economy and created lackeys out
of our elected officials. Words will be lost in courts while children are
being destroyed by diets of fake food. What campaign of words will be simple
enough to capture the understanding and hearts of nations?
I think it will evolve around the theme that we too are an organism of
nature. We too are controlled by nature and as such may not be "smarter"
than nature but should start listening more intently to what nature is
telling us? Listening and learning is not the same as manipulating.
Just some random thoughts.
Bob C


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