Living Off the Fat of the Land
Explore how biology can enable a positive future
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There is a writing contest whose prompt is to imagine how the study of biology could enable a positive, sustainable future. Lately, from sports learning, I have found the value of envisioning ideals vividly, so I wanted to take the chance to explore useful outcomes of knowledge about living things.
一
I have been reading a study note on permaculture today. Permaculture comes from the word “permanent” and “agriculture”. The movement aimed to find a way to farm that was not industrial. I first heard of this word from Dennis in Berlin in 2020. He guided a group of us through Grunewald (a forest) and asked us what the sand valley or the tracks of wild hogs could mean about the forest’s ecosystem.
I was curious about the practices because earlier that year, during COVID summer, I had been subletting in a house whose owner (and her neighbor) were trying to grow most of their food in their own backyard. We used sticks to get mangos and papayas from the trees, piled composts, and used big buckets to grow vegetables. I had started to cook more frequently by then and admired their ability to have a lot of agency over what they eat. The interesting part to me back then was that they could eat what they like, but not just in the junk food way of delicious, instead seemingly in a medicinal way of keeping the body and the mind happy. I didn’t have a theory about what food a body needs at what times back then, and I only knew to get sensory entertainment through the novelty of snacks before, so that summer was the start of my interest in food.
As COVID progressed, people back home were locked down and the need for produce became a luck. I felt scared as I read posts by people on how to distract themselves when they are hungry and I felt powerless about what could have been an alternative reality where this doesn’t happen to me or others.
Roughly, the ways of practicing permaculture to cultivate food and land are like this:
Cooperate with nature rather than resist or defend against it.
Spend time observing instead of acting immediately — getting to know the land usually takes a year. Otherwise, you might delay progress because of rushed actions.
Pay attention to the holistic function of the entire system instead of a single output. Let the mature system evolve and develop on its own.
I wonder if this knowledge translated to how I live ever since.
Mostly no, as I am not currently growing anything or really interacting with land very much. However I did get to spend some good time eating, painting, having fun at the farm Anita Brocoli in Buenos Aires for three months. And I did also enjoy lots of kimchi making and tree observing in Vermont for three months. Those experiences feel removed to me now as other people’s worlds. But I hope to stay in touch with their knowledge and visit my friends in those spaces.
Ideally, biology researchers would cooperate with other people, as well as the evolution and nature it is dissecting, to exchange knowledge and engage with aligned needs.
二
After realizing that my fantasy about biomaterials is already accomplished, for millennia, by growing beans… I have been paying attention to other ways in which what I imagine is already real. This happens quite often because my imagination is quite limited by my perspective as someone who grew up in concrete cities. I find it humbling to discover I am reinventing the wheel. Also it makes me reflect on whether what I need is to derive joy and worth from the process of making something go from fictional to real. Because if that is the honest reason, that is still fine as a coping mechanism, the fantasy itself just won’t be a good goal place.
A good place might instead be a question that needs an answer instead of only asking questions (constructing concepts) that have answers (data). The latter is definitely a trend encouraged by journal prestige pressure as you can see in the introduction of this paper on defining “leadership” in movement ecology.
Ideally, academic research in biology can have abstractions and spaces for discussion that enable people to explore what interests them, whether that pursuit immediately impacts many people in physical ways or not.
III
I started asking people who I think have a relationship with other living beings such as animals and plants and microbes, and how these people apply their learning from nature to daily life.
“how do you live your learning from the forest?” I asked Y.
“I sat under a tree in our yard to eat breakfast this morning. The microclimate under the shade is cool. Did you know that the temperature above and below a canopy can vary as much as 5 celsius?” (ref)
“how do you learn about the endangered animals you protect?” I wanted to ask W, a friend I met in Yunnan. I wonder if their knowledge about these animals come from the local villagers since she interacts frequently with them to do various tasks together, such as gathering honey, doing activities with the local elementary and celebrating seasonal changes.
“what would a world with good biomaterials look like?” I wanted to ask Shuyi, an aspiring environmental engineer. I wonder which level of the Russian doll of systems of reality it is facing.
I think ideally, biological knowledge be it molecular or ecological in scale would affect the way we see and act in the world, as individuals and groups.
四
Conversations with M linger in my mind. Last November we had been talking about what it felt like to learn that our bodies contain many invisible bacteria. Furthermore, we are part of many ecosystems. That knowledge felt hard to grasp and dizzying because I look at my arm and try to imagine how it’s made of a bunch of cells and some of the cells are not going to be “mines” forever.
We don’t have as much control over how we are composed if this is true, because if we are a cooperation of entities, anything “I” am doing affects all of them yet they have slightly different interests from each other. So who am I, the one that is devouring information and asking questions and distilling diagrams? I am definitely a relational product in physical, biochemical and social levels. These are the basics that then come up with the thinking and the living I feel.
Ideally, evolutionary and network biology would overcome the concept of the mechanistic universe. I am guessing, I don’t have enough information to think this through. I might need a model to see its predictions. Maybe there is counterintuitive. Or act in another way, or socialize and discuss.
