I shop at Whole Foods a fair amount, though I'd like to think I've internalized the lesson that you don't turn off skepticism about marketing just because the marketing is accompanied by friendly cultural signifiers.
On a somewhat tangential point about homeopathy -- how many of you knew that there's actually an exemption for homeopathic medicine written into some of the core protections of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act? Wikipedia has a brief summary. I was pretty shocked to learn that a few years ago.
So, why do many of us perceive Whole Foods and the Creation Museum so differently?
Because Whole Foods does a lot other than just peddle homeopathy and anti-GMO nonsense?
A better comparison would be between, say, the Creation Museum and Generation Rescue, Jenny McCarthy's autism organization. I don't think most liberals do perceive those as being quite so different. Both sell nonsense, full stop. (Except, they are different in the scale of harm actually being caused by the respective movements, which, let's agree, is significant. When the homeopaths and the anti-vaccinators start lobbying for equal time in our science classrooms--and winning!--then we'll talk. Until then, false equivalence.)
That said, obviously Whole Foods is terrible and no one should shop there.
Walgreens has a stunning amount of homeopathic water for sale. The "baby" section has, in addition to diapers and food jars and so on, a bunch of "pain reliever" and "colic medicine" water. If you want actual medicine you have to go to a different part of the store.
It's sad to see that the article has a ridiculously stupid definition of the paleo diet. Oh my God do you mean that people who practice the paleo diet aren't eating exactly what their paleolithic ancestors ate? That refutes the whole hypothesis, hot diggity are you smart Mr. Author.
Or put differently this guy may also be kind of a moron.
Without making Jenny McCarthy, Creationists, the writers of marketing copy for the vendors of nutritional supplements sold at Whole Foods, or anyone else non-morons.
Also: Americans get riled up about creationists and climate change deniers, but lap up the quasi-religious snake oil at Whole Foods.
Is this even remotely true? Who are these Americans? I assume he just means liberals? Because I'd be shocked if the percentage of Americans who buy homepathic products at Whole Foods is significantly higher than the percentage that supports creationism or denies climate change. Something like a third of the population supports creationism or denies climate change.
The author has a B.A. in Religious Studies from Yale, so you know he has to be a smart non-moron.
I think 2 has it. The Creation Museum is a propaganda outlet, and Whole Foods is a grocery store. They may sell all sorts of bullshit quack medicines, but the store isn't primarily devoted to teaching anyone anything. I mean, the article is bitching about Dr. Bronner's Soap as meaning something about Whole Foods? It's soap. With a wacky label, but it's perfectly pleasant soap.
Honestly, I think this article is just an online application for a gig at Slate.
Tangential: I've never understood why anyone would buy meat from whole foods - the butcher counter always looks and smells about how I would expect it to given company founded and run by a vegan. Eew.
2: I'd call actual illnesses and deaths attributable to lack if vaccination a real harm. IOW I'll see your sullied science classroom and raise you dead children.
you don't turn off skepticism about marketing just because the marketing is accompanied by friendly cultural signifiers
Can't be said enough.
Is Dr. Bronner's Soap meant to be taken seriously or ironically? I could never tell. Or maybe the answer is that the makers are perfectly happy to sell to both demographics, or that they are now even if they weren't originally.
2: I'd call actual illnesses and deaths attributable to lack if vaccination a real harm. IOW I'll see your sullied science classroom and raise you dead children.
And as this has actually started to become a problem in recent years, the amount of vocal ire directed toward the anti-vaccinators has increased appropriately, don't you think?
Does Whole Foods have anything to do with anti-vaxxers? I mean, it might, I wouldn't know. I didn't notice a mention of an actual connection in the article.
14: I actually buy it (the bar soap) because I like the scents. When I was growing up, friends with hippie-ish parents tended to have it -- I don't think the label was taken either seriously or really what I would call ironically. Sort of regarded as sympathetic and appealing craziness?
14: it was meant seriously by Dr. Browner but is meant essentially kitschily by his descendants.
16: no, I think that came just from my comment 2. Although, it's affluent conservatives who are most likely buy into the anti-vax hysteria. Not liberals.
I think something around 40% of Americans believe in creationism. I agree that belief in creationism probably matters less than some people think, but it's a much higher percentage than people who are anti-vaxxers, not to say that the anti-vaxxers aren't despicable. I mean I personally know more anti-vaxxers than creationists but that's because I know some rich stupid assholes.
The article does bring them both up, but in a sort of guilt by association kind of way -- not alleging any real connection.
I'm aware that some editor likely came up with the subhead, but I couldn't get past it. "Americans get riled up about creationists and climate change deniers, but lap up the quasi-religious snake oil at Whole Foods." Um, no. Now fuck off. To the extent that Whole Foods aggressively supports bullshit quasi-medicine, it's fully in keeping with John Mackey's bullshit libertarianism.
Politically, Whole Foods may literally be the most despicable company in America. I'd rather buy my groceries from the Koch brothers.
15, 16, 19, 21: my 11 was in reaction to "false equivalence" remark in 2.
Aaargh, 2, 23 & 24 all me, don't know why coming up blank.
Your name was diluted according to homeopathic principles.
Americans get riled up about creationists and climate change deniers, but lap up the quasi-religious snake oil at Whole Foods.
Is this even remotely true? Who are these Americans?
Oh jesus christ, I know tons of people who fit this.
Actually, a lot of them probably aren't that riled up about creationists and climate change deniers, but go head over heels for the WF strain of pseudo-science. I'm thinking of the women in the mothers group in my town.
And is all the more POTENT because of it!!!!! Mwah ha ha!
28: sure, I know plenty of them to. My point was that those people cannot in any fair sense be thought to be representative Americans. They're well out of the mainstream.
Also: being anti-GE is different to being anti-vax is different to being a climate change denier, given that the first is arguable and at least somewhat defensible and not really that morally culpable, the second is unarguable and very culpable but reasonably limited in scope and the third is unarguable, quite culpable, and poses a massive civilisational crisis for humanity. Of course they get treated differently --- they are different.
28: its the pseudo part that is the most aggravating. If they just wanted to believe in woo qua woo that would be different.
Another reason I assiduously avoid "mothers' groups".
My point was that those people cannot in any fair sense be thought to be representative Americans. They're well out of the mainstream.
Oh, this is true.
Personally I would send every member of a mother's group to a reeducation camp along with the libertarians. I guess probably separate reeducation camps. Also 23 gets it right.
Although...I think hocus-pocus-science is probably fairly mainstream. Just not the shopping at WF.
The number of scourges that can't be blamed on either organized moms or libertarians is pretty slim. If we started with those two groups we'd achieve a lot.
Posted to the Flickr pool: super-hydrating water at Whole Foods.
I mostly hate Whole Foods but shop there a lot now because it's by far the closest grocery store to our apartment.
Here's who the author means by "Americans":
. In fact, that shrine is a 15-minute trip away from most American urbanites.
Those who live within 15 minutes of a Whole Foods.
I live 45 minutes away, so I think I'm super-real.
I had a mom call me today for me to be a reference for one of my baby-sitters. Great.
She ended up lecturing me for about ten minutes on why she was planning to ask the baby-sitter to get re-certified in CPR because it didn't appear that she'd been updated since she was a counselor at summer camp and on and on and on. I got kind of furious because I kept trying to get off the phone and was getting talked over.
Aside from her, quit shitting on moms, Halford.
Hah. I'm just about as far away from a Whole Foods as you are. Maybe 40 minutes. Admittedly, in NYC that's only eight miles.
Whole Foods is the closest non-shitty store to me and the only one in the same complex as a liquor store.
17-18: That makes sense. "Kitschily" is a better way to say what I meant than ironically.
The poo pooing of probiotics irked me. I mean maybe there were specific claims on certain products that actually are "bullshit," but it's thrown into the article as if all probiotics are fundamentally quackery. When, in fact, there are indeed scientific studies validating the efficacy of certain strains for certain purposes. (I don't buy them from WF.)
40: Huh, I didn't realize you were that far from Columbus Circle. I have no sense of distance in miles in NYC.
I was going to say "pissed me off," but I didn't want to mix metaphors.
Hey, we lived 140 miles from Whole Foods, and still did our grocery shopping there. Also, in my possession: one tube of Traumeel. Totally works! Bacon will still kill you, though.
It does make me sad that Trader Joe's, which supplies about 95% of my caloric intake, also sells homeopathic bullshit, Airborne, and probably a lot of other nonsense "health" stuff. Haven't noticed any "this slicer touches impure bread!" nonsense, but then, I haven't really looked.
31: anti vax impacts "reasonably limited in scope" was that a joke???
To be clear, I didn't read the article, and I don't think that probiotics are bullshit. I had in mind the "supplements" that are clearly sold for their putative medical benefit but escape regulatory control because of the anti-regulation politics and protection of people like Orrin Hatch. Who doesn't match the caricature of the average Whole Foods shopper, but who is the ideological pal of John Mackey.
A lot of conservative Mormons really get into various vitamin/supplement crazes, including various multi-level marketing scams. Probably a significant donor constituency in Utah. Nu-skin is the big one in Provo.
31 --- not really. Anti-vaxxers are of course utterly despicable but the damage done by them pales in comparison to that done by climate-change deniers.
41: Whole Foods is the closest non-shitty store to me
This used to be true around here 10-15 years ago, which is why one sometimes shopped there, but Whole Foods has long since been matched in many things by other stores in the vicinity. Organic if desired? check. Actually whole foods, like whole-grain breads, cereals, crackers, and so on? check. Bulk section with nuts and dried fruits and beans and grains? check. Low-sodium, low or zero preservatives? yes.
Whole Foods is just the upscale (expensive) model now. That's chiefly what I associated it with, and hadn't really considered it a woo-woo place particularly. You can go to the local health food store / natural foods store for that: that's where you'll find homeopathy fans if you're looking for them (and the health food store has a better assortment of nuts and beans and grains and dried fruit and herbs and spices and honey and tea and on and on, in any case). Whole Foods caters to yuppies.
Such is my impression, anyway.
Helpfully to my personal political instincts, the biggest anti-vax dummy I knew among my friends in California has moved to Utah and gotten all libertarian-ish.
It does make me sad that Trader Joe's, which supplies about 95% of my caloric intake, also sells homeopathic bullshit
Is the homeopathic bullshit actually doing harm at a societal level? It's not, that I'm aware of, so it doesn't bother me if people want to dabble in that sort of thing. (I have not read the article either.)
50 Oh, I wasn't snipping at you at all -- all irk article-directed. I never question Jesus on healing.
Whole Foods is the only place nearby that I can get grade B maple syrup, the least homeopathic of syrups.
57: I'll touch you anytime you want.
48: what store is there that has a "health and wellness" section or whatever that doesn't sell homeopathic bullshit? Is there one? As I alluded to above, Walgreens has all kinds of homeopathic crap dispersed among the real medicine with no real differentiation.
Or you can just touch the hem of my garment, whatever heals you.
I'll touch you anytime you want.
The humor and subtlety is what YOU GROSS OLD MAN.
53: the only way the hierarchy of harm you advocate makes any sense to me is if you equate climate change denial with causing end of civilization as we know it at some point in the future, in comparison to which like EVERYTHING else is "reasonable limited in scope."
I've come across a bunch of claims that the US political left doesn't use the `purity' axis in its moral judgements, and this is one of the reasons I think that's a nutty claim. Whole Foods sells the purity of what one consumes, mostly w.r.t maintaining the purity of one's fluids, less and less w.r.t. the purity of the places it was produced. I'm pretty sure the ex-neighbor who explained that poor people chose their lot by their previous lives' karma shops at Whole Foods.
I don't think purity of consumption is coherent in larger political aims with, say, a desire to raise the minimum wage, but it does seem to be interpreted as left by most USians. (The `crunchy conservatives' and their family cloth are amused and annoyed by this.)
It would be great if someone could do for websites what Aereo has done for TV, which is, give you a mediated way to look at them, so that the publishers couldn't reliably count pageviews. Maybe it would curb clickbait just a little bit.
63 seems totally reasonable as a metric for the harm caused by climate change denialists. Was it not meant to seem totally reasonable?
We don't have WF, but a locally owned analogue that's not bad. The wife recently bought me a homeopathic remedy -- an oral spray designed to alleviate sciatica symptoms. I explained that it was bullshit, and she refused to believe my explanation of homeopathy (because it's obviously pure bullshit). I think this is actually pretty common among WF customers and others.
64 reflects my impression of the whole thing. There's most definitely a purity axis component to the whole GMO/organic thing.
That said, I'd rather steer clear of GMOs just because there's something a little frankenstein about them. It's not that I think they'll hurt me directly so much as a concern that fucking with them could lead to kudzu tomatoes or TEXAS CRAZY ANTS potatoes. Who wants to live in an ecosphere dominated by genetically modified wheat and nothing else?
31 to me uses "reasonably limited in scope" to put anti vax in a category of "nothing to get excited about" in comparison to climate change denial.
The hierarchy of harm in 63 is basically an invitation to ignore everything BUT climate change. And this distorted IMO viewpoint facilitates the relative tolerance of anti vaxers in UMC circles. When obvs they should be strenuously shunned and shamed.
TEXAS CRAZY ANTS potatoes
You bake them with a magnifying glass.
just because there's something a little frankenstein about them.
People always say this, but you know what? Frankenstein was delicious.
I'd rather steer clear of GMOs just because there's something a little frankenstein about them personally, the idea that multinational corporations will own patents on our fucking food, which will be designed for things like yield and pesticide resistance, instead of real nutrition or flavor, is horrifying. I'm not worried about my health.
It's always fun to see an osteopath and when you get a prescription ask how many times you should dilute it.
Well yeah I don't actually think anti-vax is a thing to get hugely worked up over in comparison to climate change. Obviously I think it's wrong and harmful but in practice the vaccines-cause-autism belief is limited to a small group of people (anglophone westerners) and primarily harms family members of that group.
It is actually sort of interesting that there's any ideological angle to pseudoscience at all, right? If you go back to Gardner's Fads and Fallacies there's maybe a hint of organization man against the loonies but fundamentally there is no real allegiance of political parties with anybody pushing quackery. The only reason it has become surprising at all that the embrace of pseudoscience crosses ideological lines is that the Republican party has decided to make it a core part of their identity. That shit is weird!
64: Once again we get into the problem of what constitutes a "left" in the US nowadays. I have absolutely no fear of running into anyone I know from the activist scene when I (rarely) shop at Whole Paycheck. People I would consider "left" either shop at the co-ops or at the huge discount supermarkets. Older vaguely left people seem to shop at Costco a lot.
The people one does see at WF are "left" in the sense that they probably mostly vote Democratic, and have a couple of gay friends, but they are also driving in their Landrovers to dog yoga after a trip to the baby Pilates studio. They're the people who spend $10,000 to go on eco-tourism vacations. If that's "left" I'm a Tea Partier.
40, 44: 40: Huh, I didn't realize you were that far from Columbus Circle. I have no sense of distance in miles in NYC.
Another bit of my annoying NYC geography trivia has to do with distances. For instance, from Inwood to Battery Park as the seagull flies, is fairly close to the distance from there to the Tappan Zee Bridge. I know this because a relative lives across the way in Spuyten Duyvil, not because I'm a stalker.
but they are also driving in their Landrovers to dog yoga after a trip to the baby Pilates studio
Shit, you follow them around?
72 gets it right, and makes me wonder how many of these skeptics who are so above it all are actually secretly shills for Big Ag.
The anti-vaxxers I know best sent their kids to a expat school that had a superb science program -- they tracked local urban wetlands carefully enough to catch actual (bad!) changes in waste management upstream. Of course, that was the kids, and the actual anti-vaxxers are the parents. What made me truly wiggy about it was that, since it was an expat school, it was a cohort of kids who went on international flights a couple times a year, which seems like a giant risk factor.
I would argue, in retort, that the people one sees at Whole Foods tend to be high SES and generally ideologically similar to the high SES people in the community in which that Whole Foods is located which is probably an urban area -- that's where the high SES people cluster -- and thus skews more "left" all up and down the socioeconomic spectrum. How's that for a bold stance?!@#
This indicates that there have been 1336 preventable deaths attributable to the anti-vaccine movement. I didn't bother to review their methodology, but let's just take that number as a given. That seems pretty insignificant in comparison to the damage done by climate change deniers.
You can't teach an old dog new poses. Unless you have a trained, certified dog yoga instructor rabbi.
81 something of a continuation of 78, and in response to 76, if for some reason my rambling commenting style is not crystal clear.
75: I do wonder if they really seized full control if you would have some things tending towards Lysenkoism. US has much stronger independent scientific institutions, but I wonder about how far it would go. (I guess things like Texas schoolbook committees are an indication.)
And here we are with almost all of the nukes and shit.
78: I'm trying to start a business selling dog yoga mats and baby-sized Pilates reformers, so I make a lot of sales calls in the neighborhood of Whole Foods.
Where are the nuke deniers, that's what I want to know.
1336 preventable deaths
Just one more for elite status.
I have the horrible feeling that gradschool is the equivalent of an ecotourism vacation, except less enjoyable and more expensive. No wonder I'm a downer.
The GMO system internalizes profits and externalizes risks, which makes me expect horrible unintended consequences before I know anything about GMOs. For instance, there is a policy claim, I think successful in the EU?, that widespread Bt resistance couldn't harm ecosystems because harm isn't a concept ecologists apply to ecosystems as long as there are still living things. In the sense that's that true among the ecologists I know, `and all the humans die' would also be a non-harm, a mere change. And yet...
less and less w.r.t. the purity of the places it was produced
Maybe this isn't true elsewhere, but our Whole Foods (which yes, we shop at because the goddamn Safeway doesn't reliably stock exotic ingredients such as garlic) has all these signs about where the produce was grown with pictures of the nice grey-haired lady farmer who must pick it with her own hands. Their tagline is "Good Stuff from Around Here." They have photos all over of farmers and crop fields. I understand that this is entirely propaganda, but I think there is a big emphasis on purity of places.
Their woo section doesn't seem extra weird compared to any other store except for the $30 box of NADPH I saw a few months ago. That's some extremely expensive urine. I have no idea what lots of those supplements are supposed to do, but I'm pretty well convinced that they should be regulated at least enough that they have to contain what they say on the label.
I feel like all supplements should be mixed with colloidal silver because then you could just steer clear of the blue people.
72: the idea that multinational corporations will do own patents on our fucking food, which will be designed for things like yield and pesticide resistance, instead of real nutrition or flavor, is horrifying.
Fixed that for you.
The impact of falling vaccination rates isn't limited to just immediate family members, that is just false. But CLEARLY falls below destruction of all civilization so nothing to see here people just move along...
92: Right, I believe many, many non-GMO hybrid strains are patented. But I might be wrong.
My local QFC has pictures of the local farm owners, too. Eh, wevs. Pictures of the local farm *drainages* would be a damn sight more relevant. Also pictures of the people who did the picking and hoeing, who are frequently not the actual farmers. Sometimes, of course.
It's another sibboleth I've been wondering about. I get all warm feelings towards nth-generation family enterprises, farming or manufacturing. But in general, I don't approve of inherited wealth, and a farm or a factory is a big ol' lump of capital. I am not consistent.
Vaccinations are just particularly annoying because it is such an unforced error.
any known measles cases from the recent BART exposure? (Which I found odd, as I couldn't enroll at UW or UCB without evidence of inoculation. )
95 would be funnier if K got subbed for Q.
95.2: Fixed capital is different in many ways that might be relevant as the incentives can differ from what you have with financial or other mobile capital.
Oh come on. There's some damage done to people who lose out on herd immunity but realistically we're talking low three figures there if we're generous. Most people who die of a failure to vaccinate are the kids of the people who made that decision. We're maybe talking low four figure fatalities all up for the entire MMR-causes-autism theory.
It's absurd and stupid and harmful, but it's really not a major cause of death.
94: I don't know either: non-GMO strains? It seems plausible.
I was thinking principally of Monsanto. I encourage people to watch Food, Inc.: it's lefty for sure, but sobering. Poking around just now on the GMO/non-GMO patent thing: I hadn't realized that the Supreme Court recently ruled in Monsanto's favor in its ability to sue farmers. This is bad news.
100: Meaning that it's less advantage to the inheriting farmer than a lump of cash would be? Okay, but does that do any good to the person who wants to farm and didn't inherit either?
Re: GMOs, it's hard to say what a good food production system would really look like. I mean, in general, fertilizer is bad, monoculture is bad, GMO crops (RoundUp Ready especially) are bad, even large scale organic is bad (although you could argue it's less bad). Runoff is bad, using migrant labor is bad, people starving because of inequity is bad, subsidies are bad, at some point I throw up my hands and surrender because it's a series of purity tests nobody except back to the land types will pass.
94 is right. Did someone link the articles about how a Big Ag (Monsanto?) has a division that has a high-tech rapid screen system to generate hybrids that aren't technically GMO?
Grafting stock is often licensed with propagation restrictions, if not patented; see yer current orchard catalog for the latest from Cornell.
103: I was thinking it would be more advantageous to the land (or the environment) to be owned by a series of people in the same family than a financial services company or joint stock corporation.
But most of those "family" farms are just small-to-medium businesses at this point -- guys who farm 8,000 acres with the help of GPS-guided $200,000 tractors and what not. Sure, there are little boutique growers, but most of them are not multi-generation/same acreage farmers anymore.
104.last: Did someone link the articles about how a Big Ag (Monsanto?) has a division that has a high-tech rapid screen system to generate hybrids that aren't technically GMO?
I haven't heard about this, and am interested if anyone has links. First I've heard of it. I'm off shortly, but I'll check back tomorrow to see if anyone has anything.
108: "Molecular Breeding" is the technique. The linked article is pretty good, I think at explaining the process but pretty weak at the bigger picture.
95.1: Algae blooms are pretty. Maybe CAFOs instead?
I'm starting to read the linked article and I'm a little annoyed that some snootster from fucking North Carolina is talking about how you don't have to schlep all the way to KY to see slack-jawed yokels. Indeed, dude, look at your legislature, etc.
109: Hm. Thanks for the link, ydnew. I'll poke around about it more tomorrow.
Okay, but does that do any good to the person who wants to farm and didn't inherit either?
No, but expensive farmer's markets do, and the general enthusiasm for local food does. One of the new venders at the market this year was a pair of women who had leased maybe 10 acres of land and were farming it. I don't know what the exact arrangement was, and obviously that sort of thing doesn't scale easily, but it sounded like it had worked out well for them to begin small scale farming.
(And, actually, one of my favorite vendors is somebody who started from a similarly small plot five or six years ago and has expanded from being micro to merely a small farmer).
I think there's a lot of unwarranted enthusiasm for local food and reducing "food miles" but, anecdotally, it does seem to create an environment in which more people can chose to farm if they want to, and that's a good thing.
Wow, you all really dug into this topic.
Re: GMOs, it's hard to say what a good food production system would really look like. I mean, in general, fertilizer is bad, monoculture is bad, GMO crops (RoundUp Ready especially) are bad, even large scale organic is bad (although you could argue it's less bad). Runoff is bad, using migrant labor is bad, people starving because of inequity is bad, subsidies are bad, at some point I throw up my hands and surrender because it's a series of purity tests nobody except back to the land types will pass.
Yes, exactly, except that I'm not convinced even the back-to-the-land system would work out well in the long run. (Traditional small-scale agriculture doesn't actually have a great track record on many criteria.) This is why I get so annoyed at the self-righteousness that tends to dominate on all sides in conversations on these topics, though not in this thread specifically so far.
106: We assume that families, with everything about them that has made literature and psychotherapy and monarchial history fascinating, will be better forward planners than rationally managed and potentially immortal firms? Plausible, and morbidly funny. Still doesn't explain why I feel amiable toward `family farm' independently of feeling amiable toward `pachic vermustoll'.
113: Works best if you're good-looking and nonthreatening to the weekending rich, of course; Valley of the Moon. Not specifically mentioned by current pros, though.
116: I haz a plan, then: we go gangbusters on mining the soil, while building cryogenic chambers for everyone who has to wait out the time it takes topsoil to rebuild. What could go wrong?
Yup, humans are hard on a planet, no matter how you farm them.
I'm not convinced even the back-to-the-land system would work out well in the long run. (Traditional small-scale agriculture doesn't actually have a great track record on many criteria.)
Preach.
The thing about anti-vax versus climate denial is we're all complicit in climate change whether we deny it or not, whereas anti-vaxers have fairly definite concrete deaths on their hands. I think they're worse, to the extent that climate denial is arguably not what's stopping us from doing anything about climate change.
As I remember Montgomery's Dirt, small-scale traditional agriculture wasn't as responsible for collapses as marketized agriculture was. (Though if you say trad ag is vulnerable to priestcraft and kingcraft and will therefore be on the erosive slope to hell, that would be consistent.) But even if we accept heavy labor for a lot of people, I don't know if anyone's added up whether it could run a civilization that could (say) keep developing new antibiotics.
Maybe Patzek and Pimentel have, or the Transition Towns.
Gevalt, this article. There are like two dumb woo-filled little racks of homeopathy in a section of stuff you'd find at a lot of Duane Reads these days, and then some other stuff, and then basically a kind of expensive grocery store. I like Whole Foods only a little apologetically. The produce is good, they have better cheese and wine and stuff than a grocery, some of their prepared food is good, and also, while this is perhaps not universally true for everyone in the world, it is a block away. Now I will read the comments and everyone will have said everything.
I feel like the drunkenness I encounter on public transit out here is qualitatively different from any I see at home.
As I remember Montgomery's Dirt, small-scale traditional agriculture wasn't as responsible for collapses as marketized agriculture was.
Depends what you mean by "collapse," I guess. Large-scale degradation of ecosystems, sure, but that might be more a matter of scale than organization. I think all the societies Diamond used as case studies were of small-scale traditional farmers, although he seems to have been wrong about most of them in various ways. "Small-scale traditional agriculture" is also a slippery concept, of course, and covers a huge variety of actual production systems.
Though if you say trad ag is vulnerable to priestcraft and kingcraft and will therefore be on the erosive slope to hell, that would be consistent.
This is certainly true as well. It's actually pretty striking how similar the cultural trajectories of farming societies are throughout world history.
119: Yup, humans are hard on a planet, no matter how you farm them.
I read the little book A Case for Climate Engineering by David Keith today. It's well worth reading--short and thought-provoking--and among other things it talks a bit about the tension between technocratic environmentalism and more traditional nature-loving feel-good environmentalism. He's sympathetic to the latter, but points out that we have real success stories from the former (like the Montreal Protocol and the development of alternatives to CFCs).
Actually, there's a bunch of interesting stuff in there about agriculture and how it will be affected by climate change and what we could or maybe even should do about climate engineering in relation to the food supply.
I think I'm going to go to sleep now, but I should try to remember to bring this up again sometime, maybe quoting some bits of the book.
Small scale agriculture is bullshit. We need large scale animal herds, for example bison in the depopulated Great Plains or reindeer in Canada, to kill and eat.
Montgomery is reasonably specific about `collapse', since he starts with deep silty alluvial fans. Loam all washed into the ocean, agriculture collapses. There have tended to be knock-on cultural effects.
I think `technocratic environmentalism' should not be elided into geoengineering. The Montreal Protocol didn't say `Oh, we'll spray some other stuff up into the stratosphere if the market doesn't do it automatically', we agreed to stop emitting it. It's nice that there were alternatives our engineers could find, but we didn't know that in 1987, did we? And I recall a lot of touchy-feely leafletting beforehand. THere may have been bake sales or even sidewalk painting, if not puppets.
Nb: Slashdot comments on environmental or even geophysical questions is f'n terrifying.
The big successes of environmentalism are all extremely technocratic, eg the Clean Air Act, but Ew is right that it's almost entirely been aggressive regulators leading and engineers coming up with adaptations by necessity, rather than engineers leading the regulators.
Ew s/b clew, that was the phone talking and not intentional.
Anyhow, "organic" "local" "grass fed" etc all stop being socially and morally confusing and make sense if you think of them as luxury products that are basically marketed (as are most luxury products) as artisanal. I mean let's not kid ourselves, that's what they are, luxury products more or less full stop. Whole Foods is obviously a niche luxury store but basically so is your nice local farmers market. Food is so cheap now that for basically the first time ever luxury food doesn't seem like that much of a luxury, but that's what Whole Foods style food is.
Dont get me wrong, Big Ag is horrible an the food system sucks and is responsible for the weakening of America. I'm just saying lets recognize the market for expensive luxury food for what it is. I have some hope if the food system getting better but it ain't gonna happen unless food gets a lot more expensive, and the only way that gets socially tolerable is massive wealth distribution.
Not as drunk or crackpotty as that comment implies.
Montgomery is reasonably specific about `collapse', since he starts with deep silty alluvial fans. Loam all washed into the ocean, agriculture collapses. There have tended to be knock-on cultural effects.
And yet, there seems to be rather a lot of agriculture going on right now, and the general trend has been in the direction of more of it rather than less. I dunno; I feel like whenever I tangle with you over this we're coming from such different starting points that it's impossible to even start to understand each other's positions.
Small scale agriculture is bullshit. We need large scale animal herds, for example bison in the depopulated Great Plains or reindeer in Canada, to kill and eat.
Plus adequate regulation to ensure people don't just kill them all the way they did last time, of course.
Listen, I don't know if I've made this clear, but regulation under the new order won't just be adequate, it's going to be fucking onerous with a capital O.
131: I was admiring the Halfordismo, but it's kind of you to walk it back.
134: ?? More agriculture now is perfectly consistent with our being on the up-slope of using everydamnthing. In all the empires, there was more more more until there was much less, for centuries. What part doesn't make sense to you?
(related question; has the Fertile Crescent regained its original productivity? With what fertilizer regime? We have a new cleverness with fixing N from atmo, but unless we get magic energy unicorns that will stop eventually too. With limitless energy we could do anything, including desalinating soil. That would be nice.)
That last wasn't clear to me, which is disturbing as I need to be actually writing real arguments. Hah.
More agriculture now is perfectly consistent with our being on the up-slope of using everydamnthing. In all the empires, there was more more more until there was much less, for centuries. What part doesn't make sense to you?
Well, the "much less" has pretty much always still been agriculture, right? Just at a less intensive level, supporting fewer people.
And sometimes in completely different places, for long enough for oak forests to grow back. Braudel sure implies that the total ag productivity of the world dropped for generations more than once. His New World data is weak, and I know that's an old book, but my atmo and nutrient cycling class a few years ago agreed.
Also, the trip from more people to fewer people sounds a bit rough.
I still don't get what we're disagreeing over.
I don't know that we're actually disagreeing; see 134.last.
World ag production, or world ag productivity? There's a big difference, eg the fall of the Roman Empire probably saw production fall but (moldboard plow!) productivity rise.
I guess I see clew as romanticizing (small scale, traditional) agriculture to an extent that seems unwarranted to me, much as I see Halford's anti-agriculturalism unwarranted. In my view, agriculture is a very efficient way of feeding a lot of people; no more, no less.
143.last: Teo tries on ahistoricity for size.
It doesn't fit very well, admittedly.
I do? I am really interested in nutrient-recycling, low-input ag, and that's mostly been trad ag (and not all trad ag is high-recycling). I don't assume it's going to be *pleasant*, I just think it might continue to, as you say, feed a lot of people.
I have mentioned that my first soil science class visited the Palouse, the amazing soil that's tied with China's loess for soil loss in the last century -- and most of those fields are still laft bare in winter. Heck, they don't all contour-plow, although they're supposed to. We pretended we were from the local ag college so they wouldn't suspect us of being environmentalists.
I do?
Well, at times you certainly seem to, at least. See 95.2 for an example, admittedly ambivalent.
I am really interested in nutrient-recycling, low-input ag, and that's mostly been trad ag (and not all trad ag is high-recycling). I don't assume it's going to be *pleasant*, I just think it might continue to, as you say, feed a lot of people.
I mean, I hope this right, and it may well be (you would certainly be in a better position to tell than I am). But I tend to focus on economies of scale as important to supporting modern industrial societies. Industrial agriculture as it currently exists may not bebe able to sustain that type of society in the long term, but I'm not convinced that any sort of traditional agriculture can do so either. And maybe it can't, and we're in for a rocky ride to a harsh landing at a much lower standard of living. It's certainly happened before, as you say.
I have mentioned that my first soil science class visited the Palouse, the amazing soil that's tied with China's loess for soil loss in the last century -- and most of those fields are still laft bare in winter.
So why is anyone farming the Palouse at all? No one was farming there a thousand years ago. (I hope that helps restore some of my historicity cred with JP.)
Because we haven't used up the grain productivity that the plough gives us and trains made profitable. ?? We really are talking past each other.
When the Palouse topsoil is gone, it might not support the herds it had a thousand years ago, either. And it was developed from blown-in glacial-retreat material, won't neccesarily reconstitute in place.
Because we haven't used up the grain productivity that the plough gives us and trains made profitable. ??
Because white people showed up a couple hundred years ago with guns and decided they wanted to farm there.
We really are talking past each other.
Clearly.
There is nothing in 95.2 about traditional agriculture -- it even specifically mentions general businesses, not just farms. 95.2 is a perplexity about what kinds of inheritance bother me less than others, underpinned by knowing people who actively want to become farmers and can't afford the startup costs.
Industrial agriculture as it currently exists may not bebe able to sustain that type of society in the long term, but I'm not convinced that any sort of traditional agriculture can do so either.
I think this is where we always end up; I'm just more dubious about the medium-term prospects of industrial ag (a hundred years, two, I hope) than you seem to be. Also, I am pretty sure that the soil destruction caused by industrial ag on the way down is even worse than the soil destruction caused by traditional ag, though `as bad' would be bad enough.
I'm not a fan of Whole Foods, mainly because of the quasi-religious stuff. There's a Whole Foods wannabe at the end of my road and I've shopped there maybe twice in my time in Kentish Town. I used to go to the Whole Foods in Camden very occasionally, becaue they used to carry artichokes and they can be hard to find. I haven't been since they stopped carrying them. But I can't get as worked up at Whole Foods's woo, given that it's open and mostly harmless, as I do about Boots carrying homeopathic "remedies". For fuck's sake Boots, you're a pharmacy and you're selling people water and pretending its medicine.
149 doesn't sound like you're against traditional sustenance there, though it supports even fewer people than traditional ag. (Even if taller healthier ones with better hair and, like, rock-hard abs.) I give up, though amiably. Good night.
Oh come on. There's some damage done to people who lose out on herd immunity but realistically we're talking low three figures there if we're generous. Most people who die of a failure to vaccinate are the kids of the people who made that decision. We're maybe talking low four figure fatalities all up for the entire MMR-causes-autism theory.
But that's only because, unlike the climate deniers*, they've never been powerful enough to affect policy at the national or regional level. If anti-vaxx ideology was as politically powerful and as well funded as climate denialism, many, many more people would have died. Measles alone was a scourge on humanity before vaccination, killing millions of people every year.
*I realise denialism isn't the only cause of inaction or worse at the policy level.
I'm not really for or against anything in this context. All I know is that the type of urban, industrialized society I prefer to live in, and would hate to see disappear, is completely dependent on agriculture, and currently dependent on industrial agriculture. I doubt industrial agriculture as it's practiced now is sustainable in the long run (two hundred years sounds generous to me), so I hope some other system comes along that can maintain this sort of society. Maybe it will and maybe it won't, and I probably won't live long enough to find out anyway, but if our civilization does collapse I hope someone remembers to print out the Unfogged archives before the power plants shut down. Good night.
The Asimov solution seems more and more appealling. Everyone lives in vast nuclear-powered underground cities, develops agoraphobia, hangs out with slightly metro robots and eats processed yeast. The rest of the world (I presume) rewilds.
153 --- oh yeah, it's in large part the lack of policy pull that makes anti-vaxers so different from climate change denial.
Everyone...eats processed yeast.
Another one for Team Marmite I see.
Wish I'd been here earlier to shop my theory that food & alt medicine is where liberals/lefties channel their purity/disgust reactions, which conservatives are more comfortable imposing on their politics.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/10/disgust-and-politics/
I love good, natural food (and share some of teo's concerns about industrialization of food production) but the level of concern about "natural" among a certain class of parents/mothers is intensely religious. Early descriptions of the left/right split on Haidt's values said that liberals don't show concern with disgust/purity. I think Whole Foods, the community share farm, the naturopath healer is where you find it.
I remember one of those political scientists from back in my undergraduate days.
my theory that food & alt medicine is where liberals/lefties channel their purity/disgust reactions
I would add language policing to the list. I don't mean the standard practice of avoiding slurs and other insensitive/asshole-ish remarks, but the more extreme stuff.
At certain progressive websites I used to read, there was a downright obsession with devising ever more sophisticated lists of words and phrases to avoid. It's hard not to see that as a purity ritual.
obsession with devising ever more sophisticated lists of words and phrases to avoid
Interesting - I guess I haven't been activist enough since my undergrad days to see that in action. I like 'purity rituals'. I find mapping the purity rituals of bobo's an interesting exercise in self-diagnosis.
Whole Foods is obviously a niche luxury store but basically so is your nice local farmers market.
Is this true for everyone here? The farmers market we go to most often is the big one downtown, that's a covered market open all week with the farmers in on weekends, and it's also where Nia's grandmother and plenty of other working-poor locals like her do their shopping. I think there's more trading up than down, since I don't really see hipsters shopping from the meat shop that prominently features hog maws (though I also doubt Nia's grandma has ever gotten gelato, but she'd buy Nia a honey treat from the bee guy). People of all backgrounds shop from the meat spot with a hundred different fresh sausages and halal camel steaks as well as more everyday midwestern cuts. The market is one of my favorite things about the city and one of the best places for us as a family, and I'd hope other places would have similar setups but keep hearing this isn't the case.
At our market, the camel steaks aren't halal.
A farmer's market patronized by a diverse working-class clientele is certainly not something I'm familiar with.
I once patronized a farmer's market in both senses of the term.
Our local farmer's market has mostly been a source (for us) of donuts, popovers, and overpriced coffee, so far. I don't have any idea what that says about it, but I have a sneaking feeling I know what it says about me.
National Geographic just made a big deal about it, so I guess it's fairly unique. This is what I'm talking about, and it's great. Definitely a lot of people with a lot of money but also a lot who are using SNAP or WIC for their purchases too.
I don't know what's wrong with your local hipsters that they're not shopping at the hog maw place. Meat parts are all the rage around here. Observe the hipster butcher in his indie rock-scored natural environment.
169: They would totally buy hog maws from someone who looked like him, I'm sure. It's just in the meat counters (and I think there are four, plus two fish) where the class/race divide is really apparent. But we've bought from the hog maw place and I'm sure other SWPL types have too.
The hipster butcher place here had a whole hog head on the counter. I was going to suggest putting it on a stick ala Lord of the Flies, but it was too crowded.
yes thorn, watch out - the hipsters are coming.
certainly carrboro's farmers market was excellent but often seemed more expensive than whole foods.
here in italy, the truck markets - which are generally one day a week in different locations on different days - are a great deal for truly top notch produce. a few stands are actual farmers, lots of the stands are selling produce from wholesalers. you can still spend a lot once you become a regular for the salame, cheese, yogurt.
I used to go to the fashionista butcher, crazy expensive, but now I go to an ordinary but excellent alternative. Meat is just very expensive here.
I used to go to the fashionista butcher, crazy expensive
Especially considering how little meat there is on the average fashionista.
Oh, the place is crawling with hipsters every weekend, but there are homeless activists and hippies and well-off white ladies with perfect accessories and families of all different makeups. There are several stalls where I can buy cheap shea butter as well as the place I get almost all my plants, the family-friendly beer garden with live music on summer weekends, awesome pho, both artisanal HFCS-and-dye-in-a-bag popsicles. It's the one place all our social groups (neighbors, knitting, church, multiracial potluck group, kids' birth families) overlap, and I wish there were more places like that.
173: I dunno, the butcher seems to be getting enough:
artisanal HFCS-and-dye-in-a-bag popsicles
What's that?
Damnit, it's a typo. Both high-end and those ones that are frozen neon syrup water in a bag.
Thanks. I'm actually waiting for the hipster who starts making his or her own HFCS in small batches. It's my sign for when to run to the cabin the mountains.
Nobody involved had unusual facial hair. Doesn't count.
I figured you'd jump on it since running away to the mountains is just the excuse you need to build a cob house. I suppose you did say "cabin," but you're really not fooling anyone.
Do they hang the camel's heads out in the shop window?
129 The Montreal Protocol didn't say `Oh, we'll spray some other stuff up into the stratosphere if the market doesn't do it automatically', we agreed to stop emitting it.
The book doesn't say that either -- it's much more nuanced, in interesting ways.
A farmer's market patronized by a diverse working-class clientele is certainly not something I'm familiar with.
My local farmer's market clientele was pretty diverse when it originally opened - somewhat whiter and more upscale than the average for the neighbourhood, but not by much. It was also much less expensive, or at least less consistently so. Some of the stands sold veggies and meat at only slightly above local supermarket costs. That has changed and so has the 'hood.
The political writer Henry Fairlie, who died sometime in the 80s I think, was alert in the 70s to the emergence of a deep cultural divide in the country. He unpacked this in a number of places, but his book about the Carter campaign in '76 was the first place I saw it. He told a little story about two couples, David and Rachel versus John and Mary. All sincere, decent intelligent people, but seeing the world very differently. It was the first and for me still not superseded description of the divide we've been talking about.
One thing that struck me then, because I hadn't noticed it but began to as soon as he pointed it out, was that the liberal people had an obsession with purity. Already in the 70s it was manifesting itself with the kinds of consumer choices talked about here. WF was old hat to me when I first encountered it.
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This cracks me up every time I look at it.
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The Palouse has been one of the most intensely farmed regions in the world since 1890 or so and it is still one of absolutely the most productive, with ludicrously high yields. If there are predictions that it's going to give out soon on massive agricultural productivity (as opposed to maybe just needing some relatively not that big a deal adjustments to maintain sustainability) I haven't seem them, though obviously clew knows way more about soil than I do. But it seems likely that you're going to get some kinds of minor technique modifications to sustain productivity rather than a gigantic Malthusian collapse caused by loss of topsoil. In any case that seems like maybe the 30th most likely cause of Malthusian collapse in the future.
163: This is the most perplexing statement in this entire thread. How the hell do they make money? That would be about the worst possible business plan imaginable around here. Maybe after bacon-wrapped goat chitlins or something.
Is it fair to say that while liberals may react to things along a purity axis, they're less likely than conservatives to treat purity as a major political motivator? I mean, there isn't a significant leftwing movement to ban vaccination, there are idiots who don't get their own kids vaccinated. The legislative efforts I can think of relating to GMOs are the laws prohibiting producers from identifying their products as GMO-free (which I do think are bullshit, even though I have no particular interest in avoiding GMOs for health reasons.) Is there any really purity driven political effort from the left?
Our local farmer's market has mostly been a source (for us) of donuts, popovers, and overpriced coffee, so far. I don't have any idea what that says about it, but I have a sneaking feeling I know what it says about me.
To be fair, it's a winter farmer's market, in Massachusetts. At least part of what it says about me is "doesn't love parsnips or rutabegas."
It occurs to me that free market absolutism is a form of purity axis politics. Originally I'd only thought about purity politics in the sexual and national/cultural sense, but there's clearly more to it than that. Thinking here of the right, obvs. On the left the purity politics seems to center around environmentalism, and weakly so at that. It seems like fairness is to the left what purity is to the right.
No one gives rutabagas enough credit. Mashed, with a lot of butter and pepper, they're delicious.
Parsnips, admittedly, I've never seen the point of much. Inoffensive, but why bother.
Our farmer's market seems to be mostly apple driven through the winter -- they've got the autumn apples in storage and just keep bringing them out. Which is good.
Metadiscussions about purity discourses are the purity politics of the left.
I was mostly too tired to comment on this thread yesterday, and reading it this morning made me depressed (mostly due to teo and clew agreeing that modern agriculture is going to collapse in the intermediate term), but there are a couple of things I wanted to follow up on:
Also, in my possession: one tube of Traumeel. Totally works!
I have a different brand of arnica gel, but I also think it works. There are a variety of plant-based medicinals which are labeled as homeopathic, but aren't based on the idea of homeopathic dilution. For example, looking in my medicine cabinet last night I noticed the capsaicin nasal spray. Definitely not water!
I'm not really for or against anything in this context.
I'm actually a little unclear what clew is for in this thread -- other than better agriculture. Clew, it sounds like industrial agriculture, as it is currently practiced, is clearly unsustainable, but do you think that it's possible to conduct more sustainable agriculture on a large industrial scale, or would it require overhauling the way in which ag is organized?
I have mentioned that my first soil science class visited the Palouse, the amazing soil that's tied with China's loess for soil loss in the last century -- and most of those fields are still laft bare in winter. Heck, they don't all contour-plow, although they're supposed to. We pretended we were from the local ag college so they wouldn't suspect us of being environmentalists.
That raises an interesting question -- if you go into an area knowing that there's a problem (topsoil loss, in this case). Is it good or bad to see that there are simple steps which aren't being taken? On one hand, good news, low hanging fruit! On the other hand, bad news, because it suggests a culture which isn't valuing the natural resources.
Also, I noticed this morning that one of my breakfast cereals specifically uses the word "purity" in their cereal-box verbiage.
Aside from the part about being unsustainable, an unsustainable solution is usually the better solution.
I can't imagine how farming could possibly be an efficient use of skyscrapers, being incredibly expensive and having very little interior sunlight.
I mean, there isn't a significant leftwing movement to ban vaccination, there are idiots who don't get their own kids vaccinated. The legislative efforts I can think of relating to GMOs are the laws prohibiting producers from identifying their products as GMO-free (which I do think are bullshit, even though I have no particular interest in avoiding GMOs for health reasons.) Is there any really purity driven political effort from the left?
Some words may be doing a lot of work in this passage. There definitely is a movement to ban (or thereabouts) vaccination. The question is whether it's "significant" (I would say so, but not especially powerful compared to the pharma industry) or specifically left-wing (not exclusively by any stretch, but more so than most anti-science campaigns). The movement has led, among other things, to the Omnibus Autism Proceedings, to people pulling their children out of public schools, and contributed to the anti-HPV drive in many parts.
On the GMO front, the anti-lobby (and I'm somewhat ambivalent on GM food myself, for corporate-control-of-the-food-supply reasons more than health) is very politically powerful in Europe and is mostly of the left, although some opposition comes from the religious right and traditionally conservative small farmers. For years, many EU countries banned commercial or even scientific growing of GM crops and no new GMOs were approved at the EU level. Labelling is mandatory at a fairly low threshold level.
Parsnips, admittedly, I've never seen the point of much. Inoffensive, but why bother.
Honey glazed parsnips are lovely. Then again, most things are nice when glazed with honey.
193: Is it fair to say that while liberals
I say yes...
I don't like either parsnips or rutabagas, and it's not a matter of them having been prepared improperly. It's that ol' gusty bus again.
199: But, of course, that aphoristically elides the key question of being sustainable over what time scale? Also what metric to use for "better."
Measured in terms of population or biomass, being the cleverest species in the ecosystem has worked out OK for us so far (our ranking has really shot up over the past 800 years or so!). Brain power adequate to manipulate symbol systems to creatively mold our environment was a neat little trick to evolve into. Finding out if it has staying power is all the fun.
There definitely is a movement to ban (or thereabouts) vaccination. The question is whether it's "significant" (I would say so, but not especially powerful compared to the pharma industry) or specifically left-wing (not exclusively by any stretch, but more so than most anti-science campaigns).
Seriously? I'd swear there isn't in the US, but in the UK there are people lobbying to prevent people who want their kids vaccinated from getting their kids vaccinated? That is all the way messed up.
198: Count me as another vote for Arnica gel. It certainly works for me where other remedies have failed. Doesn't seem to last very long, though.
Try mixing Arnica gel and desensitizing cream.
Seriously? I'd swear there isn't in the US, but in the UK there are people lobbying to prevent people who want their kids vaccinated from getting their kids vaccinated? That is all the way messed up.
It's generally more indirect than that, hence "thereabouts". Things like increasing liability for vaccine manufacturers (which nearly drove them out of business in the 80s), or lobbying to remove the vaccine requirement in public schools. But the anti-HPV vaccine campaign (which draws on antipathy outside the anti-vax movement, of course) is pretty direct. It's mostly not a strict ban they're seeking, but a ban on government funding/provision thereof, which is basically a class-based ban. And in the UK, there was a very strong campaign to ban the MMR triple shot, though thankfully it's died down a bit since Wakefield's fraud was brought to light.
But the anti-HPV vaccine campaign (which draws on antipathy outside the anti-vax movement, of course) is pretty direct.
Here, that'd be straightforward rightwing anti-sex purity, not the arguably at least sometimes leftwing healthbased anti-vax purity -- that is, it seems entirely distinct to me from opposition to infant/child vaccination.
Like I say, there's a lot coming from outside the usual anti-vax movement on HPV, but it's also part of it - McCarthy and co were all over it. We also had ostensibly safety based pushback in the UK despite no real religious right.
Re 172, in Cleveland, there is both an overpriced local farmer's market -- featuring a lot of Amish farmers, in addition to hippie-back-to-the-land types (the hipsters seem to be more focussed on meat) -- but there is also the West Side Market, where the produce is more along the lines of greengrocer-type stuff (and attracts a more economically diverse crowd).
in Cleveland, there is both an overpriced local farmer's market -- featuring a lot of Amish farmers, in addition to hippie-back-to-the-land types
I used to go there every weekend back when I lived in Cleveland. Mainly because I lived a few blocks away. There was a delicious breakfast burrito truck. And a stand that sold ramp pesto for about 2 weeks each year.
I'll bet the smallness of the anti-vaccine and anti-GMO movements compared to the anti-belief-in-global-warming movement is entirely due to the existence of huge, powerful corporations which benefit from climate change denialism and says nothing about relative liberal unwillingness to impose purity on politics.
Signed, a liberal who if in office would impose sin taxes on McDonald's, Cheetos, soda, etc. the likes of which the world has never seen, and doesn't deny the possibility that this would be motivated by some kind of purity thing.
Who's making money out of opposition to gay marriage? That's voter-driven (or, astroturfed but appealing to voters) purity politics without a money motive behind it, and there's nothing I can think of to match it on the left.
Is opposition to gay marriage really about purity though? In my mental model it's about repressed homosexual urges.
Although the concept of "purity" is big enough that almost anything can be made to be about it (cf people claiming that libertarianism is about the purity of the free market). Limit free trade: maintain the purity of our nation's economy. Limit pollution: preserve the purity of our air.
But what's the problem with repressed homosexual urges other than purity? It's purity all the way down.
Purity Of Essence.
Those urges are best interpreted as a "natural" cilice, devised by God to test us. However, truly manly men like Antonin Scalia don't have such urges and find the need to resort to artificial means.
Who's making money out of opposition to gay marriage?
The organized religious right. Televangelists. Merchants of hate. Rush Limbaugh. Digital pamphleteers. Etc.
222: Not to be naively confused with the Essence of Purity.
But what's the problem with repressed homosexual urges other than purity? It's purity all the way down.
Wrong. I was convinced by Corey Robin that there's a grand theory of conservatism which explains absolutely 100% of conservatism, without fail. Conservatism means exactly one thing: love for traditional structures of authority and hatred of those who oppose it, though conservatives differ with regards to which sphere of authority they reify. For social conservatives, it's not that homosexuals challenge "purity" per se (many conservatives are just fine with sexy impurity as long as it's stuffed deep into a dark closet) it's the challenge to traditional authority. Gay people can be as icky as they like as long as they don't actually threaten the power of (mostly) fathers within the home or the idea of marriage as something that enshrines that authority.
222: But they're making money in the way they could off any issue they got behind -- there's no value to the particular topic other than that voters will get excited about it. They don't make a profit off winning, they make a steady income off fighting about it.
It's fundamentally different from climate change denial, where political victory on the specific topic is financially profitable to the backers.
I don't mind going after sugared soda, but if Democrats tax Cheetos, I'll vote Republican.
I can only answer the questions that are asked. If you wanted to know who was making a money off of the absence of gay marriage, that's a different question.
222: I see Rush Limbaugh et al as opportunists exploiting people's natural repression and fear, whereas Big Oil is willing to spend tons of money to create confusion. Rush Limbaugh won't be hurt at all when gay marriage is legalized - he'll just switch to complaining about the next step forward for human rights. Whereas Big Oil would be genuinely harmed by carbon regulation in a way they couldn't easily sidestep.
225: Yep, gay marriage is what you put on Fox to appeal to the viewers to get them help stifle effective response to climate change. It doesn't work as well the other way around.
225 is even a structural pwning of 228, which is pretty cool.
228: Why would Rush have to stop complaining about gay marriage just because it is legalized?
love for traditional structures of authority and hatred of those who oppose it
The definition of traditional here would seem important. They seem pretty flexible about defending fairly new structures of authority. I still think it's mostly about defining ingroups and outgroups. The authority worship just comes from feeling besieged and not wanting to be left out.
Reading Mark Kleiman has convinced me that the conservative belief in the totalitarian heart of nanny-state liberalism isn't wholly without merit.
Somewhat on-topic, pretty much everything I've read about Jonathan Haidt leads me to believe that I would find his books incredibly annoying. Anyone who's actually read him care to chime in?
I see Rush Limbaugh et al as opportunists exploiting people's natural repression and fear, whereas Big Oil is willing to spend tons of money to create confusion.
Well, I don't disagree with the general thrust of your comment, but this is exactly what I was pushing back against, because I don't think this distinction is quite as clear as you make out. There is actually quite a bit of persuasive effort on the conservative right, and especially the religious right, that has been made over decades to convince people of the "harm" and "dangers" of gay marriage. (Since that harm may not be readily apparent otherwise.) So how much opposition to gay marriage can be said to be "natural" vs. a manufacturered result of these persuasive efforts? Also, note that these persuasive efforts are made in large part by people who are currently dressed with significant moral authority, whose moral authority, influence and overall credibility stand to be damaged by societal acceptance of gay marriage. (It wouldn't have, necessarily, if they hadn't staked themselves in opposition to gay marriage, but--now that they have--acceptance of gay marriage exposes their powerlessness and, in doing so, further diminishes their power.) I'm thinking more of conservative religious leaders than of Limbaugh, but him too.
I agree that the situation is a little bit chicken and eggy and that some members of the religious right might lose some moral authority if they lose on gay marriage, which gives them a little bit of incentive to actually care about the issue, but isn't the milennia-long nonlegality of gay marriage pretty good evidence that people have some natural anti-gay marriage instincts?
Paging Dr Foucault, paging Dr Foucault...
232 -- They seem pretty flexible about defending fairly new structures of authority.
Sure, that's why conservatism survives and is a perpetually regenerating movement -- it is pretty flexible about adopting the newly powerful into its ranks and the tactical advances and retreats involved in shoring up authority can get pretty complicated. Modern libertarianism, for example, reifies the entrepreneur in a way that would have been totally foreign to some aristocrat circa 1810.
But at the end of the day the goal is always the same, protecting those who feel they have at least a moderate amount of power and authority from an enemy who is always basically the same, the previously repressed people who (conservatives fear) will take power and authority away from the locally powerful.
I'll cross post here the comment which was meant to go here but was posted to the asshole thread instead:
Rutabagas, which we called turnips when I was growing up, were important in my family and my wife, who didn't grow up with them has taken preparation of them to another level. Every guest of ours at dinner where they're served 1)loves them, and 2) has hardly ever eaten them in any form.
My mother used root vegetables like parsnips a lot in stews, and occasionally as the vegetable on a plate. She made them palatable to children with sugar; my wife would use butter, garlic etc.
The revolutionary-era firebrand William Cobbett was a ferocious advocate of Rutabagas, which he called Swedes, and believed they would be a great aid to the liberation of poor rural people. His classic Rural Rides goes on and on about them.
You may be surprised to learn that neither of these is the vegetable I've chosen as an icon/handle at my local food blog; that's reserved for something else.
Everybody in Britain and Ireland calls them Swedes to this day. It was originally (mid .18) Swedish Turnip. Rutabaga is a non-English derivation, no idea where from.
241 - An eggplant that looks like Richard Nixon?
Jonathan Haidt leads me to believe that I would find his books incredibly annoying. Anyone who's actually read him care to chime in?
I've read a lot of his stuff because I think he is basically right, but he is a really crappy spokesman for the views we share.
He is explicitly humean about ethics, which is correct.
He believes that reason mostly plays a social role. Reasoning convinces others--often third parties to a conversation. People rarely reason directly about their own decisions. This is also all correct.
His important original insight is that the current range of moral emotions philosophers and psychologists look at is far too limited. If you really want to understand people, especially in a modern political context, you need to look at emotions like disgust, admiration, and loyalty. This is not only correct, it is an important new voice that needs to be heard.
That said, his actual arguments are slipshod. The psychological model he endorses keeps changing. And he is far to interested in pleasing all sides in the current political climate.
One of my goals, if I ever got to do publications and research again, would be to become a better version of Haidt.
Rutabagas, which we called turnips when I was growing up, were important in my family
My mother used to mash with carrots, and a bit of cream and butter, and then salt and pepper to finish the dish. So simple, so delicious.
I've read a lot of his stuff because I think he is basically right, but he is a really crappy spokesman for the views we share.
He is explicitly humean about ethics, which is correct.
Interesting. I've been a little bit surprised by the hostility to Haidt that I've encountered on the USian left. I guess his version of Humean ethics doesn't always translate well to the American left-right divide? But he claims to offer a way out of the impasse, I think? on which promise he (predictably enough) cannot deliver, so.
One of my goals, if I ever got to do publications and research again, would be to become a better version of Haidt.
Good luck helpy-chalk - we could use this. I found your comment on Haidt useful since my own understanding is glib and superficial but I basically like the core idea.
re: 245.1
This would basically be 'neeps', i.e. the traditional Scottish accompaniment to Haggis.
MASHED? WICKED CHILD! MASHING IS ALSO THE WORK OF BEELZEBUB!
re: 242
Scots call them turnips, and the small white and purple turnip, 'Swede'. It's one of those famous divided-by-a-common-language things.
My mother mashed boiled potatoes and turnips, that is rutabagas together, with a small amount of butter or margarine. Starch and vegetable in one, it was often accompanied at supper by bacon and eggs. Either strip or Canadian, which we of course called back bacon
Could have been good, usually wasn't. Potatoes often over- and turnips often under-cooked. From childhood I'd have been responsible for washing pots and pans, and I remember the many times they'd stuck. I'd make short work of it now, but then my heart wasn't in it.
I realize I've done dishes and cookware cleanup pretty much my whole life, as the principal designee in whatever arrangement I had, family, marriage, group.
GMO opponents block projects that could save lives in the developing world
yellow card on this one. No such projects, or at the most charitable, total vapourware. Even MIRACLE! GOLDEN! RICE! is an obvious bunco - if someone has a diet so inadequate and lacking in variety that they are regularly suffering from vitamin A deficiency, what kind of advanced system-blindness do you have to have to say "I know the solution! Let's get vitamin A supplements in the rice!"
251: this is completely right, esp re blindness, although interesting choice of figure of speech given subject.
