What pine forests and Wal-marts tell us

Although snow is still on the ground here, the promise of spring is once again about to be fulfilled. One’s mind turns to matters of cultivation.

In my philosophy class yesterday we discussed Michael Pollan’s dilemma (this is the one he had before his omnivore’s dilemma) over what to do with Cathedral Pines, a 42 acre forest laid waste by a tornado. Since the Pilgrims, the forest had been an intimate part of the life of Pollan’s New England home town. But when the tornado hit, it was gone in a flash. In the political bickering that ensued, some townsfolk wanted to keep the devastation as is, so nature can have her way without human intervention. Others wanted – horrors! – to build condos.

Pollan saw both extremes as wrong, because both result from the “wilderness ethic,” an illusory ideal that nature at her best is nature without man. This faulty illusion in turn fuels zoning, itself a problem: Let’s decree these 42 acres as “wilderness” so it can be unmolested nature – but the very decree gives license to molest everything else up to the legal line.

And so we have Wal-marts butted right up next to pine forests.

And so we have, in Pollan’s very revealing word-picture, idealized virginity and rape, but never marriage.

Hmmm, marriage…

If the earth once was pristine nature, it is not now, Pollan notes, because man is everywhere. (The class noted that even the earth’s poles are affected by pollutants; and even the depths of the oceans are tainted by shipwrecks).

The best recourse, argues Pollan, is not wildernesses or Wal-marts … but a garden. A garden on this view is where virginity is exchanged, not for rape, but for marriage. And I think (and I think Pollan thinks) that marriage is well worth trading in one’s virginity for.

Hmmm, marriage in a garden …

In Pollan’s garden ethic, the enlightened gardener lets nature lead, but he or she must be realistic in that, well, somehow, nature is often against us. (Wonder why that is?).

And in Pollan’s garden ethic, the agenda must be – now here is an idea – “frankly anthropocentric.”

I just can’t get around the feeling that Michael Pollan is on to something …

Logos2Go

Genesis 2.8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.

Genesis 1.27-31a So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth." And God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. "And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.

Jeremiah 20.4-5 "Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: "Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce.

Michael Pollan, "The Idea of a Garden" in Second Nature: A Gardener's Education, New York: Delta, 1991, 209-238. Reference is also made to Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma, New York: Penguin, 2006.