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I belong to a social causes book club started by Britt Bravo. The women are all quite astute -- this is no wine-slinging purely social experience. It's actually a conference call, and I was astounded on Monday night to hear that almost everyone actually finished the book I chose this month, the 575-page behomoth Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Pulitzer Prize winner Jared Diamond. Next time, I will look at word count before I pick a book. I can't actually believe they let me pick books, because it's a social change nonfiction book club and I keep wanting to read novels. Thank goodness for these women; they keep me honest and I am learning against my will some months. It's because of this damn book club that I grew peppers and tomatoes this summer. I blame them for my fruit flies.
This is a long and terrible lede into what I want to say. I regret I don't have time to make this post shorter and better today.
Like I said, this book is really long. I would not recommend you read it unless you are a anthropology student or an insomniac. There is a lot of verbal throat-clearing, mention of random friends' stories and at least two hundred pages of description of -- as someone said -- every cloud in Montana. However, the idea behind the book -- societies that collapse to the extent of disappearing off the face of the Earth -- is fascinating.
The image that struck me the most was Diamond's musing about the guy who cut down the last palm tree on Easter Island -- an act that contributed to the downfall of that society:
I have often asked myself, "What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it?" Like modern loggers, did he shout "Jobs, not trees!" Or: "Technology will solve our problems, never fear, we'll find a substitute for wood"? Or: "We don't have proof that there aren't palm trees somewhere else on Easter, we need more research, your proposed ban on logging is driven by fear-mongering"?
So here you have a society that inadvertently cut down all the trees they needed to hold down the soil to grow crops, to produce food, to build shelter.
The book describes a few ancient societies that collapsed and died out and some modern countries that are not doing well -- Rwanda, China, Haiti. It's a depressing book in the way reading Google News is enough to make me want to hide under my bed every morning. It's depressing because it seems we humans can't resist overdoing a good thing when it comes to the environment.
I'm glad I didn't read this book during the height of the Gulf oil spill.
But then I got to page 484. And Jared started speaking my language. Back when I was ranting about corn sugar, I wrote:
What I'm saying is that the root of the HFCS problem is not corn growers or maybe even corn refiners (though, hello, get rid of the mercury). They're responding to the requests of food manufacturers, who are responding to focus groups and wallet share. They're all responding to us.
Farmers grow what they grow because that's what's in demand. The root of the HFCS problem is us -- the consumers -- who have taught the food industry by our buying patterns what we want.
True, we didn't know that what we wanted was made that way by stuff that might not be that great for us.
Or did we? What did we really think gave Twinkies a shelf life of 25 days?
We make cookies from scratch. We make cookies from a mix. The cookies in the little sleeve -- they sure look so much nicer. I wonder why that is?
Did we really not know?
And here's old Jared:
Our blaming of businesses also ignores the ultimate responsibility of the public for creating the conditions that let a business profit through hurting the public: e.g., for not requiring mining companies to clean up, or for continuing to buy wood products from nonsustainable logging operations. In the long run, it is the public, either directly or through its politicians, that has the power to make destructive environmental policies unprofitable and illegal, and to make sustainable environmental policies profitable.
But ... he actually has an explanation for it, whereas I am musing and staring at my navel. He writes:
My views may seem to ignore a moral imperative that businesses should follow virtuous principles, whether or not it is most profitable for them to do so. I instead prefer to recognize that, throughout human history, in all politically complex human societies in which people encounter other individuals with whom they have no ties of family or clan relationship, government regulation has arisen precisely because it was found to be necessary for the enforcement of moral principles. Invocation of moral principles is a necessary first step for eliciting virtuous behavior, but that alone is not a sufficient step.
I walked around with that paragraph for a few days, let it seep into my brain.
It fits with everything I understand about evolution, about religion, about the need of human beings to dominate everyone around them. We can wring our hands and wish we were better all on our own, or we can just legislate it so. I personally am most at peace when I'm being financially rewarded for doing the right thing. I can't imagine it feels good to get rich when you know deep down you're raping and plundering the Earth.
Nobody wants to cut down the last palm tree.
Uncertain where to go, we ended up outside the arena watching tween girls trot and canter in circles on their horses. I'd enrolled my girl in a horseback riding lesson inadvertantly, sort of backed into it while looking for a way for me to ride a horse again. After our first trail riding experience, I realized I'd thrown the little angel into a situation for which she was unprepared. And so there we were, listening to the grunts and snuffles of working horses against the backdrop of late October wind.
I asked a few people where to find our instructor and ended up back at the main barn. We found her finishing up a lesson with another little girl with pink cowgirl boots on, just like the little angel's. "Look," said the little girl. "We have pink boots." The little angel smiled in return.
The barn smelled warm and close, horsey. The horse I had as a kid lived in a converted pig barn, so I'd never really seen Black Beauty-type stalls before, with dusty fans and individual water troughs. I stared, fascinated, at such beautiful stalls while a pony snuffed and pushed its nose through the slats at me.
The instructor taught the little angel to use a curry comb, a hard brush, a soft brush, how to keep one hand on the horse's body while you brush to learn to anticipate its movements. I remember the hours I spent brushing my horse, Cutter, in that pig barn, trying to clean the mud and dust that billowed off him in clouds after he'd been rolling in the pasture. How I fussed over his forelock and tail even though he had no party to go to -- he never left our place -- we didn't even own a trailer -- but I always wanted him to look his beautiful best. He was a bay Quarter Horse, and he had the softest nose of any horse that has ever lived or ever will.
After the brushing and walking behind the horse lesson ended, the little angel mounted Pepper the Stable Riding Lesson Horse and learned to stop and start and turn all by herself. (Which, duh, I should've made sure she knew how to do before I took her TRAIL RIDING, God protects fools and children.)
I stood inside the arena staring at the horses, listening to the sounds of teenaged girls wandering in and out of their horse's stalls. One girl gave her black horse a bath because he was sweaty. My eyes widened at this level of fancy -- I would've frozen Cutter to death if I'd ever taken a hose to him in October. But so many bits of horse ownership I'd forgotten came back: changing the straw he stood on, the heady smell of ammonia where he'd peed, the scent of oats and hay that we stored in an old-school hay barn behind the hog house, the clatter of Cutter's hooves on cement when he heard me coming, how he'd gleefully race us up our long gravel driveway on days the wind changed when the school bus dumped us out at the bottom.
When it was time to go, I looked down at my girl wistfully tracing her finger up and down Pepper's neck. It had been a test, this lesson, to see if she had any interest. She vascillates between wanting to stay in ballet and quit after four years. I told her she has to stay through The Nutcracker -- people are counting on her -- but she can quit after that if she likes. She cries because she can't decide what to do, and I remember loving and hating dance. She shows no interest in team sports, despite our constant inquiries if she'd like to try soccer or t-ball or volleyball or what have you. It's not that we think she has to be athletic, but there is more to life than academics.
The instructor looked at me quizzically -- she'd agreed to do this one-off lesson, though she usually schedules four at a time. They're not cheap. My girl looked at me with pleading eyes. "Can I come back and see Pepper again?" she asked.
I smiled at her, at the instructor. "I'll talk to Daddy about it," I said. "I think so."
We walked out of the soft glow of the barn into the darkness of the parking lot, the wind whipping my girl's red hair. And I remembered the tug and pull of wanting to keep Cutter, loving him so much, but realizing with high school I wouldn't take good care of him, wouldn't spend the time, that my parents wouldn't keep him if I wasn't going to do what I'd promised to do. I remembered the day I'd realized I was going to lose him because -- whether I wanted to admit it or not -- it was my choice to slack off. But those memories of hours spent caring for him, playing with him, riding him over the hills behind our house remain, brought to the forefront every time I smell horses.
I wonder if my girl will develop a girl crush on the horses or if she'll enjoy the physical mastery of a sport or if she'll just decide she's bored by it all. It really doesn't matter to me as long as she gets good enough to go trail riding with me when the wind changes and I need to ride again.
I realize this is all about me.
The little angel and Pepper
