Pearce Buxton > Recent Status Updates

My favorite chapter right now: Pg. 67 - 82

In this chapter, Kimmerer challenges the concept of scarcity and competition as the driving forces of our current economic system. She points out that if we were to truly use biomicicry as a model for how to sustainably govern our lives, then there are other biotic relationships leading to ecological success that we need to prioritize (i.e., mutalism and cooperation).

“Gift economies seem to arise spontaneously in times of disaster. When human survival is threatened, compassionate acts overrule market economies. People give freely to one another, and bonds of ownership disappear when everyone pools their resources of food and labor and blankets in solidarity” (pg. 43).

"In a gift economy, wealth is understood as having enough to share, and the practice for dealing with abundance is to give it away" (pg. 32).

^^^ this paragraph is one of my favorites

“Recognizing “enoughness” is a radical act in an economy that is always urging us to consume more” (pg. 12)

“Unfortunately, what makes for good politics does not always make for good medicine” (Flugate; pg. 50)

“Flugate” is a really interesting chapter describing Gerald Ford’s failed national vaccination campaign against swine flu as being the catalyst for the FDA’s investment into lysate testing.

"It's a lovely name: a perfectly marvelous name. And actually your own. It gives you importance at once. It . . . it makes you somebody" (pg. 63).

"'Anyone can send flowers,' said Miss Pettigrew. 'It's the easiest thing in the world for a man with money to walk into a shop and say send a bunch of flowers to Miss So-and-so. No trouble to him: no worry: no care, and he knows that every silly, sentimental woman is touched by the act. Odd!,' said Miss Pettigrew conversationally, 'the undermining effect of flowers on a woman's common sense."

"But there's one thing I found fatal: pitying myself. It makes things worse" (pg. 50).

Ch. 5: Heat

The majority of this chapter discusses how a variety of animals, like Melanophila beetles, vampire bats, ticks, and pit vipers, use heat/infrared detecting organs/pits to survive (e.g., mate or find food).

"We project our senses onto theirs and assume that they'd be in discomfort because we'd be in discomfort" (pg. 140) - a note on how humans often perceive the life of extremophiles.

Ch. 4 Cont:

The discussion of pain introduces consciousness because pain is what we feel in response to harm.

“The evolutionary benefit of nociception is abundantly clear. It’s an alarm system that allows animals to detect things that might harm or kill them, and take steps to protect themselves. But the origin of pain, on top of that, is less obvious. What is the adaptive value of suffering?” (pg. 129).

Ch. 4 introduces Pain and the debate about whether animals can feel it. At the heart of the debate is the distinction of nociception and pain. In other words, “nociception is the sensory process by which we detect damage. Pain is the suffering that ensues . . . They are the sensory and emotional halves of a process that, to most of us, feel inseparable” (pg.120-121).

Last quote from Ch. 3 that I really like, and which serves as a reminder for the entirety of the book:

"This tension between reception and sensation, between what animals can detect and what they actually experience, exists for most of the senses. We can dissect a mantis shrimp's eye and work out what every component does, but still never really know how it actually sees" (pg. 116).

More Ch. 3 quotes:

"In viewing nature's paintings, eyes define its palette" (pg. 114).

"Sensing can feel passive, as if eyes and other sense organs were intake valves through which animals absorb and receive stimuli around them . . . Beauty is not only in the eye of the beholder. It arises because of that eye" (pg. 115).

Another favorite quote from Ch. 3:

"It's natural to expect that an extra dimension of color would be a spectacular thing to see. To learn that it could be taken for granted threaten to drain color of its magic. But of course, all of us . . . take the colors we see for granted . . . The real glory of colors isn't that some individuals see more of them, but that there's such a range of possible rainbows" (pg. 103).

In one of my favorite discussions of Ch. 3, Yong describes how some forms of human colorblindness really just entails those humans sharing the same color vision of other deuteranopes, i.e., dogs. Thus, "color-blindness shouldn't be a disability, but it can be because humans have built cultures that are predicted on trichromacy [i.e., traffic lights meaning red for "stop" and green for "go"" (pg. 88-89).

Ch. 3 is Vision Pt 2: Color

Whether it is the lack of seeing red or the gift of seeing UV, there are a lot of color dimensions visible possible across the animal kingdom.

This chapter was a little bit harder for me to get through because it was denser, and just so hard for me to imagine - due to my own Umwelt :(

Regardless, it was still engaging, especially the discussion about the mantis shrimp.

Chapter 2 is about light and the workings of vision across the daylight to darkness spectrum:

Humans (and birds of prey) have some of the sharpest eyes in the animal kingdom.

Some animals can see at different speeds (and probably experience the passage of time differently) (i.e., Killer Fly)

Lastly, the giant squid has the largest eyes in the darkest environment in order to see their predators: the sperm whale.

Also for Ch. 1:
I like that Yong clarifies: “we tend to wrongly equate taste with flavor, when the latter is more dominated by smell” (pg. 49). Taste has 5 basic qualities, in humans : sweet, salty, bitter, sour and umami - and, as a generalization, we use it to decide whether to actually eat something (pg. 48).

Ch. 1 shows how complex smell is. Smell “is diverse and often unquantifiable” (pg. 28), and used by animals to help them navigate the world (pg. 38).

Less astonishing is Taste, as it is the more simple chemo receptive sense:
“Taste is mostly a final check before consumption: Should I eat this?” (Pg. 48).

Already, this book is such a fun read! Yong does such a great job of writing in such a lighthearted, often comical, and easily digestible manner yet is still educational and intriguing.

“Violette, the ivy is stifling the trees, never forget to cut it back. Never. As soon as your thoughts are turning dark, take your pruning shears and cut back those troubles” - Sasha (pg. 427).

Some awesome quotes by Sasha:

"Autumn is a lullaby for the life that will return" (pg. 357).

"The past isn't as fertile as the [manure] I spread on the ground. It's more like quicklime. That poison that burns stumps. Yes, Violette, the past poisons the now. Forever turning things over means dying a little" (pg. 358).

“Look how beautiful it is today, every day I’m intoxicated by the world’s beauty. Of course, there’s death, grief, bad weather, All Saints’ Day, but life always gets over it. There’s always a morning when the light’s beautiful, when the grass sprouts again from the scorched earth” (pg. 304).

“Sasha had said to me, ‘You see, they’re melons from heaven, that’s what nature is all about, it’s she who decides’” (pg. 257).

Right now in the book it is flipping from the past, where you learn and try to understand Violet’s greatest loss, to the present where you wonder how she was ever able to keep going.