> If reproduction is based on genetics and genetics normally
> occurs through sex and sex is ideally founded on love (which
> itself could be considered a mature, controlled and sustained
> form of desire), just where do GMO's fit in?
Come on! this is a big gray area and you know it. Plenty of extreme
manipulation is done using sex as a tool. Take animal breeding for example,
or plant breeding. When we put shoot and tassel bags on thousands of corn
lines and self them for six generations, how natural is that? How much love
do you think is involved in that? Trying to derive some threshold of the
"natural" beyond which it is evil to trespass will get you in trouble. No
matter how stringent you are, someone, more "natural" still, will condemn
you for manipulating nature. Doing agriculture in any form is unnatural
from a frame of reference more defensible than yours.
I would argue that manipulation of the environment is totally natural. From
the tiniest cell, life is a struggle to maintain homeostasis. I could bring
up all manner of examples from all the kingdoms, of cells and larger
organisms manipulating the environment beyond the membrane using all manner
of toxic materials, mechanical contrivances, and behaviors. I see an
unbroken line of struggle for space, security, and resources from the very
beginning of life all the way up to a breeder selecting disease resistance,
the board room at DuPont, all the way to a Kosevar Albanian grabbing his
coat on the way out the door of his already burning home. That doesn't mean
that it is all good, just that appeal to natural law is a blind alley.
I suggest a more pragmatic approach to deciding what is good for people and
the environment than appeal to natural law.
> Just where are you and Pioneer taking us, Dale?
Hell if I know! Modernity is a wild beast running at top speed.
> This whole thing is a joke and the funniest thing of all is
> that it's so obviously garbage.
I don't understand what exactly you think is a joke.
> (Of course I just ate 2 K of seedling mangos - but then I hadn't
> eaten all day. Now I'm chomping on some guamuchiles NEVER
> grafted as I type this).
I wish I had a mango right now, but I sure wouldn't eat 2 kg at one time ;-)
> This stuff, this way of "thinking" is really forced on
> people, for lack of any prominent and viable alternatives.
I know you mean grafted fruit and all that, but the bigger question is the
evolution of culture, and how we can see beyond our culture.
> I am going to start exporting real socially and
> environmentally responsible tropical food - the world's first
> international CSA movement, to complement the organic scene -
> any takers? I'm not kidding.
You know, half the people on this list will condemn you because they regard
long-distance shipping as unnatural. I'm interested because I'll bet your
produce tastes good.
Dale
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