I have sprouts!

I just planted my garden on Tuesday and I already have sprouts! Nothing is more exciting than growing plants, especially from seed. Putting something in the ground that grows to make food? This is the stuff that civilizations are built on. Literally. I finally finished reading the 400+ page book Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. It's really dense, that's why it took me six months to read it. He's an academic and a scientist so he goes to great lengths to explain and provide evidence to support his theories but most of it can be summarized in a few sentences.


Basically he asks the question “Why do some civilizations grow to conquer other civilizations or groups of people and not the other way around?” The answer, he says is in dense populations. Dense populations require food production. Out of the 200,000 plant species in the world, a mere dozen, he says, account for 80% of our current crops and not a single major food plant has been domesticated in thousands of years. That some groups of people happened to live where these plants grew gave them an enormous leg up. Same story for domesticable animals which were much more prevalent in Eurasia. Out of those domesticated herds living in close proximity with people came most of the communicable diseases that became accidental weapons of mass destruction for civilizations conquered by Europeans. Actual weapons came from innovation and technology, a result of competition for land that again is borne of dense populations requiring land for food growing. In the sparsely populated Americas, traversed by hunter-gatherers, there was little need for technology.

Diamond describes food production as an autocatalytic process meaning that it "catalyzes into a positive feedback cycle" that goes faster and faster. I've heard that once you plant vegetable plants that they produce more year, especially if you continue to cultivate them. So last Friday, I went to the nursery and bought vegetable seeds, herbs and soil - peat moss, manure and planting mix. First, I blocked off my area (about 10x4') with cinder blocks to hold the soil (I ran out and used some stiff cardboard for the rest). Then I laid cardboard boxes over the soil (after removing the packing tape) and soaked them. I layered and layered the soil but had only covered about a half of an inch so I went back to the nursery. In the end, I built up the garden about two or three inches, and then watered it again. I tracked the sun to make sure I was getting at least five hours of sunlight before I planted.


I started to get a little freaked out. I haven't used a book and I'm pretty much making this up as I go. What if birds come and eat all my seeds? Or some little animals come and chew off the plants as they sprout? What if I can't find a job and have to move out before any veggies grow? A sign at the nursery about checking the PH balance of my soil made it sound like my seeds might be sizzling in acid in the ground right now instead of germinating. I also saw a lot of spiders in the garden and an army of ants, but a little Internet research informed me that both are very garden friendly.

I took a deep breath and planted my seeds. I put tomatoes with the parsley, basil and mint plants, a row of green onions and marigolds for bug protection for the entire garden, lettuces with radishes here and there to protect from critters, an assorted mix of summer squash and bordered the whole thing with cosmos, which are pretty and also keep bugs away. In the cinder blocks, I planted arugula, which apparently does well in containers. In the areas outside the garden, I planted a hummingbird flower mix and sweetpeas to climb the fence. The seed packages say they it 45-90 days to produce vegetables but I should have sprouts for everything by 5-15 days. I spent $140 total and if it provides four weeks' worth of vegetables, it will have paid for itself but I anticipate that it will produce much more than that and enough to give away to friends. I still have most of the seeds I bought so I can keep planting as long as the weather is nice.


An article in the New York Times said seed and food plant sales are up all over the country and not since the 1970's when inflation was high, have nurseries seen this kind of interest in fruit and vegetable gardening. A desire to eat better quality food and rising food prices are cited as responsible for the surge. The latest salmonella scare in tomatoes, they think caused by contamination upstream from another farm, makes me think that my city garden is potentially safer than an organic farm in a more rural area. And if food production really is the catalyst for civilization, then who ever controls food production will have power over us all. How cool would it be if we asserted our independence and expressed our liberty by starting a food growing revolution?

Scaling the walls

On Christmas day, a Siberian tiger escaped its enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo and attacked three teenage boys, killing one, before police shot and killed it. The zoo claims the teen and his friends were throwing things, harassing the tiger, and had evidence of drugs in their car. But the real concern seems to be whether the walls should be higher; clearly the public isn’t safe around a caged wild animal.

Yesterday, the paper reported that since the attack, in two separate incidents, a 600-pound polar bear scaled the wall of her enclosure and nearly escaped and a snow leopard, while being moved between enclosures, chewed a 4-inch hole in the mesh cage and stuck its head and paw through. The zoo administrator denied these reports as escape attempts or anything to be worried about. Of course, they mean that we don't have to worry about ourselves. We should still be worried about the animals.

Most of the animals that people like to see in zoos are mammals. Mammals are the only species that need touch from other mammals to survive. Our social structures are built around that touch – how and when and who can touch us. These majestic animals that we love to look at - gorillas, tigers, lions, elephants and polar bears – have incredibly complex social structures like our own. Think about your life. How many people you see on a daily basis, how many you talk to, how many are your friends and your family. Think about how many miles you travel, all the different kinds of foods you eat and the places you go and look at.

Now imagine that you instead you spent your whole life in an apartment with one person you don’t even know and might not even like. Your keepers expect you to mate and have children with that person! Should you actually like this person enough to do so, it's very probable that they'll take your child or sell you to another zoo. They feed you the same thing every day. You never leave, you never see anyone different, you weigh twice as much as you do now, and you sleep all the time because you’re depressed.

Now imagine that six days a week visitors came to look at you. They yell at you, pound on your windows, take pictures of you and sometimes throw things. They want you to do something entertaining, to make them laugh or smile but they get to leave and you will always be there. Would you regard that life as anything but torture? Wouldn’t you also scale a wall or chew a hole through your cage and attack someone? Wouldn’t you do anything you could to get out of that situation?

I have said before that PETA is too extreme but on this issue, I agree with them one hundred percent. Zoos are pitiful prisons and they should be closed. All of them. The position of the Humane Society, whom I normally support, is pathetic and contradictory:

The Humane Society of the United States strongly believes that under most circumstances wild animals should be permitted to exist undisturbed in their natural environments. However, we recognize the widespread existence of zoos and acknowledge that some serve a demonstrable purpose in the long-term benefit of animals, such as the preservation and restoration of endangered species, and the education of people to the needs of wild animals and their role in ecosystems. [Emphasis mine]

But then they go on to say that not only is it impossible to simulate an animal's natural environment, only 10% of facilities are accredited to humane standards - and even that doesn't ensure humane treatment! Their focus is to work for better treatment of animals in zoos. It reminds me of the tobacco companies who, when their sales are dropping, ask how they could get people smoking more and never question whether they should even be making cigarettes. That's what we should be asking here, why are there zoos?

Zoos fail at everything they claim to do. They don't educate. Where's the education is seeing an animal in a cage? It's not going to do anything it does in the wild and people don't want to learn anyway, they want to be entertained. Zoos don't preserve species. Even if they breed endangered species, those animals can never be released into the wild because if they're raised in captivity, they aren't really wild animals! In Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond says that the animals that are domesticated are domesticated because it was possible, because it was easy. Wild animals are not meant to be raised by humans.

How many people, I wonder, after learning that an animal they've seen in the zoo is endangered, like the Siberian Tiger that killed the teenager, go home a write a check for preservation, or find out what they can do to help that species, get involved or write a letter? Are people really more concerned about poaching and encroachment and loss of habitat when they've just seen a majestic animal pacing in a cage like a creature that's lost its mind? Clearly it only sends a message that it's acceptable to torture animals.

"But the kids LOVE the zoo!" No, kids don't love zoos, they love animals. They come out of the womb loving animals but they have to be taught to love the zoo. Whenever I’ve gone with my nephew, we spend more time trying to get him excited about the exhibits than anything else. “Look Jonathan, look over here!” we yell while he seems perfectly fine to look at the plants, climb on a rock or watch other people.

Our pets are treated ten times better than these animals. They're domesticated for one thing, so human company is something they choose and enjoy. (Except for some states like North Carolina that allow ownership of wild animals including tigers.) They get to eat all different kinds of foods, or whatever food they want. They get out into the world, get to socialize with other animals, get love and affection and new experiences. Even so, we've all seen what happens when a dog is tied up and neglected. They're mean, they bark and bite and attack. Why? Because it's inhumane to restrict an animal's movement and deprive them of social interaction. Even domesticated animals have been known to escape from the slaughter house.

So I find it really sad that people love zoos. A Google search of "I love zoos" turned up 225,000 results while "I hate zoos," only 26,400. Ten times more people find the idea of building bigger walls and restricting the animals even more to be preferable over closing the zoo altogether. We put people in prisons as a punishment but what did the animals do to us? I say if you really like animals, boycott the zoo, donate to WWF, watch animal shows like Planet Earth, buy your kids a subscription to National Geographic Kids and take them hiking where you can see wild animals in their own habitat.

Here's the way kids should enjoy lions!

Evolution is more than mere persistence

Something I think about often is evolution. In the context of living creatures, evolution is a process of change, arising as a result of external conditions, that facilitates the survival of the species. Guns, Germs, and Steel (which I’m only halfway done with and I just discovered is available as a movie on DVD!) is an essay about why different peoples evolved at different rates. The impetus is to answer a question of why the haves are the haves and the have-nots are the have-nots (instead of the other way around).

The success of evolution is found in the persistence of a species or group. If the change results in a greater population (and perhaps greater welfare) of the group, the evolution was successful. Jared Diamond goes through a discussion of the evolution of disease, for example. When humans became sedentary and lived in groups large enough for disease to thrive in, we acquired sicknesses evolved from animal diseases. From animals we’d domesticated in large enough numbers to sustain disease. In the beginning, many of these killers wiped out whole populations but soon evolved not to kill, allowing people to carry the disease longer and transmit it to more people.

In answering the have/have-not question though, I think we have to take into consideration that mere persistence through population is not the only measure of success. Now, a tribe that exerts more power, consumes more resources and is more resistant to disease is more “successful” than a tribe with a much larger population that is prone to poverty and disease. (I imagine that Jared Diamond will get there, and I’ll let you know what he says about that.)

But there are other issues that may or may not perpetuate the tribe but seem to me to be part of our evolution. Issues that arise as we pursue liberty and well being, demand tolerance and acceptance and ask for compassion and humanity. They are part of our evolution because of our huge population growth, our collective affect on the environment and the rapid exchange of information around the globe. Just like the right ingredients allowed certain diseases to arise, these conditions brought about these issues.

When looking at the problems of the world, I feel like we’re seeing the old clashing with the new. In the old way of evolution, people killed, displaced and enslaved other populations to perpetuate their tribe. In the new way, we protect other populations, attempt to understand the enemy and promote everyone's participation in making the world. In the old way the earth was to be mined, rivers dammed and mountains flattened for industry, animals raised and killed and crops grown to feed and grow populations. In the new way, we develop industry that gives back what we take from the earth, minimize our exploitation of animals and treat them more humanely.

The rate of change has recently accelerated because we’ve discovered that we can’t afford not to. The old way will destroy us. So how do we appeal to those populations (and leaders) still trying to perpetuate their tribe the old way? In Sudan, Israel, Afghanistan and Iraq, tribes are still killing and displacing. In China, Peru, and the United States, tribes are still raping the land. The new way doesn’t justify killing and displacing. It encourages participation and understanding, asks that we act as a single tribe to find solutions to common problems and use mercy on those who seek to destroy us. That’s our evolution.

Moving into the light of discovery

I am just coming out of what has been one of the darkest moments of my history. Hard to believe because I only lost my job. I am still healthy, everyone I love is still alive, and I have not been swallowed by destitution. Far from it. My darkness is from within but that does not necessarily make it easier to overcome. It's ironic, or perhaps appropriate, that I would become unemployed at this moment in time.

I have been wrestling the last couple of years with my purpose in life. Almost seven years ago I gleefully left my job in marketing to move to Los Angeles and pursue acting. I felt very strongly that it was my calling. I said at the time that “I wanted to make people feel.” I suppose I have always in some way wanted to influence and inspire. Whether via my interest in politics or marketing for that matter, or more recently, filmmaking and writing. However, the pursuit of show business can make one weary and diminish the fire that once burned. I made a decision a little more than a year ago to give up acting and, tired of living in poverty, went back to marketing.

That's where the darkness began. I started questioning my motivation for staying in Los Angeles since I had begrudgingly moved here from beautiful Seattle. I miss the clouds, the rain, the fresh air. I despise driving in the city so much that it has, at times, made a recluse out of me. At the same time, marketing was never something I wanted, just something I fell into and happened to be good at. With a beautiful apartment in Santa Monica and a full-time job, I stopped doing anything other than working and one other thing: writing my blog.

It is probably this blog that has saved me from despair since I feel compelled to explain myself. I started it and I can't give up on it. The blog demands to know what's on my mind. Yet I have not written about the guilt I struggle with. What gives me the right, I wonder, to require that my life have meaning? That my work have meaning? Why do I not seem capable of just having a job? I struggle with feelings of inadequacy and at the same time a sense of fate. I am meant for something valuable, I know that I am. I know that I have something to offer the world, something yet to be discovered. It could be a film that I have dreamed of making, a blog entry that I will write, it could be a non-profit that I am to launch or a bid for public office that I have not yet made. My greatest fear, the blackness that surrounds me, is that I will live an unexamined life.

I'm reading Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, And Steel, the 400+ page Pulitzer Prize winning book that seeks to answer the question “Why did history unfold differently on different continents?” I'm only a quarter of the way through and yet I've already learned something very fascinating. Diamond seeks to explain how it is that in 1532 Francisco Pizarro with only 62 soldiers on horseback and 106 on foot was able to defeat Atahuallpa's army of 80,000 in modern-day Peru?

Even though the Spanish conquest of the New World began in 1510, no news of this had reached the Incas, 600 miles to the South. When Pizarro first landed on the Peruvian coast in 1527 he was not seen as a threat because Atahuallpa didn't know that only a decade earlier, the Spanish explorer Hernan Cortes captured and killed Montezuma in Mexico, defeating the Aztecs. The people of the New World did not yet have a written language and no way of sharing such information.

While Pizarro replicated Cortes' strategy exactly, published back home, the Incas had never heard of anything like this happening. When Pizarro demanded a ransom of a gold-filled room for the release of Atahuallpa, the latter believed he would be let go when they provided it. But he was executed just as Montezuma had been. While it is not the sole cause of the defeat, literacy – the ability to learn and know about other peoples' experiences – gave the Spanish an advantage over those living without knowledge of anything they themselves had not experienced.

Several years ago, when I was in a similar place of not knowing what I wanted to do, I considered going back to school to study archeology and instead chose acting (naturally!) But I still love to read about history because I think there is so much to be learned from our past and from other cultures. I think this is how the blog fits into my life. It is where I examine and attempt to understand humanity and myself. It motivates me to be literate, it forces me to look beyond my life and ultimately live life in the light of discovery.