origins?

"...between about 9000 and 2000 b.p. populations throughout the world, already using very nearly the full range of available palatable foods, were forced to ajust to further increases in population by artificially increasing, not those resources they preferd to eat, but those which responded well to human attention and could be made to produce the greatest number of edible claories per unit of land."
from "The Food Crisis in Prehistory: Overpopulation and the Origins of Agriculture. by mark nathan cohen. p.15

"in aggregate we humans have shown no more restraint in contolling our numbers and appetites than bacteria on a perti dish of sugar or fruit flies on bananas in a flask or a deer population without predators."
from "Consulting the Genius of the Place: An Ecological Approach to a New Agriculture." by we jackson. p.247

william s. burroughs saw human behavior in terms of viruses...word virus was what he called his compulsion to write...events in my past have led me to think of them in terms of addiction...to me people seem hard-wired to procure and use ( or hoard) whatever it is that presses the "more!" button in their psychological or physiological make up...or both...mark cohen mnay be correct about the origins of agriculture...an expanding population in need of greater ammounts of food to sustain itself and a primal fear of starvation may have been driven to intervene in the lives of plants to quell that dread...when they began to see how much food they could produce the "more!" button got stuck in overdrive and the process of making a living by manipulating the lives of plants and the structure of the soil became a positive feedback loop...larger harvests=more people=more need pressed the "more!" button deeper and more land with fewer species ( those that produced the most) was brought into production and the philosophy of extraction gained creedance...humans ceased to be part of the natural world and instead became its "stewards"...coaxing cajoling, and bludgeoning it to meet our desire for "more!"...somewhere around two hundred and fifty years ago industrial manufacturing was born ( there were probably industries around as long as there have been humans, but it took machine tools to make the concept of extraction truly perilous) and the people with their hands on the control levers realized fairly early that they could artificially create a desire for "more!" with a combination of glitz and novelty...advertizing sent the "more!" button form overdrive to warp drive...so now we have fields of inedible crops that are feedstock for the packaged and processed foods we've been told we want and desire because they are an "improvement on nature"...along with legions of x-boxes, i-phones, computers, automobiles, air conditioners, televisions, microwaves, refirgerators, i-pods, digital camersa, dvr's,and play stations...all neatly packaged in dead, pulped trees and petrochemicals and with no end in sight...each one extracting its own share of resources and energy from the finite ammount the planet has to offer...how long can this go on?

it was about twelve degrees fahrenheit outside when i took the photos of the beds in the back yard...way too cold to dig tubers...so i spent the day perusing a number of books and ruminating on the state of the human race...i am profoundly disenchanted with anyone who holds themselves in a role of political or economic leadrship but i am encouraged by the number of people who have ceased to take them at their word and are preparing to move in much different directions economically and in the nature of social structures...hopefully the weather will begin to co-operate over the course of the next month or so and i can get back to the practical matters involved in parts of pursuing a different path...the apple seeds are coming along and it looks like at least another half dozen trees will be ready for potting in the next few weeks...more on that in the monday update...i ordered heirloom tomato seeds form baker creek seeds today and will be going through the process of starting them and using the grow light for more than just trees...the next season of the garden is almost on us and work will begin in that direction very soon...if those proceses interest you stay tuned.