Book 12 — A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title — We are all Unique, Embrace It

Book — The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan

Book Description — Pollan presents case studies that mirror four types of human desires that are reflected in the way that we selectively grow, breed, and genetically engineer our plants. The tulip, beauty; cannabis, intoxication; the apple, sweetness; and the potato, control.

Reflection:

Did you know that every apple seed is 100% genetically unique from every other apple seed and will produce a totally unique looking and tasting apple if it grows and produces fruit someday?

Well I didn’t until I read this book. I thought there were Golden Delicious apple trees, Fuji apple trees, and Honeycrisp Apple Trees. That couldn’t be further from the truth. There has only ever been ONE Honeycrisp apple tree that the world has ever known actually. It was the magic of the unique DNA of this one apple seed that produced this tree one and only tree. That is how nature works. Everything is one big genetic experiment to see what works and doesn’t in this world. Honeycrisp’s appealed to humans so much in their taste, sweetness, coloring, etc that we figured out ways to graph the original tree to other apple trees to make sure they produced the same fruit over and over.

Humans did this so well that idiots like me think that there are really only like 10 varieties of apples that grow in this world and they all just happen to taste really good. There is good and bad in what we are doing. It is good for the Honeycrisp as it survived and thrived with our help. It is bad because there may be an infinite number of other potential delicious apples out there in this world that I’ll never taste, discover, and learn from. In a lot of ways, these little apples and other fruits are just like humans. We are all 100% unique. I would hate if there were only like 10 different types of humans in this world someday, we would miss out on so much if that were to happen. Embrace the uniqueness that everyone brings.

There will never be another Chris Sears in this world and I’m proud of that.

Who are we to take that away from the apples?

Question: What makes you unique?

Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction YOML Podcast Discussion — The Botany of Desire

YOML Bookstore — The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan