This is something I wrote a while back. Any feedback on it would be appreciated.
Author's Note: DDT, the Drug War, and leaf-cutter ants. How are these things related? They are all the elements of co-evolution, either in a biological sense, and artificial sense, or combination of the two. So what is co-evolution? Read Chuck Darwin, or you can just read my bastardized rendering of his theories.
Chuck Darwin pissed off a lot of people in his day. He still seems to today since the teaching of evolution in schools is still a very heated topic in America. While pissing off the masses is something I've always wanted to do, odds are the aspects of his theory that I attempt to extrapolate to modern life will probably not be as controversial as suggesting man came from monkeys.
But let's go back to another great scientist, Dr. Paul Hermann Mller. In 1948, Dr. Mller was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for discovering dichloro-diphenyl-trichloromethylmethane, or more commonly, DDT. DDT was a wonderful poison that could kill massive amounts of insects quickly and efficiently. Crop yields were amazing and reached unprecedented levels. The Golden Age of Agriculture was upon us.
So what happened? Well, the insects fought back. More precisely, they evolved back. Even though DDT could kill maybe 98% of all insects, that other 2% had offspring, and insects don't just have 2.3 kids like affluent, suburban Americans do, they have thousands. Before long, the new insects were stronger and more virulent than the pre-DDT insects and crop losses due to insects was even greater than the pre-DDT days. Sounds like that plan backfired, right?
Well, in our typical form, instead of backing away from something that didn't work, we do the same thing harder, faster, and stronger. Now we have lots of wonderful chemicals even more poisonous than DDT, in a sense, we had to evolve our pest-eradication methods as insects evolved even stronger, devouring our monoculture fields with greater efficiency.
So in a backward kind of way, we effectively evolved superbugs! Yay, us!
So what does that have to do with the Drug War?
Well, the drug war operates on a belief similar to the one that sparked our use of DDT. The belief is that by using DDT we can stop all bugs from eating our food. The Drug War belief is that by interdiction and taking down drug lords we can stop all drugs from poisoning our youth. With the huge success of DDT to our record, we crusaded on to fight the next evil.
So what happened? Drug use up in ghettos, drugs spreading to affluent suburbs, larger levels of drug-related transmission of HIV, and new better "designer drugs" being made in American labs, not to mention the marijuana fields in places like Georgia that local cops look the other way.
As we have attempted to create new and better ways to stop drugs, the drug users and producers have adapted around us, just like the bugs did. One might say, we tried to evolve ways to solve the drug problem, and the users and produced evolved ways around us.
So effectively, we helped to increase demand by controlling the substance, and inspired producers to make new better drugs! Yay, us! Two for two!
So what does that have to do with leaf-cutter ants?
Not much actually. Leaf-cutter ants are agriculturalists as well, though. They grow fungus in their caves for their sustenance. To feed the fungus, they cut leaves (hence the name) into a small paste that serves as a fertilizer. From time to time, foreign fungi try to choke out the fungus the ants feed on. So how do the ants respond? Did they create a super-chemical that attacks the foreign fungi? Or did they organize a task force of little fungi enforcement agents (FEA) to prevent any foreign fungi from entering their cave?
They came up with a better idea. They evolved an answer. Upon examination of the leaf-cutter ants' feet, scientists found a bacteria that is always present. This bacteria attacks fungi that are harmful to the ants' crops. Unlike DDT, it does not use a specific chemical process to kill invaders; it co-evolves with the foreign fungi. This means that the bacteria constantly adapts to find new ways to kill foreign fungi, all the while, the fungi are adapting new ways around the bacteria. The end result is an acceptable level of crop loss to invaders.
That's the main difference between this system and the previous two; the ants have accepted that some crop loss will occur. This is just nature. They do not attempt to go against nature; they flow with it and evolve alongside it.
Perhaps we could learn from the ants. Maybe, just maybe, there is an acceptable level of crop loss to insects. Possible if we used systems like horticulture, that loss could be mitigated by the fact that the insects would only get the one crop they could consume. Large fields of monoculture only give the insects an opportunity to run rampant.
Perhaps if we accepted that there is a level of drugs that is acceptable (horror of horrors!), we could actually control if with taxation, or god forbid, a free-market system in which supply and demand meet unconstrained.
One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, each time expecting a different result. Maybe it's time we do something different, and nature could provide some excellent ideas for "new" ways of looking at our problems.
Dangerous ideas, I know...
Direct Action Journal
Author's Note: DDT, the Drug War, and leaf-cutter ants. How are these things related? They are all the elements of co-evolution, either in a biological sense, and artificial sense, or combination of the two. So what is co-evolution? Read Chuck Darwin, or you can just read my bastardized rendering of his theories.
Chuck Darwin pissed off a lot of people in his day. He still seems to today since the teaching of evolution in schools is still a very heated topic in America. While pissing off the masses is something I've always wanted to do, odds are the aspects of his theory that I attempt to extrapolate to modern life will probably not be as controversial as suggesting man came from monkeys.
But let's go back to another great scientist, Dr. Paul Hermann Mller. In 1948, Dr. Mller was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for discovering dichloro-diphenyl-trichloromethylmethane, or more commonly, DDT. DDT was a wonderful poison that could kill massive amounts of insects quickly and efficiently. Crop yields were amazing and reached unprecedented levels. The Golden Age of Agriculture was upon us.
So what happened? Well, the insects fought back. More precisely, they evolved back. Even though DDT could kill maybe 98% of all insects, that other 2% had offspring, and insects don't just have 2.3 kids like affluent, suburban Americans do, they have thousands. Before long, the new insects were stronger and more virulent than the pre-DDT insects and crop losses due to insects was even greater than the pre-DDT days. Sounds like that plan backfired, right?
Well, in our typical form, instead of backing away from something that didn't work, we do the same thing harder, faster, and stronger. Now we have lots of wonderful chemicals even more poisonous than DDT, in a sense, we had to evolve our pest-eradication methods as insects evolved even stronger, devouring our monoculture fields with greater efficiency.
So in a backward kind of way, we effectively evolved superbugs! Yay, us!
So what does that have to do with the Drug War?
Well, the drug war operates on a belief similar to the one that sparked our use of DDT. The belief is that by using DDT we can stop all bugs from eating our food. The Drug War belief is that by interdiction and taking down drug lords we can stop all drugs from poisoning our youth. With the huge success of DDT to our record, we crusaded on to fight the next evil.
So what happened? Drug use up in ghettos, drugs spreading to affluent suburbs, larger levels of drug-related transmission of HIV, and new better "designer drugs" being made in American labs, not to mention the marijuana fields in places like Georgia that local cops look the other way.
As we have attempted to create new and better ways to stop drugs, the drug users and producers have adapted around us, just like the bugs did. One might say, we tried to evolve ways to solve the drug problem, and the users and produced evolved ways around us.
So effectively, we helped to increase demand by controlling the substance, and inspired producers to make new better drugs! Yay, us! Two for two!
So what does that have to do with leaf-cutter ants?
Not much actually. Leaf-cutter ants are agriculturalists as well, though. They grow fungus in their caves for their sustenance. To feed the fungus, they cut leaves (hence the name) into a small paste that serves as a fertilizer. From time to time, foreign fungi try to choke out the fungus the ants feed on. So how do the ants respond? Did they create a super-chemical that attacks the foreign fungi? Or did they organize a task force of little fungi enforcement agents (FEA) to prevent any foreign fungi from entering their cave?
They came up with a better idea. They evolved an answer. Upon examination of the leaf-cutter ants' feet, scientists found a bacteria that is always present. This bacteria attacks fungi that are harmful to the ants' crops. Unlike DDT, it does not use a specific chemical process to kill invaders; it co-evolves with the foreign fungi. This means that the bacteria constantly adapts to find new ways to kill foreign fungi, all the while, the fungi are adapting new ways around the bacteria. The end result is an acceptable level of crop loss to invaders.
That's the main difference between this system and the previous two; the ants have accepted that some crop loss will occur. This is just nature. They do not attempt to go against nature; they flow with it and evolve alongside it.
Perhaps we could learn from the ants. Maybe, just maybe, there is an acceptable level of crop loss to insects. Possible if we used systems like horticulture, that loss could be mitigated by the fact that the insects would only get the one crop they could consume. Large fields of monoculture only give the insects an opportunity to run rampant.
Perhaps if we accepted that there is a level of drugs that is acceptable (horror of horrors!), we could actually control if with taxation, or god forbid, a free-market system in which supply and demand meet unconstrained.
One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, each time expecting a different result. Maybe it's time we do something different, and nature could provide some excellent ideas for "new" ways of looking at our problems.
Dangerous ideas, I know...
Direct Action Journal
VIEW 4 of 4 COMMENTS
f_a_hayek said:
i just dont see a correlation between interdiction and higher drug use in an economic sense.
I think when you control a substance, demand does increase. It's the scarity principle. The same reason toy makers release 'limited editions' and whatnot.
In Europe, where drinking ages are lower, they don't have half the young alcholism problems we have in the states.
[Edited on Jul 14, 2004 7:29AM]
Have you read anything by Lynn Margulis? She has managed to convince most scientists that eukaryotic cells were themselves a product of co-evolution. Fasinating stuff.