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Title: Genetic Engineering and Primitivism
Author: Tom Smith
Date: 5th September, 2011
Language: en
Topics: anti-civ, Charles Eisenstein, environment, Genetic Engineering, Genetic Modification, John Zerzan, primitivism, science
Source: Retrieved on September 19, 2011 from http://challengingciv.blogspot.com/2011/09/genetic-engineering-primitivism.html

Tom Smith

Genetic Engineering and Primitivism

If there’s one controversial issue which is obsessed over, probably to a

disproportionate extent, by most environmental activists it’s that of

genetic engineering. It’s also a logical place to explore from an

anti-civilisation perspective as it involves so many important facets of

the primitivist critique — domestication, agriculture, nature, hunger,

population, and many others.

There’s a high level of misunderstanding at play on the part of

environmental activists in focussing so feverishly and fervently on this

one topic. I won’t attempt to debunk all the myths surrounding GE here

as others have done a great job of that elsewhere [1] . However, to

sample a few:

In getting irate over the potentially “catastrophic and unknown

consequences” of tampering with crops at the genetic level, activists

completely ignore conventional plant breeding techniques such as

mutagenesis which are perfectly allowable under organic standards. This,

in essence, involves provoking many random genetic mutations through the

use of carcinogenic chemicals or radiation, and seeing if anything

useful comes out of it, a process inherently less predictable than many

techniques involved in GE/transgenics.

Terminator technology is not a commercially available trait and may

never be [2] . You can, in fact, still technically save seeds from GE

crops (although End User License Agreements may unfortunately make this

illegal, a completely different issue involving broader discussions of

intellectual property rights). Restrictions (via what are called Plant

Breeders’ Rights) are also in place on saved seed from

conventional/non-GE varieties on other farms, so this really isn’t an

issue inherent to the technology of GE.

Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT) — the transfer of a gene from one

species into the genome of another unrelated species — isn’t quite as

“unnatural” as it’s made out to be. As Stuart Brand mentions in Whole

Earth Discipline [3] , humans simply wouldn’t be human if it wasn’t for

the vast quantities of viral DNA embedded in our own genome.

Inter-species genetic transfer happens at random in nature all the time.

Equally, the vast majority of cells in your body aren’t even human, they

are in fact microbes [4] (e.g. intestinal bacteria) who are constantly

swapping DNA in random ways, right inside you.

Far from being a technology developed solely by the big baddies of

Monsanto et al., much (and increasing amounts of) research is being

undertaken at public institutions, intended for use in the Majority

world, for example. See CAMBIA for an example of this.

Looking at GE from an anti-civilisation perspective is refreshing,

though, because we can finally acknowledge that the technologies

involved are pretty much a mere extension of what humanity has been

doing for circa 10,000 years now.

Since the advent of the first agricultural revolution, humans have done

some downright bizarre (and often unethical) things in manipulating

their food, with GE being no different. See, for example, seedless

grapes, sterile bananas , colour-altered (formerly purple) carrots,

turkeys which can’t reproduce without artificial insemination by a human

hand, geese which can’t fly etc. If they have a problem with random acts

of control and intervention in “nature”, then why is the focus of food

activists so narrowly on GE foods?

Regarding Horizontal Gene Transfer, Charles Eisenstein has this to say

regarding recent developments in the field of biology:

“In place of this competition-based world-view, a new paradigm is

emerging that emphasizes symbiosis, cooperation, and the sharing of DNA

across species boundaries, calling the integrity of the discrete

biological self further into doubt.

... Horizontal gene transfer removes the biological underpinnings of the

ideology of the discrete and separate self. It suggests a new self, a

new identity that might be described as “interbeingness”. This is a much

more intimate relationship than mere interdependency among life forms.

Thanks to HGT, we are all incorporated into each others’ being.”

This isn’t to say that what humans are doing in the field of GE is

right, but just to acknowledge that opposing it on the basis of it being

“unnatural” is to turn your back on reality and to refuse to acknowledge

our species’ place in an almost infinitely-complex, beautiful and

interconnected biological system.

I’ve struggled a lot to pin this issue down but think the only

conclusion which holds water is that the rapid, inexorable advance of GE

(it is, truth told, the fastest spreading agricultural technology in

10,000 years), like agriculture itself, may be a huge philosophical

failure with serious biological consequences. As someone opposed to the

destructive processes of civilisation, I see how unsustainable

agriculture has been in all but a few places globally. GE is, to a large

extent, taking our tinkering attempts to heal the harms of agriculture

to a new micro level, while ignoring that what really needs to be done

is to be rid of agriculture as we know it.

As John Zerzan said in his laudable talk at Stanford University:

“Technology today is offering solutions to everything in every sphere.

You can hardly think of one for which it doesn’t come up with the

answer. But it would like us to forget that in virtually every case, it

has created the problem in the first place that it comes round to say

that it will transcend. Just a little more technology. That’s what it

always says. And I think we see the results ever more clearly today”

GE, it seems, is thus neither the panacea it’s made out to be by its

proponents, nor is it the ultra-evil which its opponents describe it as.

It’s simply a further (yet rather dramatic) notch up in speed along the

agricultural technological treadmill, a phenomenon well described

elsewhere. Furthermore, by focussing on GE as a human health threat [5]

, say, wastes time and attention which food activists should be

directing at the very real global health threat that is our

industrialised, high-input agricultural system .

In a discussion with a prominent Irish permaculture teacher (of all

things) who bizarrely believes that the natural world will be saved by

increasingly intensive agriculture [6] , I asked what miracle

technologies were going to allow 9 billion humans to be fed without

further pillage of the biosphere. The single response he came up with

was genetic engineering, an amazing statement for anyone with even a

fundamental awareness of the current state of agriculture to make, and

evidence of the baseless, deluded belief in a techno-utopia exhibited by

the Technologists. None of us are living in space, and none of us are

eating meals in pill form , things which were promised to become

imminently mundane some time ago. To believe, after millennia of

desertification, de-forestation, soil loss and species extinction, that

suddenly agriculture will become sustainable if we just tinker with

plant genetics is astounding. This smacks hugely of the civilised

(‘old’) mindset discussed in Daniel Quinn’s Beyond Civilization:

“If the world is saved, it will not be by old minds with new programs

but by new minds with no programs at all... Old minds think: If it

didn’t work last year, let’s do MORE of it this year. New minds think:

If it didn’t work last year, let’s do something ELSE this year.”

GE will be discussed here again in future posts, and in the meantime I’m

perfectly happy to be corrected on any inaccuracies in this one. Anyway,

I’ll conclude with this immensely central quote, which goes right to the

heart of genetic engineering and our modern culture’s arrogance and urge

to control:

“... if nature’s forms and systems express a purpose, then we must doubt

our absolute suzerainty over nature; we must doubt the assumption that

we can engineer nature endlessly with impunity, especially when we do so

in ignorance of its purposes. In a blind, purposeless universe we are at

perfect liberty to do our will, for there is no natural order on which

we might infringe, no destiny to interfere in, no destiny at all, in

fact, except that which we create. But if there is a purpose inherent in

the way of the world, then the whole bent of science must change from

understanding for control’s sake, to understanding for the sake of

according more closely to nature’s purpose.”

[1] E.g. Read Tomorrow’s Table by Ronald & Adamchak (2010)

[2] Despite the fact that it might have a use in preventing the spread

of genetically modified genes, something rarely acknowledged by

conventional anti-GE activists.

[3] Loath as I am to quote from that philosophically reprehensible book.

[4] Human cells are just much larger.

[5] Remember that not one person out of the many millions who have eaten

GE crops over the last two decades have had any adverse health impacts.

[6] Due to its supposed ability to feed more people on less land.