The Lorax in the Anthropocene

By: | January 6, 2012

Late last year, I wrote about the dominance of the tragic “Lorax narrative” in environmental reporting. Journalists Sara Peach and Keith Kloor have since examined Lorax-ness in climate-change coverage, and I’ve been collecting climate stories that draw on other archetypal narratives (suggestions welcome).

The discussion has made me wonder: How would Dr. Seuss himself tackle climate change? After all, a tired narrative isn’t the only challenge for writers on the fast-shrinking climate beat. The story of climate change is muddy and complex, and its real drama is both geographically distant (if you’re lucky) and years in the future (ditto) — in other words, it lacks most of the ingredients that make any narrative memorable.

My guess is that the good doctor wouldn’t try to hide these problems. He wrote for kids, but he wasn’t afraid of complexity. He might even put the scientific, political, and personal knottiness of climate change at the heart of his story.

With apologies to the master, it might sound something like this.
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The Seven Deadly Sins: Anger

By: | January 4, 2012

A general psycho-neuro scenario of anger:  It begins outside you, with some sort of trigger – injustice, humiliation, betrayal, dishonor, frustration, negligence, restraint, physical threat.  It moves inside, into the pre-human depths of your brain and lights up a bunch of neurons called the amygdala.  The amygdala and some of its neural associates analyze the trigger’s shape, sound, and outrageousness, and decide to get angry.  They send out chemicals — serotonin, noradrenaline, and dopamine — which fly all over the brain and raise your blood pressure, increase your heart rate, turn your face red, intensify your alertness, narrow your attention, and screw up your judgment.  Whatever is in control now, it’s not you.  You cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.  You lose it.

“If this were the worst of this passion, it were more tolerable, but it ruins and subverts whole towns, cities, families, and kingdoms,” wrote Robert Burton, the seventheenth century scholar, in the remarkable Anatomy of Melancholy.  The history of nations, he continues, is the history of anger:  “Look into our Histories, and you shall almost meet with no other subject, but what a company of hare-brains have done in their rage!” Continue reading →

The seven deadly sins: Lust

By: | December 30, 2011

 

Yes, lust made the seven deadly sins list, but it’s also the reason we’re all here. Nearly half of all pregnancies in America are unplanned. Eliminate the primal urge to get naked and share body fluids, and homo sapiens would die out rather quickly.

My admittedly incomplete internet search (it’s easy to get sidetracked when you start googling words like lust and sin) failed to turn up a definitive answer on when or how sin attained its status as one of the seven deadly sins. But according to Skipping Towards Gomorrah, sex columnist Dan Savage’s entertaining first-person romp through the seven deadly sins, the big seven list isn’t found anywhere in the Bible.

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The Seven Deadly Sins: Envy

By: | December 29, 2011

You know the feeling: somebody has something and you want it for yourself. That thing may be talent, or success, or good looks, or something simple . . . like a bag of chips.

For me, the emotion is all too familiar. See that cute girl on the subway? The one with curly blonde hair, glittery tights, and knee-high leather boots? You might simply admire her footwear. I’ll make up an amazing fake life for her. And then I’ll envy that life. Because that’s what I do on the train. Why, yes. I do have a serious problem.

Each year, I make the same resolution: Think more charitable thoughts. And each year I find myself wallowing in the green, weed-choked pools of envy, harboring ill will toward my fellow — more successful, more attractive, more talented — man.

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The Seven Deadly Sins: Pride

By: | December 28, 2011

On June 26, 2000, three famous men — one president, two scientists — made a big announcement at the White House. Two independent teams — one public, one private — had published a first draft of the human genome, or as one of the scientists called it, the “book of life.” It was a feat. It would change the world. It would “revolutionize the diagnosis, prevention and treatment of most, if not all, human diseases,” the president said. Everybody was proud.

Ten years later, a journalist at a big newspaper pointed out that, well, no, the $3 billion we spent on the human genome — a dollar for each pair of DNA letters — had not bought us the ability to diagnose, prevent or treat common diseases. The genome had revolutionized basic biology, sure, but done little for human health.

The newspaper article made a lot of scientists angry. (Some of them are still sputtering about it at conferences.) It also launched a broader discussion about science communication and hype. A month ago, I went to a public event at the American Museum of Natural History, in Manhattan, called “The Human Genome and Human Health: Will the Promise Be Fulfilled?” Four experts on genetics, medicine, ethics and law discussed whether the promises of that 2000 announcement would ever come true. The general consensus was that the White House hoopla had raised expectations much too high, inevitably leading to disappointment. Pride goeth before the fall.

As a journalist, I hate hype, and I will never argue that journalists should be anything but skeptical of scientific advancements. But I recently learned that, like all of the Seven Deadly Sins, pride is necessary for survival. So I wonder, does science need hubris?
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The Seven Deadly Sins: Sloth

By: | December 27, 2011

When is a sin a virtue?

When the sinner is an assasin, and the sin is laziness.

In cancer, however, it’s diffiult to know which tumors will be slothful and which will be aggressive. This is the dilemma behind the ongoing controversies in screening and treatment for conditions such as breast and prostate cancer.

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Biologist Michael Soule on the Seven Deadly Sins

By: | December 26, 2011

Dearest readers, we hope you had a gluttonous, slothful, greedy and lustful holiday, with only the tiniest touches of wrath. Here at the Last Word on Nothing, we’re celebrating the season with a series of posts on the Seven Deadly Sins. Beginning tomorrow, each of our crack writers will tackle his or her favorite (or perhaps least favorite) sin, inspiring — we hope — pride on our part and envy on yours.

Today, though, we’ll consider all of the seven deadlies with conservation biologist Michael Soule, the founder of the Society for Conservation Biology and The Wildlands Network and a professor emeritus of environmental studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz.

In recent years, in pursuit of an ultimate explanation for human reluctance to protect biodiversity, Soule has turned his attention to the seven deadly sins, examining their history and evolution as both a scientist and a longtime Buddhist practitioner. I spoke with Soule at his home in western Colorado.

LWON: From a biologist’s perspective, what is sin?

Soule: Sin is about the most primitive emotional elements of survival and reproduction. If you look at the seven deadly sins, you see that each of them concerns a major component of fitness — how we survive, and how we succeed in courtship and reproduction.

So in that sense, there’s nothing biologically bad about any of the sins. All of them are necessary for survival and reproduction.

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