​Humans change EVERYTHING

Image by Joe from Pixabay

~Brian Bondy
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Humankind definitely has a penchant for forcing the world around us to change for our “benefit”. Sometimes it’s trying to bend the will of others to believe something different, like religion, science, or justice. It may also be to change the world around us to be more accommodating, building dams, clearing forests, plowing fields.
 
These changes can cause conflict, alleviate hunger, alter nature. It’s quite the mixed bag. Arguably, we wouldn’t be where we are without fossil fuels. It would be easy to see that as a positive and a negative. Sometimes maybe, we just don’t know when it’s time to quit. Nobody likes change, but really, nobody likes change unless it’s easy.
 
I wrote about how humans changed wild animals into domesticated cats and dogs. The same goes true for cattle, pigs, and chickens. This is the food we eat because this is the food that is served to us in grocery stores. When I was a kid, I got served squirrel and didn’t think anything of it. Today that seems odd, but I have a Better Homes & Garden cookbook from the 60’s that shows how to skin and prep a squirrel and a rabbit.
 
I was looking up ‘how humans have modified their food’ How humanity has changed the food it eats - BBC Future  and the results were fascinating. It also came up with articles on how humans have changed because of the food they eat. The first thing that caught my eye was how, since humans have cooked their food thus making it easier to chew, this evolved our faces to become smaller and our jaws less powerful.

Humans’ civilization begins with farming. Food supplies being localized meant that they did not have to continuously wander in search of something to eat. Groups could form to help with protection, education, food production, etc. And the food could be selectively bred to be more productive, larger, sweeter, whatever the needs. Read some on that HERE. How Humans Have Changed Fruit (businessinsider.com)
 
Forests were cleared, dams were built, pesticides were sprayed, wolves were killed. Unintended consequences happened.
 
Today, genetic modification is done to help enhance plant growth. In some cases, generous scientists have created rice that will survive longer periods under water. They donated this genetic modification to the world, which helped some starving nations to grow rice where their regular crops failed due to the new, unusual weather patterns occurring today.
 
Monsanto, of course, was famous for patenting their seed products, then selling them everywhere. They could then sue farmers that were not buying their product, but the farmer’s crops were contaminated with Monsanto corn from neighboring crops. That was likely a conspiracy theory, a story you can read about HERE. 
 
There is genetic engineering going on to help alleviate hunger, produce pest resistant food, and even to produce milk and meat in a lab, not from animals. It’s happening right now. The promise of solving food shortages, and maybe even vegetarian compatible meat, vegan compatible milk, that has some seriously great promise. And, like AI, artificial intelligence, it has some seriously scary possibilities.
 
Cats & Dogs, Cows & Pigs, Wheat and Soy, they are all genetically modified, some by selective breeding, some in a lab. Where do you draw the line?