You know shag, I had careful reply to your last post planned, but after reading this I really don't see the point: I figure you're going to read into it what you already think. And I feel solidified in my suspicion that there's a tendency for people having a really hard time taking a careful critique of technology on its own merits.
[...]
.....
Well now, that hardly seems sporting.
After all, if shag went to the trouble of quoting passages from Pollan's latest book and offering an interpretation, the best way to counter that -- it seems to me -- would be by looking at the same passages and putting your counter offer on the table (and if you're too busy for all of it, a few would do). Certainly not by declaring, 'you're getting it wrong!' and leaving the room.
Speaking for myself, I have no trouble "taking a careful critique of technology on its own merits." For example, I see the merits of Ellul's "The Technological Society", Giedon's "Mechanization Takes Command" and Cacciari's "Architecture and Nihilism", to name three examples that quickly come to mind. All of which, in varying ways, carefully dissect technology as applied.
So maybe there isn't a general inability, just an analysis of Pollan's work which doesn't accept that 'careful critiquing' is what he's up to.
Speaking of which, Andy quoted:
It's Not the End After All November 26, 1995
by M. Pollan
<snip>
On closer inspection, it turned out that what McKibben was really mourning was not the end of nature per se, but the end of a certain romantic and scientifically meaningless idea of nature conceived as the pristine opposite of culture, as "the world apart from man." McKibben's biggest contribution to environmental thinking in "The End of Nature" was to unwittingly expose the harmfulness of this idea, which deserves much of the blame for America's schizoid, all-or-nothing approach toward the environment; we possess the unique ability to worship Edenic wilderness while paving over everything else.
[...]
full at --
<http://michaelpollan.com/article.php?id=56>
All of which is good stuff. But here's the thing Andy. As good as that is, if the ideas dusted throughout "Omnivore" are any indication, it no longer seems to reflect Pollan's main view. Hell, that was thirteen years ago. I could pull up a Hitchens article from 13 years ago and declare him to still be a biting critic of Western folly. But things have obviously changed.
So there's shag, practically typing while holding the man's latest book in her lap and there you are, telling her she's wrong and offering as proof an old article which may or may not be a report on the state of the art in Pollan's brain.
C'mon, rebut with the raw material at hand.
.d.