Summer Reading: Simple Solutions & Complex Problems

 

Ah, yes, I fondly remember the old days. All I needed was a piping hot cup of tea, a cozy corner in a well-lit room, and the latest installment of a Thomas Hardy novel.

Nowadays, I do things a bit differently.

I’m talking, of course, about summer reading routines. What could be better, on a torrid Chico summer afternoon, than sipping a Sierra Nevada Harvest Ale in a comfortably air-conditioned room, and devouring the latest pot-boiler? Here are a couple of provocative books to kick off a literary summer fest.

1) In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto (2008) by Michael Pollan.

Michael Pollan’s book does not try to solve the current global food crisis. His aim is more modest yet no less important: “to help us reclaim our health and happiness as eaters” (7). He views America’s ongoing battle with diet issues through the eyes of a cultural anthropologist yet the book is also informed with the wisdom and knowledge of an educated nutritionist.

At the heart of this book lies a central paradox. No other nation on earth has an obsession with healthy eating like the United States of America, yet no other nation suffers more from high levels of obesity and diabetes. As he says, “Thirty years of nutritional advice have left us fatter, sicker, and more poorly nourished” (81). The result, strangely enough, is that we, as a nation, have become “overfed and undernourished.” For example, we daily consume, on average, 300 more calories per person now compared with 1985. Most of those calories derive from sugars and fats. Omega-3 intake, meanwhile, has been drastically reduced, and Pollan argues that this might have something to do with higher national rates of depression, suicide, even homicide.

But take heart. The third and final section of the book does offer ways for each individual to revive the lost art of pleasurable eating and thereby reclaim their health. It all boils down to a simple mantra: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants” (1). In fact, that’s the opening line of the entire book. The subsequent 200 pages provide a weighty elaboration of this basic truth. And I think that’s one of the points that Pollan wishes to press in his book: we have turned the food industry into such a complex, all-controlling system that we have lost sight of the fact that the production and consumption of food should be an art not a science. Eating should be pleasurable as well as nourishing. It should encourage slow enjoyment not a quick fix. Our diets should not be prescribed, legislated, or industrialized. In short, simplify, simplify, simplify.

2) The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (2008) by Nick Turse.

From “simplify” to “complexify.” According to journalist Nick Turse, we are currently living out the troubling truth revealed by one of the characters in the 1999 sci-fi cult movie The Matrix. Towards the end of the movie, the hero (Morpheus) explains:

The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

In the movie, Morpheus is talking about a highly elaborate cybernetic network that has taken over humanity. In this book, , Turse is referring to a military-corporate complex that has similarly continued to tighten its grip on our everyday reality. He argues, “if you look closely, it can suddenly come into focus and be seen almost everywhere: on our TVs and in the movies we watch; in the video games we play and the products we buy; in the coffee we drink and the boots we wear; in the stocks we own and the Web sites we visit; and in almost every other facet of our lives” (271).

Does that sound like paranoid conspiracy thinking? Well, yes, it probably does. But if you’re like Nick Turse, and have spent a few years researching this topic, you’ll probably argue that you have every reason to feel afraid, very afraid. According to him, it’s not just the burgeoning budget of U.S. national security (now costing nearly $1 trillion per year) that should be a concern, it’s also the fact that so many of our everyday consumer items either directly or indirectly bear the imprint of the Department of Defense, from the Sony alarm-clock and Starbuck’s latte that wake us in the morning to the HP notebook computer and iPod MP3 player that keep us going throughout the day. In fact, it’s difficult to find a profit-making business these days that hasn’t, sooner or later, signed a lucrative contract with the military.

 

Turse’s main thesis is simple and direct: “an entire industry and culture of ‘homeland security’ has ushered in an era of military-industrial transformation” (270). From popular culture to foreign policy, we have allowed our lives to be dictated by the pervasive frame of “militarization.” Pushed to its most extreme, this thesis leads to a sobering conclusion: “it’s hard not to suspect that war making is now America’s most advanced product” (228).

 

While attributing much of this transformation to the impact of 9-11 on the national consciousness, Turse also reminds the reader that it was President Eisenhower who, in his 1961 farewell address, first warned the nation about the dangerous potential growth of a “military-industrial complex.” In other words, according to Turse, the events of 9-11 merely helped to further strengthen and consolidate (and “legitimize”) an agenda that was already powerfully entrenched in the national political psyche.

True, neither of these books is particularly “upbeat.” I must confess that I had to take a few extra gulps of Harvest Ale (not to mention mouthfuls of Doritos chips) to help me swallow the unappetizing portrait of contemporary America provided by Turse and Pollan. But at least I can rest assured that the locally-owned Sierra Nevada Brewing has never signed a contract with the Pentagon, and that the organic ingredients it uses in its beers are healthy and an epicurean’s delight.

Not sure about the Doritos, however.