Sean Dwyer

WC: 406

4/18

“Botanists have but one name for all those oddball cultivated tomatoes: S. lycopersium.” (Estabrook 11)

“To get around this problem, field managers examine the crop and then tell pickers on a certain day to take all the tomatoes below, say, the third row of supporting twine and none from higher up. The less mature fruits higher on the vines will be picked by crews that pass through the field again a couple of weeks later.” (Estabrook 31)

“You’re really changing the environment… and that causes genetic shifts from one generation to the next. It’s artificial selection.” (Estabrook 17)

“She said, “I’m sorry child you’ll have to fend for yourself” and started to throw me in the fireplace but all praises due to the gods Aunt Rose caught me.” (Smart-Grosvenor 3)

The triggering passages from this week’s text held a theme of humans playing god from a place of denial of the self. Estabrook discussed the history of tomato varieties that were linked to Mayan culture and how the usage of the term variety was describing its appearance rather than genetic difference. The theme of mythical origin stories developing from the malformed growth of American culture that I explored last quarter helped me understand how the tomato, and other celebrated crops such as corn, had to be monopolized to uphold the impressive stature of the American way. What one brings to their approach to growing reflects the quality of the food as reflected in the second quote listed. Rather than “getting around this problem” and adapting to a natural method of growth the quality of the product had to be sacrificed in order to continue the style of production. The third quote describes this process as artificial selection. Rather than utilizing the wisdom of Mayan culture to support nature’s mode of selection by propagating appropriate varieties with varying genetic structure to create resilience, the ego’s resilience overcame “this problem” and the people harvesting, the consumers, and the creators who repackaged the appearance of the same tomato. The genetic shifts have not been occurring in the plants and farms have been designed to create negative genetic shifts in the humans involved due to a large scale commodification of food. The quote I chose from Vibration Cooking describes Vertamae’s unlikely survival in her infancy and I saw a connection with youth being thrown to the fireplace. The artificial selection that has been used on humans rather than the natural selection of plant varieties artificially supports those who have an Aunt Rose. Rather than becoming stranger, strength can be found in finding the strength of those dedicated to sustaining their sense of self, but my version of “this problem” is differentiating between how we sustain our true sense of self and not an artificial development that we have identified as our self through our own origin story to be happy in our provided environment. If we have not developed our sense of self independently we are still subject to the whim of others seeking to validate their own perception of emotional compromise, which underpins a larger problem of growing through artificial methods, inhibiting our gift to be social creatures without the perceived need to socially sustain our artificial concept of the self.