oh the last post was a reaction to reading In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan author of The Omnivore's Dilemma.

so F-ing stupid, to listen to food scientists, and nutritionists and all the idiot "experts" literally piece by piece try to retell us what for centuries we've already known and known better. if only we gave any credit to things such as story, and myth, and culture, and convention, and freaking intuition.

We are NOT stupid creatures. We already know how to live in this world. Grow up science and stop being so dang angsty.

plus, progress is not only achievable by science. so don't go accusing me of extreme conservatism.

Sometimes I can't believe how mad I am at Science.

as a kid i remember being so excited and curious and fascinated by science. it taught me about the world, and all the amazing things within it. i had this large picture book of earth science teaching me about rocks and how they were formed, and i took chemistry that taught me why certain things reacted the way they did and it was all magical and amazing.

but then i grew up.

i often feel as though people involved with science, turned on by science, passionate about science are stuck in a twilight zone teenage adolescence.

or perhaps i just relate it to my own life and then pass judgment. I grew up with religious education too. And it was boring, and had nothing to offer me on how I should live my life even though that was its express purpose. The metaphysics of religion seemed hopelessly out of touch (although it was Catholicism *wink*). Moralizing about this and that and generally just blabber.

but then i grew up.

I'm not saying I'm reverting to Catholicism and I'm not saying I'd never listen/trust/or become fascinated by science. But I feel as though I learned the limits of both science and religion. And by religion I mean so many many things. Plus, I don't want this to be a science vs. religion discussion because who gives a shit. (about that debate)

"Religion" for me changed when i went to college. i continue to use the word religion because religion for me has become a clear embodiment or institutionalization or way of communicating all that I associate with the word which could be communicated via these words: culture, history, myth, story, tradition, ethics. In a certain sense, "religion" for me changed to include "humanities" in college. The whole chunk of academia seemed appropriately "religious" hence, my leaning toward and eventual unbridled passion for Religious Studies at Pomona College.

And so, as I continued to learn via science in my courses along that route, and now after college continue to encounter in reading books written in, or criticizing against the scientific paradigm that rules the West, I am becoming increasingly annoyed at the adolescence of science.

Reading science stumble forth in its explanation of the world around us, and reading the history of science in its quest, it no longer has anything to offer me in how to live my life. How quaint science is.

How I live my life comes from culture, tradition, ethics, story, myth, and religion. These explain the world to me in a sense that is relevant. (we also see more and more 'hard science' disciplines growing offshoots prefaced by the word "applied" my reaction: yeah, no shit) what is relevant to living my life comes not from science but from humanities.

Aggravated by the ills science has caused (correction: people fighting under the banner of science), I get all worked up in a huffy and can't stand to have anyone operate under that idiotic ideology. And then, I hear my opponents decrying the ills of religion! How ghastly the crimes of religion! So then it hits me: science, ideology, group of people fanatically although disinterestedly following a pattern of life that sometimes is beautiful sometimes wreaks destruction, really means. Science is made up. And is just like the humanities and there's no dichotomy and to think that Science has any superiority to comparative literature or anything else is just bogus and I can spend all my time and talent decrying an ideology I think is dangerous and manipulative.

And so continues the process of demantling science's ideological remains from my mind.