I’ve been reading Jared Diamond’s Pulitzer Prize-winning study of the rise of civilizations, Guns, Germs, and Steel. Although many of his conclusions are controversial, the book is a great read, and in many broad ways confirms the Biblical narrative. He basically argues that food production as farming and herding originated earliest in the fertile crescent and gave the peoples of Eurasia a head start on the rest of the world’s population in developing writing, technology, and complicated societal structures. He argues that the people of the Fertile Crescent benefited from the abundance of farmable plants and domesticable animals. Indigenous peoples in eastern North America, for instance, would have had access to no large animals suitable for herding, and few native crops suitable for farming. Sunflowers are an exception, and were cultivated, as were some ancient kinds of beans and squash. One plant that Diamond calls a “nutritionist’s dream,” the sumpweed, however, was never domesticated.
Sumpweed seeds are large, abundant, and are 37% protein and 45% oil. Besides that there is the attractive name “sump” (meaning standing, stagnant water) and “weed” (meaning weed). Why would anyone pass up a steaming plate of sumpweed? Diamond lists some compelling reasons. Sumpweed is a relative of ragweed and like that better-known plant causes hay fever. It has a “strong, objectionable odor,” a bitter taste, and handling it causes skin irritation. His description of sumpweed reminds me of those miracle drugs advertised on television whose possible side-effects “may include nausea, mild dementia, or rashes with oily discharge.” I seriously doubt, however, that sumpweed’s being bitter, stinky, and the source of negative chemical reactions would be enough to discourage humans from acquiring a taste for it.
Look at all the other stinky, bitter, chemically reactive stuff we enjoy and become addicted to. Peter Falk has a line in Wim Winders wonderful film Wings of Desire, where he’s explaining to an Angel how delicious the five senses are. He says “To smoke, and to have a coffee – and when you do them both together, it’s fantastic.” I’m sorry Mr. Falk, but cigarettes and coffee are bitter, stinky, and react with our bodies in chemically negative ways. I love hot salsa. Eating it hurts, and digesting it later hurts worse. Yet, if unchecked by time, or a lack of corn chips, I will eat it a gallon of it at a sitting.
Psalm 133 begins: “How good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity.” David establishes two positive categories – “good,” beneficial, and “pleasant,” enjoyable. Not all “good” things are pleasant (dietary fiber, having your teeth cleaned, regular colonoscopies). Not all things that are “pleasant” are good (oreo cookies, double cheeseburgers, Mountain Dew). Humans seem to be unique among carbon-based life-forms in readily acquiring a taste for things that are neither good nor pleasant (tobacco products, raw oysters, the vocal stylings of Celine Dion).
I don’t know why Native Americans never developed a taste for sumpweed, but it wasn’t because it was bitter and bad for them. We humans seem to love nothing so much as things that are bitter and bad for us. And we pay the price for consuming those things. Lung cancer and heart disease, our two biggest killers, are largely caused by our unbridled consumption of things that are bitter and bad for us.
I know, O Lord, that a man’s is not in himself, nor is it in man who walks to direct his own steps. Jeremiah 10.23
My point is that unlike dogs, or salmon, or slime molds, humans can not be trusted to pursue a life course that will be as safe and beneficial as life on earth allows. Thus we must live deliberately – therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but as wise, making the most of your time because the days are evil (Ephesians 5.15-16). Good and pleasant things (like dwelling together in unity) don’t happen organically among humans, they must be asserted, cultivated, protected. If we live by our impulses we will acquire a taste (even an addiction) for all sorts of unpleasant and harmful things – perhaps even sumpweed.
