If They Give You Lined Paper, Write Sideways (13 page)

Daniel
[
sighing
]. Yes, of course, there's that one. This represents a kind of misdirection called "changing the subject." Have I said anything connecting growth rate to food availability?

Elaine
[
after thinking for a moment
]. Not that I recall.

Daniel
. I've said only that the population of any species will grow if more food becomes available to it, and our population is currently growing by about seventy-seven million every year. That may not sound
like much, but I once took the trouble to do some research, and found that this is equivalent to the
combined populations of Canada, Australia, Denmark, Austria, and Greece. Every year.

Elaine
. That's impressive, when you put it that way.

Daniel
. The fact that it's growing at a faster rate in some places than others is beside the point. The point is that the human population is steadily growing because we're steadily increasing food production.

Elaine
. I see that.

Daniel
. The reason why growth rates differ in developed and undeveloped nations has nothing to do
with food availability. It has to do with family economics. In developed nations having a multiplicity of
children is a burden, no matter how abundant food is, whereas in undeveloped nations it's a blessing, no
matter how scarce food is. Do I need to explain why this is so?

Elaine
. No, I don't think so. In developed nations it costs a lot of money to raise children, and they're not expected to contribute anything to family income. In undeveloped nations it costs little to raise
children, and they generally contribute a lot to family income.

Daniel
. I'm sure you realize that we don't consume all the food we produce in the United States.

Elaine
. Of course. I assume we export huge amounts of it.

Daniel
. So this food isn't being turned into human biomass in the United States. Since it's not here, it
can't
be used for that purpose.

Elaine
. Right.

Daniel
. So what's happening to it?

Elaine
. It's being turned into human biomass in other parts of the world.

Daniel
. So while we're not interested in increasing our own population, we're very interested in
producing surplus food to support population growth elsewhere.

Elaine
. True. [
After thinking for a bit.
] But when this business of growth rates is brought up, one of the points that people make is that when currently underdeveloped nations reach our level of prosperity their
growth rates are likely to go down just the way ours has.

Daniel
. And at that point population growth will be negligible.

Elaine
. That's right.

Daniel
. All right. We need a reality check here. First, it's been estimated that we'd need the resources of six planets the size of the earth if all six billion of us were living the way people live in developed
nations. Second, the US Census Bureau estimates that by the year 2050, there will be nine billion of us,
and while the growth rate will have declined substantially, we'll still be adding an annual population the size of New York City and Los Angeles combined. Third, you understand that our present system of
food production is almost entirely dependent on fossil fuel at every stage between fertilization of
cropland to delivery of processed, packaged foods to your grocery store.

Elaine
. Yes.

Daniel
. Fourth, the projected increase in our population to nine billion assumes that food production is going to increase. But this projection doesn't take into account the fact that, in order to reach nine
billion, we're going to have to steadily increase the amount of fossil fuel we pour into agricultural
production during a fifty-year period when the world's supply of fossil fuel is going to be steadily
diminishing. It's estimated that oil production is going to decline by 60 or 70 percent between now and
the year 2050.

Elaine
. So it sounds like that projection is based on a fantasy.

Daniel
. Yes. If our system of agriculture and the percentage of oil used for agriculture remain the same for the next fifty years, then our population is also going to decline by 60 or 70 percent.

Elaine
. The die-off predicted by the Peak Oil theory.

Daniel
. That's right. At a conference this year in Dublin ("What Will We Eat as the Oil Runs Out?"
organized by the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability, 2005) a paper was read that examined
what we'd need to do to restructure our agricultural system to one that is fossil-fuel-free and concluded
that this was not beyond possibility ("Threats of Peak Oil to the Global Food Supply" by Richard Heinberg, author of two important books in the Peak Oil canon, The Party's Over and Powerdown). So
the threatened die-off is not necessarily inevitable, at least during this period. I seriously doubt that the planet's ecological systems could survive a human population of nine billion — nine billion and still
growing.

Elaine
[
after thinking for a minute
]. So — in light of all this — the difference in growth rates between developed and undeveloped nations really seems like a nonissue.

Daniel
. It's a red herring. Thrown out to distract from the fact that, like all other species, our overall population grows when our food supply grows, no matter whether growth occurs faster in one place or
another... Well, let's see... [
Picks up and begins looking through a stack of index cards.
]

Elaine
. I have a question.

Daniel
. Go ahead.

Elaine
. Is it the plan that we're going to continue with questions you've received from readers?

Daniel
. Well... I hadn't so much thought of it as a plan as... Do you have a problem with it as a
procedure?

Elaine
. Not a problem, exactly.

Daniel
. But?

Elaine
. I guess I expected something more... systematic.

Daniel
. Talk some more.

Elaine
. You're teaching me how to deal with questions. But in reality — in my day-to-day life — I don't have to deal with questions. No one has ever asked me questions like the ones we've been discussing.

Daniel
. I'm not teaching you how to answer questions. Have we ever actually answered any of the
questions I've brought up?

Elaine
. Well, no, not specifically. I mean, we've never ended up framing an actual answer.

Daniel
. The questions are just raw material. They give us opportunities to examine what's going on in the minds of the people around us.

Elaine
. I don't know...

Daniel
. Consider this. Once I was listening to a talk show in the car, and the subject under discussion was the protection of endangered species. The host said something like, "I don't know. Personally, I can do without songbirds."

Elaine
. Uh-huh.

Daniel
. You see that I could have used this as a springboard for an examination of what was going on in this person's mind.

Elaine
. Yes, certainly.

Daniel
. But it's not a question that someone sent to me. It's something I picked out of the air.

Elaine
. I get that.

Daniel
. My point is that I don't have a stock of material to look at that I've heard on the radio. What I have is a stock of questions and comments that people have sent to me.

Elaine
. I see that...

Daniel
. But?

Elaine
. I don't know.

Daniel
. Take your time. Take all the time you need.

Elaine
[
after a few minutes
]. Right at the beginning, you talked about one big question that you felt you'd never answered adequately. And the idea seemed to be that you were going to answer it here, in
this conversation.

Daniel
. The question being "How do I do what I do?"

Elaine
. That's right.

Daniel
. And you feel we're not getting at that question.

Elaine
. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that
I'm
not getting at it. At least that's the way I feel.

Daniel
. Well, if that's the way you
feel
, then that's the way it
is
. Tell me more about it.

Elaine
. I guess what I'm looking for is your
method
. A coherent, systematic description of your method.

Daniel
. You're looking for something like that classic by Charles Van Doren and Mortimer Adler,
How
to Read a Book
. That was very methodical, very coherent and systematic.

Elaine
. I haven't read it, but I'll take your word for it.

Daniel
[
after a few minutes
]. Back in the mid-1970s I had a wonderful tennis instructor. I hadn't played tennis in twenty years, and I'd never had any formal instruction at all. So the first thing he did, once we had me properly outfitted, was to put me on a court, stand three or four yards away, and bounce a ball to
my forehand to see what I did with it. Then after a while he started bouncing balls to my backhand.
Then he said, "Okay, we've got to work on your basic strokes." So he taught me the proper way to step into a ball coming to my right or left. I practiced these strokes — oh, I don't know — five thousand
times, so many times that I could stand up right now and without hesitation show you exactly how the
ball was addressed in the era when Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe were superstars of tennis. When
we had these strokes down, we added volleys at the net, then smashes, then serves. During this long,
long period we never "played tennis," never just rallied, never played games and kept score. I don't suppose you see why I'm telling you this.

Elaine
. You're right, I don't.

Daniel
. I can't teach you that way. Call it the
technical
way, in which you perfect all the individual techniques and only then begin to put them all together.

Elaine
. Okay. I guess I can see that.

Daniel
. I suppose you could say that the technical way is opposite from the way you learn to ride a bicycle. You can't learn to ride a bicycle first by practicing steering for fifty hours, pedaling for fifty hours, and keeping your balance for fifty hours. You get all those skills at once, in one instant, or you
never get them at all. One minute you're just falling down a lot and the next you're riding a bicycle.

Elaine
. That's true.

Daniel
. But it may be useful to you — or give you a feeling of coherence and system — if we review
the various skills that are involved in doing what I do.

Elaine
. I think so, yes.

Daniel
. I guess the first of these is simply alertness to nonsense. When that talk-show host said he could get along perfectly well without songbirds, a million people heard him and thought nothing of it. I
picked up on it instantly and recognized it as the blather of an empty-headed fool.

Elaine
. I think I would've, too.

Daniel
. Ten years ago? That's about when I heard it.

Elaine
[
after thinking about it
]. Honestly, probably not. I probably would've thought, "Well, that's true.
I'd miss them, but I could live without them."

Daniel
. Okay. So you're more alert now than you were then. But you can see that there's no way to give you lessons in alertness. I mean, I can't say, "Now we're going to spend the next ten hours working on your alertness to nonsense."

Elaine
. No, I don't see how you could do that.

Daniel
. So what's the second step in the "Quinn method"?

Elaine
. You try to understand the thinking that produced the nonsense. You look for the assumption or assumptions behind it.

Daniel
. And what's the assumption in this case?

Elaine
[
after a moment's thought
]. That the reason birds are here — their function in the workings of the world — is to provide humans with entertainment.

Daniel
. And what's the third step?

Elaine
. I guess I'd say it's... extending this assumption... connecting it to more general assumptions.

Daniel
. In this case?

Elaine
. The assumption that the world and everything in it was made specifically for Man's benefit.

Daniel
. Do you see a fourth step?

Elaine
[
after some thought
]. No, I can't say that I do.

Daniel
. Having found the more general assumption behind this particular notion, you look at some of the other notions or actions this assumption gives rise to. For example?

Elaine
. I'd say... working from this assumption, we're free to eliminate any species that inconveniences us. Wolves, coyotes, and so on. If they're valueless to us, then they're superfluous. They don't do
anything for us, so they don't need to be here, and we can get rid of them... And in general we can do
anything we want to the world. It's our toy — God gave it to us — and we can do anything we like with
it, including smashing it to bits.

Daniel
. Very good.

Elaine
. But I'd still like to see... "How you do what you do" isn't just limited to little things like this. I'd like to see how doing what you do produces your books.