In class today I used the parenting metaphor as it applies to the industrial/biotech and organic methods of farming to illustrate that having absolute control of something can often lead to an absolute rejection of that control, while 'guiding' something loosely can produce cooperation and a better overall result. To expand a little on my thinking, I feel that absolute control tends to backfire alot because it is, by nature, inflexible. The use of the strict regimines of pesticides or a specific gene that infuses a specific pesticide into a plant may work for the time being, but does not account for the infinate numbers of factors that are liable to change. The model that the industrial food industry uses indicates that it, like a majority of us, tends to view nature as a sort of mathmatical model, that nature follows some kind of formula, and to get the desired outputs, all you need to do is put certain imputs in. This results in the kind of linear model that we discussed in class. This model, however, does not account for the fact that nature is constantly evolving and changing, and so is bound to fail. As a political science major, I find the disconnect between our political and natural philosphy and our conceptions of control fascinating. The major reason that our American government has endured for more than 200 years is its flexibility. Democracy is a better form of government than autocracy because it lets the people have some control over their government. Simillarly I think that organic farming is a better method because it lets nature have some control over the process, and is therefore flexible. We refer to the constitution as a 'living' document because of its ability to change and have championed its values all around the world. Yet sometimes it seems that we hardly even view nature as a 'living' thing. Why is it that our views on politics reflect a need for limited goverment control, but our views on nature reflect a need for absolute control?