McNoleg’s brief article gave me a whole new appreciation towards the concept of academic story telling. What does egg-laying pigs, parrots, and advanced geography information systems have in common—well, not much other than the basic understanding that geography is EVERYWHERE. This article told the story of two mystical peoples from an ancient land that struggled to survive given exceptionally unique circumstances. Although, humorous, it makes me wonder if our current society will be judged any different against the ages of time?
The four self-evident truths precipitated from this article were: “(1) watch your diet, (2) beware of global warming, (3) do not mess with genetic engineering, and (4) if a system starts to extol the virtues of owning something that does not actually exist, it is time to change the system”. At face value, these four recommendations come across as ambiguous and overly generalized. However, I believe that there might be some teaching value to each of these given the correct context.
The first truth, may be correlated to our current expansion of monoculture of agriculture crops across much of the world. It wouldn’t be difficult to relate our over dependence on soy or corn to the Tessellati people dependence on that bizarre pig creature. Point 2 is a bit more forthright and applicable given our current climate trends. However, I struggle to understand why this obvious point is even mentioned given the aforementioned stories. Point 3 can be fiercely argued on a techno-optimist vs. anti-GMO platform, however for the sake of geography, I feel that this may be loosely translated to the fact that severely altering a species (i.e. pig), may limit our geospatial distribution and genetic fitness. Finally, point 4 can be simply be transposed into H.G. Wells saying, “Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative”.
–BreadPool