In his national bestseller, The Botany of Desire, journalist Michael Pollan ingeniously illuminates the ever-changing and perplexing relationship between human beings and the domesticated plant. More specifically, he unmasks the four driving desires of human existence - sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control - while simultaneously exploring the effects that they have on our lives today. In The Botany of Desire, Pollan utilizes his own personal experiences, witty anecdotes, informational passages of history, and surprising statistics to captivate the reader’s attention while also leaving them to flounder in a state of questioning as he unearths the motives behind human existence.
First Desire - Sweetness: In this first chapter, Michael …show more content…
Here, unlike the explorations of the other desires, Michael Pollan takes the simple and often deplorable term “intoxication” and bridges to all realms of possible thought. With inspiration stemming from the marijuana plant and its interactions with the human race, he examines the history of intoxication and how it continues to affect us. With the words:
“Memory is the enemy of wonder, which abides nowhere else but in the present. This is why, unless you are a child, wonder depends on forgetting -- on a process, that is, of subtraction. Ordinarily we think of drug experiences as additive -- it’s often said that drugs “distort” normal perceptions and augment the data of the senses (adding hallucinations, say), but it may be that the very opposite is true -- that they work by subtraction some of the filters that consciousness normally interposes between us and the …show more content…
His intriguing and colorful writing drew me in from start to finish and truly left me yearning for more. Additionally, because we seem to live in a society where being completely polite and not stepping on each other’s toes has become a social norm, this flat out demonstration of wonder and utter honesty was more than refreshing. Whether or not everyone agrees with the theories and accusations of The Botany of Desire, I value that Michael Pollan has now provided a basis for a reader, such as myself, to take the match ignited by these pages and question the status quo in his or her own
First Desire - Sweetness: In this first chapter, Michael …show more content…
Here, unlike the explorations of the other desires, Michael Pollan takes the simple and often deplorable term “intoxication” and bridges to all realms of possible thought. With inspiration stemming from the marijuana plant and its interactions with the human race, he examines the history of intoxication and how it continues to affect us. With the words:
“Memory is the enemy of wonder, which abides nowhere else but in the present. This is why, unless you are a child, wonder depends on forgetting -- on a process, that is, of subtraction. Ordinarily we think of drug experiences as additive -- it’s often said that drugs “distort” normal perceptions and augment the data of the senses (adding hallucinations, say), but it may be that the very opposite is true -- that they work by subtraction some of the filters that consciousness normally interposes between us and the …show more content…
His intriguing and colorful writing drew me in from start to finish and truly left me yearning for more. Additionally, because we seem to live in a society where being completely polite and not stepping on each other’s toes has become a social norm, this flat out demonstration of wonder and utter honesty was more than refreshing. Whether or not everyone agrees with the theories and accusations of The Botany of Desire, I value that Michael Pollan has now provided a basis for a reader, such as myself, to take the match ignited by these pages and question the status quo in his or her own