85. Michael Pollan, conscious human being

My title is a little tongue in cheek, but not much. Michael Pollan, of course, is an author, starting with Second Nature: A Gardener's Education (1991) and including most famously The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World (2001), The Omnivore's Dilemma (2006), and This Is Your Mind on Plants (2021), about psychedelics. As his interests have evolved he's become a philosopher, and lately has been delving into the question of consciousness—as in his brand-new book A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness. Because of this book, he's been popping up in interviews, on podcasts and on TV. So I thought I'd feature a few of those here, plus a couple of ancillary references.

Stephen Colbert featured Pollan last week:

He was also Terry Gross's guest recently on Fresh Air, and the guest of David Marchese on the New York Times's "The Interview":

In the first video above, Pollan mentions a 1974 essay by Thomas Nagel titled "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" which I happily found online, and you too can read it here.

But finally, what really brought me here was the poem by e.e. cummings that Colbert recites in the second video, which a FB friend of mine, Leslie, mentioned in her daily post. She also quotes a different poem of cummings's. So I will end with both those. You're welcome!

[since feeling is first]

since feeling is first

who pays any attention 

to the syntax of things

will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool

while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,

and kisses are a better fate 

than wisdom

lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry

—the best gesture of my brain is less than

your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then

laugh, leaning back in my arms

for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

[you shall above all things be glad and young]

you shall above all things be glad and young

For if you’re young,whatever life you wear

it will become you;and if you are glad

whatever’s living will yourself become.

Girlboys may nothing more than boygirls need:

i can entirely her only love

whose any mystery makes every man’s

flesh put space on;and his mind take off time

that you should ever think,may god forbid

and (in his mercy) your true lover spare:

for that way knowledge lies,the foetal grave

called progress,and negation’s dead undoom.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing

than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance