Barbara McClintock won the Nobel Prize in 1983 for her discovery, decades earlier, of mobile genetic elements, the control mechanism for genetic material to move from one part of the chromosome to another, allowing for variability. This theory helps to explain, for example, the diversity of antibodies in mammals, and ultimately, evolution.
McClintock’s work was based on observation and relationship to her subject rather than statistics and probabilities. For me, it is easier to think about what this means when taking a mythic perspective. In my most recent post, I wrote about the qualities of Eros and Logos. Eros — think “erotic” — draws us toward real qualities of things and people in the world (like the cute angle of that left eyebrow of your special someone). Logos allows us to take a sufficiently distant view to categorize and make objective evalutations.
McClintock made her scientific discoveries studying corn plants, and compiled careful observations from which she drew her conclusions. This is the work of Logos. But her scientific work is also a beautiful example of Eros, the archetypal force that draws us into fascinated relationship with a unique Other. ”No two plants are exactly alike,” she said. “They’re all different and as a consequence you have to know that difference. I start with the seedling, and watch the plant all the way along. So I know every plant in the field. I know them intimately, and I find it a great pleasure to know them.”
McClintock is also a good example of how little Eros is valued in our society. Her Nobel came long after her work of discovery, and after others had in effect re-discovered her conclusions using newer technology, where McClintock used chiefly eyes, hand holding pencil, and brain. In 1973 she wrote to the maize geneticist Oliver Nelson, “Over the years I have found that it is difficult if not impossible to bring to consciousness of another person the nature of his tacit assumptions when, by some special experiences, I have been made aware of them. This became painfully evident to me in my attempts during the 1950s to convince geneticists that the action of genes had to be and was controlled. It is now equally painful to recognize the fixity of assumptions that many persons hold on the nature of controlling elements and the manners of their operation. One must await the right time for conceptual change.”
I teach creativity to people in organizations — or, perhaps I should say, I create the conditions in which people in organizations can experience their own creativity. As an artist as well, my own definition of creativity is very simple: continually overturning assumptions. Art is Erotic, always. Even when it is conceptual, its aim is always to direct the attention.
And, cliché disqualifies anything from being art. One of the clichés that puts my teeth on edge every time I hear it is defining creativity as “out of the box thinking.” Lately, I have found that a few people in organizations are catching on to the beauty of seeing what’s inside the box. So few of us spend any time actually noticing what is around us that we are at a loss to describe it; and the cliché is very powerful. It has a way of directing thinking, of diverting attention away from the wondrous Erotic value of what’s right in front of us. We don’t see it. But there are plenty of techniques for developing the ability to see what is really there.
Our Logos jones keeps us self-confined in a series of boxes without being able to see either what is in them or beyond them. Take corn. The label on the corn box is being re-stenciled, from “food” to “energy.” But do we have a clue of what this means? Beyond its food uses since ancient times, corn is rapidly replacing petroleum in many industrial applications, from plastic containers to ethanol. Unlike their petroleum counterparts, corn products are a biodegradable and renewable natural resource.
Corn is changing the face of the global economy. As China, historically the world’s second or third largest corn exporter, becomes a net corn importer, foreign grain users will be compelled to turn to the U.S. to fill corn needs. The scenario is complicated by the conversion of corn for food to corn for ethanol. Milk and meat producers “fear they cannot sustain their operations alongside a robust and growing ethanol economy.” At the beginning of last year, the Washington Post reported that “Mexico is in the grip of the worst tortilla crisis in its modern history.” Spiraling corn prices “spurred by demand for the grain-based fuel ethanol” have triggered a tripling to quadrupling or prices. Mexican workers canont afford to buy their lunches.
Analysts have said that U.S. policymakers need to start asking themselves whether fuel is the best use of grain. The amount rquired “to fill a 25-gallon SUV tank with ethanol will feed a person for a year,” says one economist. “If we’re not careful, the United States could be seen as reducing corn exports for the sake of fueling bad-mileage vehicles. That would not be a positive image.” (Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20070203/food.asp)
For the sake of Eros, and seeing what else is in the box, how about a taste of some additional corn mythology:
Almost anyone reading this may have seen “corn dollies” for sale at local harvest festivals. The corn dolly is an animal or human figure made from the last sheaf of corn from the harvest, most often symbolizing renewal, and once thought to provide a home for the corn spirit over the winter until the corn dolly was ploughed into the first furrow of the new season. St. Eligius warned the Druidic pagans of Flanders to desist from making such figures, known as vetuta or “Old Woman.”
Corn dollies appear in many folk traditions. In some, they are sacrificed by burning, symbolizing the necessity of death in the cycle of life. The corn dolly is thus related to John Barleycorn, the Green Man, and, more anciently, the Sumerian Tammuz, consort of the goddess Inanna, who dies as the crop is harvested and is reborn each spring. Julius Caesar recorded in Commentarii de Bello Gallico the Druid harvest-time ritual of sacrificing a human (a.k.a. the Wicker Man, most recently incarnated by Nicholas Cage).
The Sio Hemis or Corn Kachinas were the first to bring corn to the Hopi. The Kachina is an ancestral spirit intermediary between humans and the gods. The Hopi still practice sustainable “dry farming” which relies strictly on precipitation and runoff water. It has kept the Hopi culture intact for nearly a thousand years. Corn is sacred to the Hopi and enters into nearly every aspect of traditional life, contributing to the development of values, the sharing and passing on of tradition, and the celebration of connection with the Great Mystery.
Wonder what else might be inside the box of corn? Be creative; be Erotic: take a look for yourself.
If you are interested in learning more about Barbara McClintock, check out Evelyn Fox Keller’s biography of her, A Feeling for the Organism (1983).
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