The Green Revolution

If you had to name the problems that need to be solved most, what would it be? Many people would say world hunger is among the most pressing problems that need to be solved; and numerous people have indeed tried to solve it. In the 1960s, in fact, several specialists in science and agriculture (specifically, a communication specialist, an agronomist, a potato specialist, and two maize specialists) came together to address the hunger problem. What is amazing is that, even though we still have world hunger, the men involved in this project were able to increase grain production so much that the lead scientist (named Norman Borlaug) “has been credited with saving over a billion people from starvation.” How did they do it? They did it with genetic engineering. They saw that a certain type of grain would yield a lot of rice, wheat, or maize; but they also knew that these types of grains also fell over before harvest time because they became too tall. What the scientists did to solve this was they bred into the grains a “semi-dwarfing gene” from other grains. This meant that these high-yielding plants would stay short enough so that they wouldn’t fall over and be ruined, and still produce a higher amount of grain. They also made the grains resistant to disease. The result was that a number of countries that had formerly been short of food were now actually exporting food (Mexico and India are examples).

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Persuasion

At different points in history, governments have devoted men, women, and resources to try to persuade others to their side. One significant example of this occurred in Germany under Adolf Hitler. Hitler knew how important it was to make sure the German people were on his side as leader of the country. One way he did this was by controlling what people heard. Specifically, near the beginning of World War II, Hitler made it a crime for anyone in Germany to listen to foreign radio broadcasts. These were called the “extraordinary radio measures.” He did this to ensure that Germans weren’t being persuaded by enemy countries to question their loyalty to Hitler. He knew that a German listening to a radio broadcast from Britain might persuade that German to believe that Great Britain was the good guy and Hitler the bad guy. This was so important, in fact, that two people in Germany were actually executed because they had either listened to or planned to listen to a foreign radio broadcast (one...

Comparison

Psychologists and others have studied ways in which we compare ourselves to each other. One man named Leon Festinger argued that we tend to compare ourselves to other people when we don’t know how good or bad we are at something (like football or playing the guitar). One way we do this is when we compare ourselves to those who are not as good as we are, to protect our self-esteem (called “downward social comparison;” example: we’re playing basketball and miss most of our shots, but we feel okay because a teammate wasn’t even given the ball). Another comparison we make is when we compare ourselves to others who are doing much better than we are (called “upward social comparison”). When we see others who appear to be doing better than we are, we can respond by trying to improve ourselves, or by trying to protect ourselves by telling ourselves it’s not that important. There was a study published in 1953 by Solomon Asch, who asked students to take part in a “vision test.” The par...

The Nice Guy Fallacy

I read part of a poem recently by one of my favorite poets. It reads: I envy not in any moods The captive void of noble rage The linnet born within the cage That never knew the summer woods. I envy not the beast that takes His license in the field of time Unfetter'd by the sense of crime To whom a conscience never wakes. Nor what may call itself as bles't The heart that never plighted troth But stagnates in the weeds of sloth Nor any want-begotten rest. I hold it true, whate'er befall I feel it, when I sorrow most 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. At base, Tennyson contrasted a life of risk, and consequent pain, with one of security. He sides conclusively with the life of risk, and says he fails to envy those who have faced no hardship. I agree with him; and, for good or ill, his words are just as relevant today as they were in the nineteenth century. Like then, there are those today who choose to live their lives with as little risk as...

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