A decade ago or so, I don't recall precisely, I read Michael Pollan's book " In Defense of Food ", and it's companion book "Food Rules ". I found it quite interesting, despite not agreeing with some of his more interesting assertions. And a number its basic tenants have added to the form of the grand conspiracy I'm building here. His book "Botany of Desire ", has been used at multiple points in the building of this grand master plan.
So it was with a great deal of confidence that I picked up his book "Second Nature ". I have a horrible black thumb, and have been attempting to correct my deficiency in the garden, given the necessity of being able to grow one's own food as a requirement to be considered independent. And unfortunately I have found that, like cookbooks, gardening books expect a certain amount of base knowledge that most beginners something don't have but which the books assume people have by some inborn natural ability. And I felt that if anybody could demystify the process of learning to garden and point me in the right direction it would be Michael Pollan.
I was wrong.
Pollen uses one of the most annoying and cowardly defenses in this book, that most useless kind of mystification whereby an experienced person acts as though their knowledge isn't something that can be put into words and isn't something that they'd ever learned but something they just knew through an ineffable ...something. That they have a connection to the skill in question.
And of course this is all rubbish. The process of learning a skill has been well studied and is at this point well understood. A self-taught person may well be unable to put into words what they have learned through their long experience, but none of it arrives through some natural inborn talent. None of it arrived through a non physical connection with some magic pool of talent ether.
And skilled people know this, and so does Michael Pollan. And when his book is willing to admit this and point it out, his writing is at its best. But too often, his bias against modern science seem to compel him to back himself into a corner, fists up, and use this cowardly pseudo mystical defense against a strong man caricature of science that he has disingenuously created. And then none of this is useful to the reader.
At this point the reader is probably being tempted to point out that I self-identify as a chaos made, and where do I get off attacking somebody's useless mysticism? And the key word here is useless. As I've often said, I don't care if the fairytale is true, I care if the fairytale is useful. This mystical smokescreen that experts, and Michael Pollan, throw up in the face of questions regarding process is used to defend their position as expert against competition from the beginner. In his interview with Tim Ferris, former Mr. Olympia Arnold Schwarzenegger admitted to giving younger bodybuilders bad advice to prevent them from becoming a threat to him in competition. And the broad smokescreen put up by Michael Pollan in this book is the same thing, albeit on a lesser scale.
When somebody with experience resorts to such rubbish as the idea of inborn talent, or a mystical connection to some deeper understanding, they are really saying that if you are not the lucky one who just seems to get it then tough beans. But the fact is, that science has learned and dissected natural Talent. And it turns out 'Natural Talent ' is acquired by hard work and time, without fail. Disregarding such factors as height in basketball and weight in sumo wrestling, talent is acquired as a skill little by little. Talent is the accumulation of small understandings adding up to deeper insights.
Now, attempting to be fair to an author who's writing I generally love and the experienced person unable to explain their skill to others, I must point out that being skilled at something is no guarantee that one is able to explain either how that skill was acquired or the pieces that must be assembled for another to display that skill. Many skilled craftsmen for instance- carpenters, auto mechanics, painters, musicians- have acquired the various requisite pieces of their skill tools kit through non verbal linguistic methods. They didn't sit through classes. They didn't read manuals. They didn't write dissertations. They hammered on thumbs. They squeaked their way through embarrassing music recitals. They over tightened bolts. They learn the hard way by trial and error in the physical world again and again. And so when these experienced talented people try to explain the source of their talent, having not acquire their skill through words and potentially not having training in the skill of using words, they fall back on mysticism to try and explain things. Michael Pollan has no such excuse. Words are Michael Pollan's profession. And so if he is throwing up a mystical smoke screen around the gardening profession, and he is, then he's either being a lazy author or he is doing so with deliberate intent. And that is disappointing.
I don't want this to end with a kick at a favored author, so I'll end by pointing out but this is all a very good thing in the broad sense. All skills are acquirable. Most have already been dissected, and most are already available in step by step guys. The basics of most professions takes around 200 hours to acquire. To become competent at most professions takes 2000 hours. Conscious practice on the correct skills is all that is required. No mystical connection or inborn Talent is needed. And barring hard physical traits such as height in basketball maybe setbacks or limitations, very few skill sets are beyond the reach of any individual.
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