Kristen Olson is the author of Sweet in Tooth and Claw: Stories of Generosity and Cooperation in the Natural World. Her other books include The Soil Will Save Us: How Scientists, Farmers and Foodies are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet, and Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil. Olson appears in the award-winning documentary film Kiss The Ground, speaking about the connection between soil and climate. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Smithsonian, Discover, New Scientist, Orion, American Archeology, and has also been anthologized in Best American Science Writing, and Best American Food Writing.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS’ ONE PLANET PODCAST

And really you highlight what is so important, and many of us are just coming around to understanding, that it's not really the fittest individual that survives. It's that collective adaptive intelligence. And in some ways, our insistence on dominating is actually destroying us.

KRISTIN OHLSON

It definitely is destroying us. It definitely destroys ecosystems. And I think part of the reason that this story of cooperation among living things appeals to me so much. I mean, in my book Sweet in Tooth and Claw, I look at the work of lots of scientists who are studying how nature works and discovering all these incredible connections among living things that certainly help them thrive and help ecosystems thrive.

But I think it's this story of cooperation is important in terms of the story that we tell ourselves about nature, and seeing as how we are part of nature, it's important that we see ourselves as possibly a partner instead of a destroyer. I think that we have held onto the perspective that nature is all about competition and conflict. And when we shift that, when we look at nature as this vast web of interconnection and cooperation, and of course competition and conflict in there obviously in some places. But when we look at this vast web of cooperation and collaboration, I think that it changes our view. It changes our view of what's possible.

You know, instead of us trying to make order out of chaos, largely out of the chaos that we've created, we can instead look at the world as being held together and look for the places where the connections have been snapped, where the connections have been broken, and where we can roll back some of the damage that we've done and help those connections heal.

*

I think it's really interesting how we humans are a massively cooperative species. That's why we dominate the world to the extent that we do. We're very good at working together and stories and metaphors are a lot of what drives us to work together, that drives us towards goals. So that's why I thought it was very important to push against the metaphors that have informed so much of our culture for the last couple of hundred years.

So we have the idea of survival of the fittest, not directly from Darwin, that argued that the growing human population would outstrip the earth's resources and there would inevitably be death and weakness in parts of the population. And that that was kind of a good thing because it would balance out society. You know, we would lose the weakest members. And Darwin had read Malthus and took that idea of progress through struggle and the weeding out of weaker members by the harsh exigencies of nature, and that was how he came up with his theory of natural selection, you know, that the fossil record showed that certain animals, plants, living things could not survive given the circumstances. Then it was Herbert Spencer who read Darwin and who came up with the line survival of the fittest. Those are phrases that have stuck with our society, and I think our thinking about how nature works and how we work.

So those are phrases that came out of science that affect the culture. And the culture, of course, affects science in terms of what we push science to ask for, what we tell science we want to know about the world. And I'm hoping that the new crop of scientists who are looking at all of these cooperative relations among living things - how that holds together ecosystems, how that determines how species can survive - that that new crop of scientists will inform and reform the metaphors that we use, the stories that we tell ourselves about how nature works, how we work, how the culture works. That's what I'm hoping will happen.

*

I’m naturally drawn to optimism, which is a gift from my sweet father. I actually worried that I might just be soft-headed until I read this quote from activist and professor Angela Davis: “I don’t think we have any alternative other than remaining optimistic. Optimism is an absolute necessity, even if it’s only optimism of the will ... and pessimism of the intellect.” But it’s hard to hang on to optimism. Like others—probably you—I panic at the growing, undeniable evidence of humanity’s damage to the natural world around us, and fear we’ll never get our shit together to do anything about it as our politics and cultures continue to clash in the nastiest of ways. When I wrote my previous book, The Soil Will Save Us, I discovered a wellspring of optimism as I met farmers, ranchers, scientists, and others figuring out how to restore damaged agricultural landscapes. But if the world is characterized by greed and grasping and selfishness, as so many people believe, would the growing numbers of ordinary ecological heroes be enough?"

–Kristin Ohlson
Sweet in Tooth and Claw

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk and Maureen Nole with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this episode was Maureen Nole. Digital Media Coordinators are Jacob A. Preisler and Megan Hegenbarth. 

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).