THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 16, 2019 3
I live a hundred miles by car—fifty via
the path of a wind-driven fire—from
the Sagehen Creek Field Station, where
the Forest Service is implementing
prescribed burns. Our seventy-year-old
small farm was within spitting dis-
tance of the King megafire a few years
ago. Everyone here lives half the year
with bags packed, trucks gassed up,
and animals ready for roundup. I am
constantly shocked at the lack of sense
on both the federal and the state level
when it comes to addressing the fires.
Limiting controlled burns because the
smoke violates air-quality standards is
absurd. The King fire filled the air with
thick smoke for weeks; you could
hardly breathe.
Sallie Reynolds
Garden Valley, Calif.
1
THE BEST INTENTIONSAndrew Marantz describes Big Tech
wizards soaking away their guilt in hot
tubs at Esalen while brainstorming so-
lutions to the problems of connectivity
addiction (“Trouble in Paradise,” Au-
gust 26th). Their feel-good meditations
bring to mind Werner Erhard’s Hun-
ger Project, an organization founded,
in the late nineteen-seventies, ostensi-
bly to end world hunger. At the time,
the Hunger Project focussed on raising
awareness about the problem, rather
than on giving food to hungry people.
Marantz writes that “someone” must
help the Big Tech titans convert their
emotions regarding the way that tech-
nology is affecting the world into “re-
sponsible actions” to improve it. But no
one can guide Silicon Valley leaders;
they must be motivated by an internal
sense of what their inventions are taking
away from us all—the will and the mind.
Kathe Jordan
Berkeley, Calif.WHO DEFINES CULTURE?
Louis Menand, in his review of Charles
King’s book about the growth of cul-
tural anthropology, explores why peo-
ple “no longer solicit the wisdom of
anthropologists” (Books, August 26th).
His answer is that there has been a
“swing back toward biology” to explain
cultural phenomena. As an anthropol-
ogist, I see it differently. The defining
shift was not from culture to biology
but from science to literature. An-
thropologists decided that their field
was not a science, and that it should
not make scientific claims. A gener-
ation of self-styled postmodern an-
thropologists, fearing that categoriz-
ing human groups was inherently
oppressive, insisted that anthropol-
ogy become a form of literary criticism.
(See especially George E. Marcus
and Michael M.J. Fischer’s influential
book, “Anthropology as Cultural Cri-
tique,” from 1986.) One result was the
fragmentation of the field, which in
turn diminished the authority of an-
thropologists to drive coherent pub-
lic debate about culture.
Will Reese
Portland, Ore.
1
CALIFORNIA BURNING
I was pleased to read about forest fires
from the perspective of neither the lum-
ber industry nor traditional environ-
mentalists (“Trailblazers,” August 26th).
But Nicola Twilley’s article oversim-
plifies the relevant science: there is no
consensus on how extensively we
should thin forests or use controlled
burns to prevent megafires. Moreover,
it is questionable whether the goal of
making every California forest look
like “a lightly wooded park” that “should
be tended like a garden” is reasonable,
or even desirable. Instead of pursuing
these uncertain aims, we should invest
in a surer solution: burying power lines,
which were the main culprit in many
recent California fires.
Lucille Lang Day
Oakland, Calif.
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