The Botany of Desire

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Michael Pollan's book, Botany of Desire introduces a unique perspective of our relationship with the nature. Unlike the traditional perspective of being the dominant species, Michael Pollan introduces a new idea of relationship between organisms and nature, which is called co-evolutionary relationship. By introducing the term of coevolution, which involves the evolution of two organisms which initially begins as solely for individual gains, becomes one where they end up "doing favors for each other." More specifically, he stated that plants exploit our inner desires and influence our preferences through their tastes and appearances. In other words, plants control us.

Source from: http://hight3ch.com/are-we-controlled-by-plants/

The four desires: sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control. The apple represents our desire for sweetness; the tulip represents our desire for beauty; the cannabis represents our desire for intoxication; the potato represents our desire for control (and probably taste). All of the plants above are examples of domesticated plants. While they are given the title of domesticated, they all have the ability to manipulate our desires with their appearances and other qualities, enabling themselves popular in human agriculture.

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The ancient relationship between bees and flowers is a classic example of what is known as “coevolution.” In a coevolutionary bargain like the one struck by the bee and the apple tree, the two parties act on each other to advance their individual interests but wind up trading favors: food for the bee, transportation for the apple genes (flowers need to be able to pollinate). Consciousness needn’t enter into it on either side, and the traditional distinction between subject and object is meaningless.

Source from:
 http://wallace.genetics.uga.edu/groups/evol3000/wiki/ce8b9/Selective_Breeding_or_Artificial_Selection.html

As mentioned in the book, Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, once introduced a term called "artificial selection" (aka domestication), which means our choices in selecting domesticated species, that reflects on our wills. In other words, our desire plays the same role as the natural selection in determining the best species for survival. And now artificial selection has become the most influential force of nature.