Wild Sugar (Maple Syrup & Honey)

We are losing wild sweetness

Few substances humans consume hold such a central role in our daily lives and the structure of our societies. Empires have been built and destroyed in pursuit of that sweet stuff we now put in so many foods and drinks. Think about what your daily life would be like without relatively inexpensive sources of sugar.

Virtually every occasion worth celebrating would be forever changed without sugar, let alone the amount humans consume in everyday beverages like coffee and soda.

But the ubiquity of sugar in modern human diets has an ugly history and is a source of tremendous suffering and ill-health today. The institution of slavery is responsible for the massive amounts of wealth and infrastructure of sugar production, which has resulted in skyrocketing rates of metabolic diseases and destruction of Indigenous foodways on a global scale.

The story of sugar in Anti-Indigenous Civilizations (AIC) makes a lot more sense, I think, if we consider it a narcotic substance rather than a food. The lengths AICs have been willing to go to produce this substance and build economies around the production of sugar is a story that makes the violence and depravity depicted in Scarface seem like a Pixar movie in comparison.

And like AICs tend to do, sources of wild sugar, like maple syrup and honey from bees, has been both largely marginalized, cooped, and commodified for a food system that is first and foremost concerned with profit rather than reciprocity. You can have all manners of artificial maple flavorings and high fructose honey products for fractions of the cost of the real thing. Isn’t that wonderful?

But the real cost of wild sugar’s decline is our collective severing of relations with the actual beings who produce the gift of sweetness without the threat of enslavement, wage labor, or death. We are welcome to the gifts of maple and honey bee so long as we do not take more than we need and that we allow ourselves to be responsible for their well being.

In a few weeks, I’ll begin tapping maple trees (with their permission) in our yard to make maple syrup. Last year was the first time I tried this and it was a truly transformative experience.

I’m nervous about doing so this year in part because of how inconsistent the climate is getting — I don’t know if we’ll have a consistent pattern of below freezing nights and above freezing days as maples begin to grow their leaf and flower buds — and in part because I don’t know that the maples will grant their permission for me to tap them.

I think asking for permission from beings is an important practice, not because said beings answer us in ways that we expect from other humans — although sometimes I think they do — but mostly because asking for permission creates an internal environment for the potential gift recipient that grounds them in future good relations with the beings they are seeking to benefit from.

Nothing in the socialization of Anti-Indigenous Civilizations teaches us to do this, and it is because of that lack of teaching that these societies have corrupted the nature of sugar and have/are destroying the wild sources that are far more beneficial for humans.

On tremendous benefit to wild sugar is the labor it takes to produce products that humans can consume. If you’ve ever wondered why actual maple syrup, not maple flavored corn syrup, is so expensive, it’s because of the labor and fuel it takes to produce it. And as is the same with honey, there are robust and practical limits to scaling up production from these sources.

To put it succinctly, there’s only so much profit one can make from wild sugar because of the ecology and energy economics required for it to be produced.

But this is a good thing because too much sugar is incredibly bad for human beings, and if given a cheap source of the substance, our physiology is such that sugar becomes more addictive than the so called strongest “hard drugs” (I think of this term as is mostly bogus as Dr. Carl Hart’s work demonstrates).

To put it plainly, if human beings embraced the existing limits of our access to sugar, then perhaps we would not be suffering through our current collective addiction that slowly, but surely kills thousands every day.

And you might say, well humans commodifying sugar for industrial production was inevitable and so what could have or can be done about that now? I don’t necessarily disagree with the spirit of that argument. My point though is for us to think about what it took to establish our current system of sugar consumption — all the violence to human and non-human populations — as a motivator to begin to pivot away from a system that is obvious bad for us.

Industrial sugar production simply would not have been possible without the institution of chattel slavery. That institution generated tremendous wealth for colonizing nations, which then built economic infrastructures we are subject to today. The addictive nature of sugar combined with the infrastructure of its production cemented sugar as a necessary product for human society.

Similar to the internet, industrial sugar has become so essential to our lives that we consider it more of a right than a privilege.

Misguided mandates like Bloomberg’s soda ban that are more rooted in demonizing populations that don’t have fair access to health options, than this policies are ever about actually improving people’s health, I think a better way to begin to break our individual and collective addiction to sugar is to build relations with maples and honey bees.

My maple harvest from last year produced 5L of syrup, most of which I shared with friends and family. Our personal consumption was about 1L and we went through that in about a total of a month. Had that maple syrup been our only source of sugar, then I know my health would have been a lot better off this year.

Anti-Indigenous Civilizations are rooted in greed, what many people attribute to “Human Nature”. I wouldn’t argue against humanity’s capacity for greed, but we have a longer tradition of our species living in good relations with others than we do in the last 12,000 years of unprecedented global violence and destruction.

What I think makes the difference about our impact is how we choose to construct and participate in the societies we live in. The patterns of our impacts, the leaders we appoint and elect, and the relationships we have with the beings that sustain us are rooted in the values we aspire to.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that industrial sugar is rooted in overconsumption, widespread and ongoing violence and addiction, while wild sugar, as an alternative, is rooted in reciprocity, moderation, labor sovereignty, and sharing.

Our dominant relationship with sugar won’t change overnight nor with this or any other post on the subject. There’s a limited amount any one of us can do to alter the massive infrastructure, i

eology, and momentum of industrial sugar. But given how unstable and vulnerable so much of Anti-Indigenous Civilization praxis is, I’d like to deepen my relationships with alternate forms of subsistence…just in case, and for the sake of the next generation.

New Video Content

The first episode is live! More to come this week!

I love skits. This is one I’ve come up with that you’ll be seeing more of on my platforms. J and his alter ego Clarence, is as much a creative outlet as it is a way for me to process my imposter syndrome. If I can make fun of myself, then it’s easier to deal with my feelings of vulnerability in putting myself out there. I hope y’all enjoy!

Wild Food Update

Two words: CORNED VENISO

I started this process last week and I’m happy to report IT’S AMAZING!!!! I’m definitely going to be doing this again and now that I know it turns out well, I’m going to do at least two more roasts like this.

Episode on how to do this coming for sure!

Recommendation

I really like my wireless mic, but my workflow needs more efficiency so I’m buying a new mic. I haven’t bought this one yet, but the reviews are solid and I’m confident it’ll be what I need to make content creation run more smoothly.

Business Update

So, I’m not offering a paid subscription to the news letter like I mentioned last week. I realized, after talking with some friends, that such a move was probably too far ahead of where my business is right now.

What was wild was after those conversations, I realized that in my haste to generate money, I was neglecting the foundation of my business right now, which is content creation.

Here’s to good friends who will tell you what you need to hear, which can lead you to focus on what’s really important. I love y’all!

Weekly Poll

Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter!

-Jonathan