Spend two min­utes exam­in­ing the prod­ucts in your pantry or gro­cery store that include corn (maize) prod­ucts, includ­ing corn syrup. Spend another few min­utes exam­in­ing indus­trial uses (corn­starch pack­ing mate­r­ial, coat­ings of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, and so forth). Con­sider the num­ber of acres of farm­land corn planted in the United States; the pro­por­tion of hectares of agri­cul­tural land world­wide planted with maize; the pro­por­tion of bio­mass con­sumed by all het­erotrophic ani­mals world­wide that is maize. Com­pare these num­bers to the same val­ues a decade and a cen­tury ago.

Force your­self to seri­ously take the stance: The species Zea mays has devel­oped a strat­egy for dom­i­nat­ing and out-​​performing its nat­ural com­peti­tors by directly mod­i­fy­ing the behav­ior of Homo sapi­ens. Take into account the psy­cho­log­i­cal effects of corn syrup, foods deep-​​fried in corn oil, and the species’ recent diver­si­fi­ca­tion into indus­trial ethanol pro­duc­tion. Take into account the indus­trial, trans­porta­tion, social, and med­ical infra­struc­ture of human soci­ety that is devoted to or depends upon Zea mays. Con­sider what would hap­pen to a 50-​​acre corn­field if aban­doned sud­denly, and com­pare the evo­lu­tion­ary fit­ness of the plants in the field while being tended vs. the state of aban­don­ment. Con­sider the reported fla­vor ben­e­fits and health dan­gers of corn-​​fed vs. grass-​​fed beef. Think of farm­land as hav­ing been scraped clean of many tens of thou­sands of estab­lished organ­isms per square meter, and re-​​scraped peri­od­i­cally, so that corn seed and only corn seed may flourish.

It may be use­ful to read a bit about the coevo­lu­tion­ary dynam­ics of orchids and insects, and exam­ine the struc­tural engi­neer­ing involved in the hooked sur­faces of bur­dock and net­tle seed cases.

As quickly as pos­si­ble, change your per­spec­tive to the more tra­di­tional one: That thou­sands of years ago, prim­i­tive human neo-​​agronomists dis­cov­ered the wild grass teosinte and began co-​​opting it for their set­tle­ments. Over sev­eral hun­dred gen­er­a­tions of directed breed­ing, the genetic makeup of the wild plant was twisted into a food crop. Since it was on hand and increas­ingly stan­dard­ized by human manip­u­la­tion, maize plant mate­r­ial came (through a process of tech­no­log­i­cal exap­ta­tion) to be used in many diverse appli­ca­tions. Mod­ern genetic agron­omy, includ­ing trans­genic manip­u­la­tion and other intri­cate manip­u­la­tions of the species, has led to the trans­for­ma­tion of the orig­i­nal wild plant into a lit­eral tool of Homo sapi­ens.

Now switch back. Repeat until the notion of “advan­tage” and “use­ful­ness” begin to be undermined.

Bonus exer­cises: Under­take the anal­o­gous exer­cise with: trop­i­cal house­plants, bam­boo, dogs/​wolves, the chili pep­per. Can the same effect be brought about for books? Light bulbs? Computers?

Com­puter viruses?