The Wizard and The Prophet — A Book Review that Resolves the Duel
By 2022 apprentice Lucas Babinec
Imagine two completely opposed ways of seeing the world and today’s environmental issues. The first represents the Wizards and sees humans as large-scale problem solvers, able to create massive top-down fixes with cutting edge technology and innovations, perhaps outside the bounds of nature. The second features the Prophets and sees humans as needing to consume less, becoming more efficient, less wasteful, adhering to the biological limits all other species live within. These two paradigms became two of the most significant movements within environmentalism over the last 150 years and in The Wizard and The Prophet, Charles Mann dives deep into the lives of the two men who most embodied the two distinct views: William Vogt and Norman Borlaug. Mann also brings a magnifying glass up to their impact on initiatives to modern day dilemmas regarding food, water, energy, and climate change.
The book’s successes
The read was often captivating, really humanizing two prominent people who dedicated their lives to the environmental challenges we face as a species. I feel environmentalism can get quite unapproachable and unrelatable for the typical person. People talking about problems that are far away from one’s own backyard, not only physically, but timescale too (decades in the future). Mann impressively paints the story arc of the lives of these two men, weaving the philosophies and figures that influenced them smoothly into a cohesive narrative. Here’s some essential info about them:
William Vogt ~ aka the Prophet
· Born in “pre-suburban” Long Island in 1902 and dealt with polio and serious family drama
· Saw the degradation of the surrounding natural habitat during his early adulthood as a bird watching enthusiast
· Headed to the guano islands off the coast of Peru in 1939; hired to conduct research about the birds there
· Published The Road to Survival in 1948
· National director of Planned Parenthood from 1951 until 1961
Norman Borlaug ~ aka the Wizard
· Born in rural Iowa in 1914 and watched his family struggle to make ends meet year after year farming the land
· Had ambitions to get out of his small town and studied forestry at the University of Minnesota
· Researched wheat rust in Mexico beginning in 1944; new cultivars of disease resistant wheat discovered in the late 1950s
· Methods applied to wheat in other countries plus rice and other staple crops throughout 1960s, “Green Revolution” coined in 1968
· Won a Nobel prize in 1970
The way Mann structures the middle portion of the book into sections (food production, freshwater supply, energy usage, and climate change) is intuitive. To see the two different approaches directly applied to real life challenges made the whole premise of the book way more relevant.
Mann skillfully explains the process farmers use to create new breeds of a plant as well as the process of photosynthesis as it relates to attempts to create adaptations in new varieties of food plants. There are a couple of helpful graphics to accompany these detailed explanations too (pp140 & pp195).
In the water section it was fascinating to learn about mega-projects and the pitfalls that come up, like lack of funding, ecosystem degradation, and poor efficiency.
The stories in the energy section about the demise of oil boom towns and the machines of the initial solar power movement like the Pyrheliophoro, were particularly interesting.
In the climate change section Mann nimbly bounces between reforestation of deserts in Burkina Faso, a debris mountain named Fridgelandia in post-Katrina NOLA, the burning Jharia coal field, US senate testimonies about change in carbon dioxide levels, and much much more.
The deluge of information would be overwhelming if it weren’t for Mann’s deft ability to sow the threads in the overarching narrative.
Constructive criticisms
While being quite exhaustive in regard to history, the book’s breadth of scope looking at how the ideologies look in modern day solutions is disappointing. For example, the word ‘permaculture’ is not mentioned a single time in the book. One reason that alternative solutions are marginalized is because best-selling authors such as Charles Mann don’t devote awareness to them. Thousands of readers could have been exposed to key words such as permaculture, holistic management, or regenerative agriculture and are instead left to wonder if big technological fixes are our only way out. To his credit, Mann does say in the prologue that the book is not “a blueprint for tomorrow.” However, this contradicts the text on the cover flap that claims “The Wizard and The Prophet is essential reading on the future of our species.”
Another critique is the subtle sensationalization of opposition in the two views. Though they did have their differences, Vogt and Borlaug shared many similarities, most importantly being english speaking white men who grew up in the United States in the early 20th century. Both were immersed in the cultural soup of the times and it follows that they were subject to the same biases as anyone with close proximity to power. Vogt walked in the footsteps of racist elitist conservationists (pp81-82) and Borlaug was influenced by the heads of the big money groups who funded his projects (pp119-120). The inherited intellectual imperialism seeps out insidiously in both the Wizard and Prophet views portrayed in this book. A caption on a photo captures it perfectly:
“According to its architect, Ralph Walker, the modernist IRRI [International Rice Research Institute — An institute based in the Philippines funded by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations] campus, constructed entirely of imported materials, symbolized ‘a new type of imperialism’ of ‘specialized knowledge generously given to backwards peoples,’” (190).
The passages that compare the two ideologies are rift with divisive language such as: ‘hostilities’, ‘conflict’, and ‘radically different’. Mann even writes, “indeed, the dispute between Wizards and Prophets has, if anything, become more vehement” (7).
It’s 2022 and there’s enough tribalism and opposition going on, at least in my home country of the US. We don’t need another book that pits two groups against each other. Maybe that is what’s needed for some people to build awareness of our species’ ecological situation.
Personally, I would have been much more interested if Mann also focused a bit on the similarities between the two men and their philosophies and how we can integrate both approaches to find the best, most appropriate solutions.
In the end of the prologue Mann asserts that “I wrote this book to satisfy my own curiosity, and to see if I could learn something about the roads my children could take,” and I hope his curiosity has led him into researching more holistic, healing, and regenerative solutions (such as permaculture) in the next book he publishes.
The Bottom Line
The Wizard and The Prophet is exceptional as a history and at the same time, lacking as a source of knowledge for the future. If you want a detailed account of two major establishment approaches to environmental challenges, this is a book for you. If you are more interested in reading about holistic solutions to our global ecological crisis, seeking a source of inspiration, or want to read about ways of bridging different ways of thinking, I highly recommend these books:
All We Can Save
Braiding Sweetgrass
Climate: A New Story
Permaculture: A Designer’s Handbook
