An Observation of Vavilov Day

I think this is a great idea, and intend to participate, in whatever way I can.

This feels like another good candidate of adding to the rationalist/secular calendar of holidays.  These only get invented when people decide to try new things, so I doubly appreciate this.

As for what to do, a simple thing I would be interested in is just learning more about the story.  Who were they, how did they get to be at the seedbank?  What was the onset of the siege like, and how did they adapt as things changes?

I'd also be learning about other seedbanks, and how they came about.

Finally, as a more ritual-y thing to do, maybe we could make a little seed bank of our own.  I expect it to mostly be symbolic.

If this sounds familiar and you went to bay area secular solstice, that’s probably because it was the topic of this song.

uncomfortable squirm

In my culture, one is to be super wary of lionizing martyrs.

I want to be excited about cool new holiday ideas. I think trying a fast in a coordinated group is a splendid idea. I want to celebrate the amazing capacity of humans to care about others and to do hard things for good reasons.

but pain is not the unit of effort.

dying for the cause is not a success.

not every cost is avoidable, but i never, ever want to become the kind of person

who mistakes the price sacrificed for a value bought

In my culture there's a meta-tradition around ritual hardships or labors: you are to set aside at least 5 minutes, by the very clock, for considering how you might cheat. If you find you could get results without the hardship, you are expected to cheat for the results and then go find some other way to challenge yourself.

I love this, I love Nikolai Vavilov, and I love the holiday concept - I'm going to have to think about doing something similar to commemorate him and his colleagues. I really liked the book The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov by Peter Pringle and recommend it, it's info-dense and well-written. (I haven't intentionally fact-checked it or anything but I did a big research dive into him a few years ago and I don't remember it obviously not holding up against other sources.)

A bit of advice from my own experience with fasting.

Hunger is strongest roughly between hours 6 and 12 after you stop eating. There's some variation here, but my vague understanding is this has to do with something about blood sugar and insulin response cycles.

Generally once I make it to 12 hours the rest is smooth sailing, at least in so far as hunger becomes a background annoyance rather than a strong urge.

At around 20 hours or so I find mental changes start to happen due to what I presume is low blood sugar. It's nothing insurmountable, just something like mental fuzziness that makes it hard to do mental activities at the limit of my ability.

I'm not sure what happens past 24 hours; never gone longer than that.

I'll offer up my own fasting advice as well:

I (and the couple of people I know who have also experimented with fasting) have found it to be a highly trainable skill. Doing a raw 36-hour fast after never having fasted before may be miserable; but doing the same fast after two weeks of 16-8 intermittent fasting will probably be no big deal.

Before I started intermittent fasting, I'd done a few 30-hour fasts, and all of them got very difficult towards the end. I would get headaches, feel very fatigued, and not really be able to function from hours 22-30. When I started IF, the first week was quite tough. I'd have similar symptoms as the fasting window was ending: headaches, trouble focusing. But then right around the two week mark, things changed. The symptoms went away, and the hunger became a much more "passive" feeling. Rather than hunger directly causing discomfort, the hunger now feels more like a "notification". Just my body saying "hey, just so you know, we haven't eaten for a while", rather than it saying "you're going to die if you don't eat right this moment". This change has been persistent, even during periods where I've stopped IF.

Both of the two others I've seen try IF have reported something similar, that the first few weeks are tough, but then the character of hunger itself starts to change. Today, I can go 24 hours without eating fairly trivially, ie without much distraction or performance decreases from hunger.

Going 36 will still be a challenge, but some pre-training may make it easier! Of course you may be specifically trying to test your willpower, in which case making it easier may be counter productive. Either way, this seems like a cool idea for a secular holiday. Best of luck! 

From one Elizabeth to another, I would love to join you in support of Mr. Vavilov + associates'

I am based in Philadelphia, are you willing to do a virtual kick-off dinner + reading the night of the 25th? I'd be happy to have a virtual feast on 1/27 as well. 

Thank you Elizabeth, Clara, Anna, and those who develop Google translate for your enlightenment

Curated. If true, the actions of Vavilov and colleagues seem worth knowing and remembering. Kudos to Elizabeth (and Clara) for bringing them to attention and making a meaningful practice out of them.

A tragic yet uplifting story that I'm grateful to now know. How many more heroic examples there must be! Thanks for sharing it. Like you, I'm also not eager to skip meals but am inspired to honor Vavilov.

I really like this idea. I'm not able to participate this year for medical reasons, but would like to in the future.

I aspire to be a person who does good things, and who is capable of doing hard things in service of that. This is a plan to test that capacity.

I haven’t been in a battle, but if you gave me the choice between dying in battle and slowly starving to death, I would immediately choose battle. Battles are scary but they are short and then they are over.

A large proportion of "battle deaths" historically have been due to infection following serious injuries, and many of those who died lingered for weeks. I'm not sure whether this would change your decision, but in case you ever actually had to make this choice it might be worth considering.

Personally, also aspiring to be a person who does good things, I tend to think of "dying in battle" as involving taking actions to kill and/or maim other people and therefore something to avoid as being worse than plague.

That aside, thank you for posting about the actions of these people, and Vavilov in particular.

While I generally am not a fan of people making public displays of personal sacrifice, I can understand some of the reasons why you might be doing so, and hope that you achieve your goals.

This sounds like a good (and somewhat productive) way to celebrate.

I'll start an attempt to as well, if my parents don't object too much (I'm currently 17 and still live with them).

I've never fasted any longer than 16 hours before, so I'll assume this will be hard... Does anybody have advice on how to make the 36 hours go over a bit easier?

I propose we surround ourselves in edible seeds, too. 

Any thoughts about supporting biodiversity (perhaps especially for food crops)?

Great idea! I have marked my calendar. 

I'd be interested in joining for a Bay Area kickoff!

I think this is a great idea and intend to join the fast. I also downloaded the book “The Murder of Nikolai Vavilov by Peter Pringle” that another commenter suggested - Vavilov deserves to be recognized! I have experience with fasting and generally find 36 hours very doable - especially helpful for longer fasts is having a clear sense of purpose which reinforces motivation and commemorating this great scientist in this way feels meaningful. 

I think this is a really cool idea. Good luck with your fast.

At the risk of undermining your post by second guessing the decisions of people made 80 years ago under duress, I can't read that article without thinking "If they were needed there, alive, to guard the seeds, maybe they should have eaten some of the 370,000 seeds?"  To be clear, that does not diminish my respect for their restraint (I certainly could not have done that) or Vavilov's contributions.

Would join this if there was a Front Range 25th gathering. 

the part of my brain that allows me to make moral trade-offs at my own expense

I can relate to this. I wonder if there is a pinpointed system in the brain that's responsible for it? 

(Oh, one other note -- I would quite prefer it if the original post didn't implicitly endorse suicide.)

Just wanted to say that I think most rationalist "holidays" or "rituals" are pretty cringe, but this one strikes me as something much more real and valuable. I'm not sure I agree with your concept of "Patron Saint holidays" for the community as a whole but this one seems at least somewhat virtuous and noble in a way that I think a lot of other stuff misses.