Radio 3Fourteen - Plant Intelligence

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

00:00:30.000 This is Radio 314 on the Red Ice Radio Network.

00:01:00.000 And there are times when I'm pleased and then there are times when I cringe, regret it, don't want to release the interview.

00:01:06.420 So this time around, we'll be discussing plant intelligence with Stephen Harrod Buhner, who's the author of 19 books, including Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm, The Lost Language of Plants and Sacred Plant Medicine.

00:01:18.840 He has taught for more than 30 years throughout North America and Europe.

00:01:22.400 Can the subject of plants become political?

00:01:24.620 You bet.

00:01:25.700 Hi, Stephen.

00:01:26.260 Welcome to the program.

00:01:27.860 Hi.

00:01:28.240 Thanks for having me on.

00:01:29.800 Well, you've written 19 books revolving around plants.

00:01:33.040 So how did you come to study the realm of plants?

00:01:36.800 Well, my great-grandfather was a physician who primarily used botanic medicines.

00:01:43.700 He started practice in 1911, and they didn't really have many pharmaceuticals then, and I spent a lot of time with him on his farm in Indiana, and that's sort of what oriented me toward the healing professions and wanting to do something more kind of old-fashioned, I guess you might say, and not so technological.

00:02:05.640 And then just with the whole human potential movement that happened in the 60s and 70s and kind of the development of massage therapy and different psychotherapeutic techniques and all of that.

00:02:19.480 And then eventually, in the early 80s, I wandered into herbal medicine, and it was just a great fit for me.

00:02:27.180 Wow.

00:02:27.880 Well, James Lovelock was the scientist who first theorized that our planet is a self-regulating biological entity, which is known as the Gaia Hypothesis.

00:02:36.520 However, I'd say this concept of Mother Earth has been in the psyche of our European ancestors for thousands of years, but today we can have a deeper understanding of it.

00:02:44.380 So share with us the concept of plant intelligence.

00:02:48.400 Well, the fascinating thing about Jim Lovelock's work is that he was showing that there is this kind of livingness in the world that we'd really been taught for a long time that wasn't there.

00:03:03.520 And, you know, we've been trained in the West to pretty much look at the world around us as a static backdrop, you know, and human beings are kind of the only intelligent actors.

00:03:14.360 that are sort of walking across that stage, but that was never really very accurate.

00:03:20.840 It really came out of 19th century thinking and early 20th century thinking, and it turns out that what people call non-linearity or chaos theory,

00:03:32.320 the tendency for biological organisms to sort of self-organize, which Gaia is the largest example of that, is extremely pervasive here.

00:03:42.740 And every time that happens, the organisms have to be able to do a lot of things.

00:03:48.860 They have to be able to tell the difference between me and not me.

00:03:51.920 They have to be able to tell the intent of an organism that's coming toward them.

00:03:57.540 They have to be able to craft responses, all of which is highly intelligent behavior.

00:04:03.880 And it turns out literally every biological organism on the planet is really highly intelligent.

00:04:11.040 Human beings are in some ways much less intelligent than some of those entities.

00:04:16.880 So when you start looking at bacteria and plants, for instance, what you start finding is this tremendous intelligence level

00:04:26.160 with extremely sophisticated neural networks like we have in our brain, and they're able to do all of those things, plus a lot more.

00:04:36.580 They plan for the future.

00:04:37.700 They teach their offspring.

00:04:39.880 And so this is sort of upsetting that older, more reductionistic look of things.

00:04:47.320 And all of this really was pretty much inherent in Lovelock's Gaia orientation.

00:04:52.020 That's why I like to tell vegetarians, well, plants have feelings too.

00:04:56.500 They definitely have feelings.

00:04:57.760 And what's more than that, as I talk about in the book, some plants are far more intelligent than human beings.

00:05:02.540 So that sort of thing of like somebody's in a coma, they call them a vegetable, that's sort of our orientation toward plants.

00:05:11.420 But they're actually, in general, they tend to be a lot smarter than most people, no matter what plant you're looking at.

00:05:18.120 I mean, they can't run.

00:05:19.980 They can't hide.

00:05:20.900 They can't go to the doctor.

00:05:22.100 They can't call the police.

00:05:23.400 They can't call, you know, go to the hospital or whatever like that.

00:05:27.160 They have to craft all of these responses, and they're really good at creating sophisticated chemicals to do so and to coordinate and communicate with everything around them.

00:05:40.040 They're actually tremendously fascinating.

00:05:43.300 Well, let's talk about the plant brain because you write about how brains don't actually have to look like the human sense of the word, right?

00:05:50.020 Right.

00:05:50.580 They don't have to at all.

00:05:51.820 And really what's important is not the brain, but the neural network that the brain contains.

00:05:58.300 And so a lot of people that are doing studies of neural networks and intelligence and neural networks,

00:06:04.120 they really are calling what most neuroscientists and consciousness researchers have been doing for a long time,

00:06:10.160 a kind of brain chauvinism because they're so focused on the organ that they've missed the important thing,

00:06:17.540 which is the neural network.

00:06:18.620 Now, you know, reductionists who like to call themselves skeptics or whatever,

00:06:22.940 they always like to jump on this sort of thing.

00:06:24.660 And I think it's fascinating that the first person who in print identified the plant brain was Charles Darwin

00:06:31.960 in his second to last book, The Power of Movement in Plants.

00:06:36.160 And so what happens is the plant brain is really the root system.

00:06:40.040 And when you examine it, as many plant neurobiologists have done,

00:06:44.600 you find it's got the same kind of neuronal structures that our brains do.

00:06:50.040 They use the same neurotransmitters.

00:06:52.540 They act very much identically to our own brain, our neural network.

00:06:58.040 And the other thing is they're not limited by the size of a skull.

00:07:01.500 Our brain development is limited by our skull size.

00:07:05.960 As plant roots can grow forever in the soil, that's the medium.

00:07:11.160 So that's how you get, you know, aspen root systems or aspen organisms that are over 100,000 years old,

00:07:20.900 where the root systems cover hundreds of acres.

00:07:23.280 And their neural network far exceeds our own.

00:07:26.800 Well, you mentioned some plants are smarter than others.

00:07:29.640 So how so?

00:07:30.400 Well, it's just like anything else, you know, there's all living organisms have a range of intelligence level, you know.

00:07:38.840 I mean, we've all noticed that in people because we've all been around long enough to have encountered that range, you know.

00:07:45.320 A plant bell curve?

00:07:47.000 Yeah, there's a plant bell curve just like there is amongst human beings.

00:07:51.480 But it might even be more accurate to think of it looking at human beings as just being part of the mammal species.

00:07:59.920 And you're going to get a range of intelligence or a range of sophistication of neural net might be a better way to put it across the whole mammal spectrum.

00:08:10.280 And you're going to find that same thing among plants.

00:08:13.120 Some have massive neural networks, like that aspen tree system that I just mentioned.

00:08:19.400 Others, like a single rye plant, will have about 16 billion neurons.

00:08:23.740 Human beings have about 86 billion.

00:08:26.120 But the aspen system will have trillions of neurons. 0.99

00:08:28.960 So you get an idea of that just similar kind of range.

00:08:32.860 Well, bacteria, they don't have a brain yet. 0.95

00:08:35.300 They must be intelligent because it seems like the more antibiotics we try to kill them with, the more resistant they become, right?

00:08:41.180 Yeah, they're supremely intelligent.

00:08:43.700 I mean, they're the oldest life form on the planet.

00:08:46.680 So, you know, they've been around somewhere between three and a half and four billion years.

00:08:52.080 And what they have is they have really sophisticated neural networks that they've developed that look different than a plant or a human neural network.

00:09:01.460 But they perform exactly the same function.

00:09:03.960 And so what happens with bacteria, they sort of all hook together almost in a superorganism.

00:09:10.380 You might call them a swarm intelligence in which the neural network capacities of a single bacterium hook together with all of the others.

00:09:19.380 And you get this neural network that there is nothing on the planet that is larger than that particular neural network.

00:09:26.520 And many people have remarked that those bacteria, if you touch bacteria in one part of the earth and do something to them, that information will travel around the planet extremely rapidly.

00:09:42.920 And that's one of the ways they started figuring out that they're more like a global superorganism rather than isolated individual entities.

00:09:50.520 Wow. Well, what is your take on the bacteria relationship with us?

00:09:56.340 Does the virus host relationship offer any benefits?

00:09:59.240 Well, the interesting thing is if you look at Lynn Margolis' work, I mean, you know, all of this stuff I like to continually say,

00:10:07.640 all this stuff we're talking about is information that's been carefully concealed in peer review journals where most, you know, researchers can't find it.

00:10:15.960 You know, so the thing is, like, when you look at Lynn Margolis' work, she worked with bacteria for all of her life.

00:10:23.080 And she was the one that began to realize that all complex biological organisms were simply bacteria that had morphed into a more sophisticated shape,

00:10:37.680 innovated from a process she called symbiogenesis, where two organisms that are unlike each other merge and form a completely third organism

00:10:47.860 that has the capacities of both of the original ones and other ones that can't be predicted from studying those first ones.

00:10:56.080 And so, you know, and one of the things she continually said is bacteria are our ancestors.

00:11:02.100 They invented consciousness. They invented neural networks.

00:11:05.580 So when we attack bacteria, we're engaging in this kind of form of self-hatred.

00:11:10.000 You know, but even if you look at it more reductively than that, the surface of our body is covered with bacteria.

00:11:18.160 Our GI tract is covered with bacteria. We've evolved with them.

00:11:23.080 And if they were removed from our bodies, we would die pretty much immediately.

00:11:28.140 Without that sort of collaborative behavior, our life, no advanced life or more complex life form could exist.

00:11:37.680 Oh. Well, if we talk about invasive plants, they obviously have a function.

00:11:43.100 So what can you tell us about the purpose of invasive plants as we know them?

00:11:46.940 Well, the thing is, you have to understand plants have tremendous power of movement.

00:11:50.480 Nobody can really quite figure out how plant populations move across the world.

00:11:55.280 But every time they do mathematical analysis of it, they don't move by random dynamics.

00:12:02.240 There's really sophisticated, nonlinear periodicity, they would say, going on.

00:12:09.060 And so, you know, the Earth moves on much longer timelines than we're used to.

00:12:14.720 So the fascinating thing about invasive plants, they, you know, were sort of taught that somebody brought the seed back.

00:12:23.660 It was on their shoe when they went to, you know, Belgium or something.

00:12:27.720 And they bring it back to the United States and then start to spread. 0.89

00:12:30.800 But really, when you really look more deeply into it, you start seeing that the plants that move into particular areas all do so for specific reasons.

00:12:39.640 They're actually counteracting long-term ecological damage in that location.

00:12:44.820 And they begin to rectify the problem by being there.

00:12:49.600 And after a while, they'll move on and other plants will come in once the soil is restored and the ecosystem is more balanced.

00:12:57.060 Now, a great way to get an idea of this, because I know about plants best, but when you look at the zebra mussel,

00:13:05.420 which is something everybody keeps bringing up, is this horrible invasive pest.

00:13:08.600 It's in the Great Lakes system in the United States.

00:13:13.020 And so it's really incredibly fascinating to me, because the Great Lakes are tremendously polluted.

00:13:20.620 And they've killed off a lot of the natural life that lived in there for thousands of years.

00:13:26.380 And one of the things that began to die off or began severely reduced in numbers were all of the normal mussels and oysters that lived in that location.

00:13:37.360 Plus, they built all these huge industrial plants around the Great Lakes, which continually polluted them.

00:13:45.440 So they're not actually very healthy places.

00:13:47.500 Well, when the zebra mussels moved in, one of the functions of mussels and oysters, for instance, is they filter the water.

00:13:56.300 A single zebra mussel can filter about three gallons of water per hour.

00:14:02.140 And so you get these millions of zebra mussels who are in there that are acting as a massive filtering mechanism to clean the lakes.

00:14:09.380 But secondly, the one thing that they really like to do after that is clog the intake ports and the exit ports of all of these industrial factories.

00:14:20.020 So they're screwing up their plumbing system, stopping them from being able to continue to pollute.

00:14:25.740 So that's why I say that whenever you're looking at an invasive species, you have to ask, what's its ecological function?

00:14:32.060 Why is it moving into that area?

00:14:34.100 And invariably, you find that they're doing something to correct an underlying ecological disruption.

00:14:41.020 Yeah, many people think that dandelions are weeds just to be mowed down, but they're shining their little yellow faces at us, begging to be picked and consumed, because they're also highly beneficial for humans.

00:14:51.480 I mean, I always have dandelion tea in my house.

00:14:54.000 It's the go-to herb.

00:14:55.220 Nettles also like that.

00:14:56.300 It grows in ditches and around old barns and cars.

00:14:58.720 It's also great for medicinal properties.

00:15:00.860 Yeah, they're two absolutely great plants for healing disease, and you start to see these growing in certain locations.

00:15:11.720 But dandelion is extremely good for liver problems, which a lot of people suffer from.

00:15:16.900 Nettles are really good as a tonic for people that are really run down or they're nutritively diminished somehow.

00:15:24.640 And so it's always really important to look at what these things are doing and to understand that, you know, there's a lot more going on out in nature than we've been led to believe.

00:15:36.340 I mean, we just don't notice how incredibly wondrous it is.

00:15:39.340 Yeah, I know.

00:15:40.960 Well, many people today say humans are a plague, and some are probably, but not all.

00:15:46.460 So what do plants get from us?

00:15:49.780 Well, as a friend of mine said once, she said, it's their journey too.

00:15:55.080 And I love thinking about it that way.

00:15:57.060 When you really start getting into plants and human beings and you start looking at it, there's this terrible suspicion that begins to emerge, this dawning realization that's really hard to put down after years of looking at it, that human beings serve as plant propagators.

00:16:18.560 I mean, we're the ones that carried them all around the earth, and you have to understand, plants are tremendously older than human beings, anywhere from 140 to 700 million years, depending upon what you're looking at, what your criteria are.

00:16:34.120 And they and bacteria are the two most fundamental organisms to life on earth, the way the whole earth ecosystem is, couldn't be here.

00:16:46.140 If all the bacteria died, everything else would die.

00:16:50.540 If all of the plants died, the bacteria would still be here, but human life would cease to exist extremely rapidly.

00:16:58.040 So they're much more fundamental to everything here than we are.

00:17:01.940 We're sort of Johnny-come-lately-after effects, in a sense.

00:17:06.600 And they, so because of that, we were sort of emerged into an existing system.

00:17:13.900 And one of the things, the major things plants get from us is we move them around the earth and help distribute their seeds.

00:17:21.780 I mean, it's more like we're the dog and they're the person walking us.

00:17:26.080 So do you think humans serve an ecological function on the planet?

00:17:30.640 Yeah, I think humans, you know, that's one of the things I talk about in the book,

00:17:34.220 that I think humans serve a really important ecological function.

00:17:38.980 And, you know, I've been working on that, thinking about that for about 20 years.

00:17:44.980 The whole concept that human beings are a plague on the earth or a cancer or a virus,

00:17:51.440 I'm sure you've heard that and a lot of people listening have heard that sort of phrasing.

00:17:56.480 And it just never really sat well with me.

00:18:00.100 I mean, it's a great way to, you know, sort of give energy to feelings of guilt,

00:18:05.520 but it didn't really seem to serve any function.

00:18:09.100 And if you look at the Gaia hypothesis, the earth is a living, intelligent, aware organism,

00:18:15.700 it would be really strange for an organism that's 4 billion years old to make that kind of an error in judgment,

00:18:23.460 to generate an organism which was going to destroy the very biosphere itself.

00:18:28.980 So I started looking at it with new eyes and really asking what's the ecological function.

00:18:37.380 And what's really fascinating is that if you start looking at sexual reproduction on the earth,

00:18:43.120 I mean, that's one of the things the earth loves.

00:18:45.460 The earth is engaging in sex all of the time.

00:18:48.940 Sex, drugs, and rock and roll is ecologically fundamental to the functioning of the planet, actually.

00:18:54.340 And so then if you start looking at the innovations, Gaia, I think a better word for evolution is actually innovation.

00:19:04.180 Gaia is always innovating and Gaia is always creating more complex ecological structures

00:19:11.260 because the more complex they are, the better able they are to respond to perturbations

00:19:17.080 and their functioning like asteroid strikes or something like that.

00:19:21.380 So one of the things Gaia does to keep everything really healthy is blending genomes all around the planet.

00:19:29.720 And about 140 million years ago or so, Gaia started getting really interested in split gender sexuality.

00:19:40.800 Gaia had been playing around with that for quite a while, maybe 700 million years, something like that.

00:19:46.020 And then that was a really great innovation.

00:19:49.460 You start looking at how plants propagate, you also get this, first they had wind pollination, that was the earliest form.

00:19:58.920 And then with the emergence of flowering plants about 140 million years ago, Gaia had this even greater idea,

00:20:07.080 which was you get the pollinator to take the pollen exactly where it needs to go rather than relying on the wind.

00:20:13.780 And you combine that with Lynn Margolis' understanding that there were just four original bacteria that gave rise to all of the organisms on Earth.

00:20:25.080 And then you start looking at what human beings have done.

00:20:27.920 Now, human beings have done a very similar thing that plants do.

00:20:32.740 The plants store up all of this material over the winter and then in the spring and then the summer and then in the fall they start putting out seed.

00:20:43.120 And they use those stored resources to create seed stock, which they then release into the world to propagate.

00:20:50.180 So Richard Dawkins said this thing once, he said, Gaia's not alive because Gaia doesn't reproduce.

00:20:58.180 And I thought, well, that's a really strange thing for an 80-year-old person to say about,

00:21:04.140 or somebody that's going to live 80 years to say about an organism that's 4 billion years old.

00:21:09.240 How would he know if Gaia only reproduces every million years, for instance?

00:21:13.180 So the thing is, is that as we create all of these rocket ships and everything and send them out into space and all of our space probes,

00:21:23.280 they're covered with bacteria and we're actually sending them out into space to all of these different planets.

00:21:31.180 Like panspermia type of thing?

00:21:33.220 Yeah, that's exactly like panspermia.

00:21:35.100 I mean, a lot of people have speculated that life on Earth started because bacteria from out there came here.

00:21:41.920 And what's actually happening is we're sending bacteria from here out all throughout the solar system,

00:21:48.940 throughout the galaxy and into the universe.

00:21:51.560 Gaia's really reproducing.

00:21:53.180 And they found that these bacteria, they found them on the moon.

00:21:56.500 They found them on the Mars, Land Rover.

00:21:59.180 They found them on the International Space Station that they're actually able to go into this hibernative state in space

00:22:06.640 and last pretty much indefinitely.

00:22:09.160 So that's, I think, the ecological function of the human species.

00:22:14.360 We've used up all of the stored resource base that Gaia had built up over 100,000 years,

00:22:21.340 basically as part of the reproduction process.

00:22:24.580 And we're important to Gaia.

00:22:26.720 We're just not fundamental.

00:22:28.560 Right.

00:22:28.720 You have a chapter in your book called Gaia and the Patterns that Connect,

00:22:31.580 where you write about the similarities between plants and humans seen in the female reproductive system

00:22:36.080 and in the fundamentals of sex.

00:22:38.200 And it's incredible to see the imagery of this.

00:22:39.940 But tell us about these aspects.

00:22:41.740 Well, what's really fascinating, I mean, a lot of people have noticed this,

00:22:45.400 that the flower reproductive system and the human female reproductive system are virtually identical.

00:22:51.840 And then a lot of people have also noticed that plants produce estrogenic compounds

00:22:58.840 which affect the human reproductive system or the female reproductive system.

00:23:04.180 So, you know, Gregory Bateson was absolutely a fascinating guy,

00:23:08.980 and he realized there were all of these what he called meta patterns in nature like an egg shape,

00:23:15.400 like nuts have an egg shape.

00:23:16.820 It's a really sophisticated kind of innovation.

00:23:20.520 But you start looking at the development of that particular kind of reproductive system. 0.99

00:23:24.860 Gaia always tends to take that pattern, if it's successful,

00:23:28.840 and then use it in succeeding innovations.

00:23:32.500 And so what you see is that it was used in the flowers,

00:23:37.880 and it was used in other species, including mammals, including human females.

00:23:42.880 But once you really understand that, once you understand you're looking at a meta pattern,

00:23:48.680 and you apply it also to split gender sexuality,

00:23:51.700 because when you start really looking closely at the male and female reproductive tracts,

00:23:56.840 they're virtually identical.

00:23:58.120 They're just slightly morphed for function,

00:24:00.680 like the prostate and the uterus are virtually an identical organ.

00:24:04.280 The testicles and the ovaries are virtually identical organs.

00:24:07.300 So you put all of that stuff together,

00:24:10.820 and what you begin to understand is flowers are going to be menstruating,

00:24:15.220 because there's a reason for menstruation,

00:24:18.000 which is one major reason is that it sterilizes the female reproductive tract. 1.00

00:24:22.640 And in fact, flowers do menstruate. 0.80

00:24:24.820 We just happen to call it nectar.

00:24:26.300 They put this very sweet substance filled with antibacterial compounds

00:24:30.580 all up through into the flower, which helps prevent infection.

00:24:34.600 Then, if you understand that the female and male reproductive systems are virtually identical,

00:24:41.980 then you have to understand that not only are plants going to be creating estrogenic chemicals,

00:24:47.120 they're going to be creating androgenic chemicals.

00:24:50.500 And of course, pine pollen has pharmaceutically pure testosterone in it,

00:24:56.880 just like in our bodies.

00:24:58.660 And so then you can also get, if the uterus and the prostate are identical organs,

00:25:04.880 just morphed for function,

00:25:07.060 then a plant that's going to affect the prostate, saw palmetto, 0.99

00:25:11.300 which is an endocrine modulator,

00:25:13.280 it's also going to be able to be used to normalize uterine function.

00:25:17.500 So you begin to see how all of these things are connected together

00:25:20.420 in this most marvelous network of all of these patterns that are working together.

00:25:25.780 Yeah, it's amazing.

00:25:26.520 You went further, even talked about the male and semen and testosterone,

00:25:30.920 which is fascinating, actually.

00:25:33.520 Yeah, I think that it is.

00:25:34.880 It's like that's, the more I learn about all this,

00:25:37.800 the more I realize I don't know,

00:25:39.980 and also the more fascinating it all becomes for me.

00:25:43.820 I mean, it's just a marvelous kind of journey

00:25:46.480 to go into the world without preconceptions

00:25:49.980 and begin to see what's really there rather than what I was taught in school,

00:25:54.760 which most of which was useless.

00:25:57.400 Oh, yeah.

00:25:58.480 Well, you mentioned pine trees were high in testosterone.

00:26:01.420 I know these days men have dangerously low testosterone levels,

00:26:04.820 and you've written a book called Vital Man.

00:26:06.860 So what recommendations do you have for men to boost their testosterone?

00:26:10.080 Well, the thing is that there's massive amounts of estrogenic chemicals

00:26:16.440 going into the ecosystem.

00:26:19.520 And one of the major sources of that is hormone replacement therapy that women take. 1.00

00:26:25.940 One of the reasons why when people take pharmaceuticals

00:26:29.780 that they have to keep taking them is that it goes into the body

00:26:33.520 and the body naturally tries to get rid of it.

00:26:36.100 And so it's usually excreted out of the body somehow.

00:26:39.480 A lot of it is excreted out in urine.

00:26:41.900 And so it goes into the water supply at these really tiny levels,

00:26:47.860 parts per trillion.

00:26:49.600 And it turns out that those parts per trillion of estrogenic chemicals

00:26:53.160 are very, very potent in their impacts.

00:26:56.840 A lot of people thought that the levels were too minute to make any difference.

00:27:02.640 But in fact, it turns out that they're a lot more active at parts per trillion

00:27:07.360 than they are at parts per hundred.

00:27:09.800 So what you get from people that are studying this is that they're starting to notice

00:27:15.060 there's massive effects on male reproductive systems all around the earth.

00:27:20.500 And it's not just hormone replacement therapies.

00:27:23.640 Of course, there's a lot of estrogen mimics from plastics and other things

00:27:27.520 that are doing the similar thing.

00:27:29.460 So I began to look.

00:27:31.900 It took me about 10 years.

00:27:33.080 I don't know why I was so slow.

00:27:34.680 But it took me about 10 years before I began looking for androgenic or phytoandrogens.

00:27:42.920 And the weird thing is, it just took me so long to think of it.

00:27:46.140 I've been working with phytoestrogens for a decade.

00:27:48.640 And all of a sudden, I just went, there's got to be phytoandrogens.

00:27:52.840 And it turns out that pine pollen has more testosterone in it than any other plant on earth

00:27:59.780 or any other plant part on earth.

00:28:02.140 And so taking a tincture of pine pollen is extremely effective

00:28:07.240 because it's absorbed through the mucous membranes of the mouth and throat

00:28:11.640 directly into the bloodstream.

00:28:13.060 And it'll raise testosterone levels and actually counteract a lot of the problems

00:28:18.240 that low testosterone causes in the human male.

00:28:21.700 It's quite magnificent, really.

00:28:23.580 Wow.

00:28:24.140 Yeah.

00:28:24.340 And I know for women with high estrogen, you don't want that because, 0.99

00:28:27.500 well, it makes you crazy.

00:28:28.940 And also, you can, your chances of getting cancer are higher.

00:28:32.400 So there's plants you can take that are, you know, we need more progesterone

00:28:36.020 because that's a precursor to testosterone to balance out the high levels of estrogen.

00:28:41.380 Right.

00:28:41.900 And women have testosterone in their bodies, too. 1.00

00:28:44.500 And what's most important for both men and women is the estrogen-testosterone ratio.

00:28:51.040 And that's why for men, what happens in middle age is that there's a very definite shift

00:28:56.740 where the estrogen-testosterone ratio moves more toward the estrogen side.

00:29:02.640 And so men begin to gain more weight at that time.

00:29:06.320 They begin to slow down a bit.

00:29:07.900 They begin breasts.

00:29:09.420 Yeah, they do.

00:29:10.700 The MUB experience is just unfortunately known in the United States.

00:29:14.720 And so women start to have similar dynamics at various different times. 1.00

00:29:20.820 So the important thing is to, like, balance those ratios.

00:29:25.080 And, you know, plants are extremely good at doing that because there's very few side effects

00:29:29.440 from them.

00:29:30.000 They're biodegradable, which most pharmaceuticals are not actually biodegradable, which most people

00:29:35.920 don't know.

00:29:37.480 And they're renewable, and they're very inexpensive.

00:29:40.480 So I love them.

00:29:42.760 I use them all the time.

00:29:44.380 Well, speaking of testosterone, it and the male purpose seems to be demonized.

00:29:48.860 And that's an issue I have with many of the Gaia goddess-worshipping types because they only 0.93

00:29:53.320 talk about the goddess aspect and seem to resent males. 1.00

00:29:56.160 But what you're talking about is the balance between male and female on the planet, right?

00:30:01.540 Yeah, I am.

00:30:02.040 And that was actually the whole point of feminism in its original emergence is not to suppress 0.97

00:30:09.740 the male, not to supplant, you know, one kind of totalitarianism with another, but basically

00:30:16.080 for this kind of equality and recognition to begin to occur.

00:30:20.380 And the more I understand about how that men and women are actually extremely, I mean, we're

00:30:26.560 really taught in a lot of ways that there's two species of human beings on Earth, men and

00:30:32.280 women, but there's not. 1.00

00:30:33.940 There's one.

00:30:34.800 And split gender sexuality just means there's this human identity at the core of this and

00:30:42.980 that one, you know, it's morphed toward the male or morphed toward the female simply for

00:30:48.080 genetic recombination because it's more healthy.

00:30:51.540 And so, you know, it's a real difficult thing being immersed in the midst of my liberal tribe

00:30:57.280 as long as I have been and being at so many conferences and festivals and events like this,

00:31:03.260 running into male hatred or sex hatred like that has been a continual process.

00:31:11.100 And unfortunately, amongst my liberal tribe, we've had the same difficulty speaking up about that

00:31:19.200 and trying to moderate it as people in the extreme right wing have done about fundamentalist

00:31:25.120 Christianity or any other kind of fundamentalism.

00:31:28.360 So it is a real definite problem.

00:31:30.660 And I can't actually see how, you know, hatred between the sexes is going to get us to a

00:31:38.000 better place.

00:31:39.140 Oh, of course not. 0.97

00:31:39.980 It's ridiculous. 0.80

00:31:41.080 And it's being spread everywhere in the universities right now, that type of teaching, unfortunately. 0.94

00:31:46.040 So.

00:31:47.380 Yeah, it's I mean, it kind of, you know, and I've been watching this for a long time.

00:31:51.540 Um, we often will get some really neat innovation addressing some problem that needs to be addressed.

00:31:57.360 And there'll be this massive kind of exploration and all this wonderful stuff that happens.

00:32:02.080 And then all of those people sort of, they either begin to die off or they begin to move on.

00:32:06.740 And then the most fundamentalist sort of regressive, reductionistic members of that movement begin

00:32:13.920 to sort of take over the whole shebang.

00:32:17.060 And it's, you know, I've seen it happen.

00:32:19.120 It's happened in, um, psychoanalysis.

00:32:22.500 There's much less innovation, much more conservatism now.

00:32:26.180 It's happened in, it's starting to happen in herbal medicine quite a bit.

00:32:30.060 It happened in the medical profession.

00:32:31.680 It happened in physics and in science.

00:32:33.860 It just seems to be a common dynamic.

00:32:37.000 And I love Doris Lessing, who was a great writer in England for a long time.

00:32:43.140 And she talked about this a lot.

00:32:45.220 She said, you know, for every one person that uses this information about equality between

00:32:52.280 the sexes to actually change, there's nine others that are using it to gain power over 1.00

00:32:57.520 others.

00:32:57.920 And she said it's simply unconscionable.

00:33:00.620 I think the whole idea of egalitarianism is a farce, though, because we don't see it in

00:33:05.000 nature at all.

00:33:05.860 Well, yeah, but we do see cooperation and where the sort of, you know, the diversity of

00:33:17.080 life and function comes together in an incredibly cooperative way.

00:33:21.960 One of the real truths that you find as you start getting deeper into the whole Gaia dynamic

00:33:27.060 is that cooperation is a lot more fundamental than competition.

00:33:31.800 That whole thing about nature being read in tooth and claw is actually not that accurate.

00:33:37.380 What's really accurate is you have a fundamentally cooperative system in which death is inherently

00:33:43.700 embedded.

00:33:44.420 It can't be removed from the system.

00:33:47.200 And that's one of the things that people have a lot of difficulty dealing with.

00:33:53.220 It's like, you know, the thing is, we're supposed to biodegrade.

00:33:58.340 We're biodegrading right now.

00:34:00.740 But the thing is, you get in the midst of my liberal community and you say, and they go,

00:34:05.320 yeah, biodegrading is really fun.

00:34:06.860 You know, I really believe in that.

00:34:08.100 You go, well, we're biodegrading.

00:34:10.080 And they go, no, that's not OK.

00:34:11.360 I have to go to the hospital right now.

00:34:12.900 So there's that fear of death has sort of been in there and we can't look at it or seem

00:34:18.640 to accept that it's a fundamental aspect of things.

00:34:22.540 But you get away from that or you understand its inherent nature and you begin to find cooperation

00:34:28.560 is fundamental in the system and that all of the differences that are occurring in all

00:34:35.320 the different organisms, it's because they have a function.

00:34:38.600 They have an inherent genius to contribute from what and who they are to the functioning

00:34:44.200 of the whole.

00:34:45.100 And I just think that's one of the most marvelous things about it.

00:34:48.240 Well, if we back up a little bit, you've spoken about how sex is woven into the fabric of our

00:34:53.240 planet.

00:34:53.940 And in your book, you kind of get into how people can be shameful to talk about it.

00:34:57.380 And it makes me think of the story of Adam and Eve and how they became shameful being naked.

00:35:02.080 And to me, it symbolizes the defilement of our ancestors by this Judaic myth religion 0.99

00:35:07.400 that got into the psyche of our European ancestors and cut them off from their ancient grounded 0.96

00:35:11.920 ways.

00:35:12.700 You know, I was raised Christian and it's not a religion that depicts sex and nature as

00:35:16.820 a positive force.

00:35:17.960 What do you think?

00:35:19.260 Well, it's a really kind of bizarre thing because in the early days of Christianity, that

00:35:23.680 wasn't an issue. 0.86

00:35:24.580 It's another real example of how the most restrictive, crazy, fundamentalist members of the movement 0.90

00:35:30.220 sort of began to take things over after a while.

00:35:33.340 And I think part of it was really in response to the Romans.

00:35:36.900 The Romans, you know, were fascinating.

00:35:39.600 They didn't have the same sort of orientation toward nudity or sex that we do.

00:35:45.280 It's like I've just been reading a massive amount of work by Mary Beard, who's English,

00:35:50.000 and I just love her work.

00:35:51.400 She's absolutely brilliant.

00:35:53.540 And so, you know, so in Roman bathrooms, there were no stalls, right?

00:35:59.060 It was just a line of toilets.

00:36:00.840 And so everybody just walked in and sat down next to each other and did their business,

00:36:04.740 you know.

00:36:04.960 But when we would think of that, it's like we started to get real twitchy about it.

00:36:09.000 So the other thing they would do, they didn't have the nudity taboo like we do.

00:36:13.020 So that during sex, the banded woman would be in their bedroom having sex and they would 0.99

00:36:19.320 get into all of these different interesting positions and they would call in their slaves 0.96

00:36:23.700 or their servants and say, oh, you know, we're having trouble with this position when you

00:36:26.640 help us get into this one or that one.

00:36:28.560 And it's like, would you think about us doing that now?

00:36:31.760 Everybody goes, oh my God, I could never do that.

00:36:34.200 But the dynamic about shame about body, shame about sexuality, it all came from this very

00:36:44.460 definite shift.

00:36:45.380 And I think part of what was happening with Christianity over time is that they were really 0.96

00:36:51.580 reacting against the Roman orientation to sort of set themselves up as different.

00:36:59.100 And, you know, the fascinating thing about a nudity taboo, once it's put in place, children

00:37:07.000 don't understand it.

00:37:08.700 Little kids always take off their clothes because it feels good to run around naked.

00:37:12.460 They just do that.

00:37:13.180 You have to train them over and over and over again to keep them on.

00:37:16.200 And then they're like, well, why?

00:37:17.560 And the parents don't really have an answer.

00:37:19.100 Well, you just have to, or it's not nice to be without clothes or whatever.

00:37:22.460 And so for kids, what they start doing is the only way to explain that is that they make

00:37:28.180 up there's something wrong with naked bodies.

00:37:30.780 They have to.

00:37:31.620 It's inevitable.

00:37:32.960 And it also gets translated to a personal thing.

00:37:36.960 They make up that there's something wrong with their body because that's the only way to

00:37:42.640 explain it, even though nobody ever says what it is that's actually quite wrong with the

00:37:47.500 body.

00:37:48.520 And so one of the ways that I like to get to this is with people, I lead them into kind

00:37:55.020 of this, you know, exercise, meditative exercise, and they get really calm. 0.57

00:37:59.820 And I say, okay, now I'd like you to see standing in front of you the ugliest part of your body.

00:38:07.680 And every time you do that, it's very vivid. 0.98

00:38:10.040 Somebody will see whatever.

00:38:11.020 And the fascinating thing is the amazing range of body parts that are chosen to be the ugly

00:38:18.740 one, right?

00:38:20.860 Everybody's different.

00:38:22.360 But the thing is, like, just looking at those parts and talking to them in that exercise,

00:38:28.380 you know, the part invariably sort of says back to the person during the meditation, well,

00:38:33.360 all I really want to be is love.

00:38:35.140 All I want you to do is have me be part of you and not sort of have this divisive thing

00:38:41.000 for you to once again, you know, own the beauty of your body and for us to be happy together.

00:38:46.980 And that's a tremendous act of cultural defiance to do something like that.

00:38:53.580 Well, moving away from body parts and getting back into plants, another aspect I wanted to

00:38:57.960 ask you about is regarding plant intelligence and environmentalism.

00:39:01.440 So what do you make of humanity's environmentalism today?

00:39:05.260 Environmentalism is a really strange thing.

00:39:07.480 I think also the same thing.

00:39:09.880 I think in the beginning, when you look at the work of Aldo Leopold, for instance, or Arnie

00:39:14.760 Ness, Aldo Leopold was considered sort of the father of American environmentalism, modern

00:39:21.280 American environmentalism from the 30s and the 40s.

00:39:24.380 Arnie Ness from Norway, I think, of European.

00:39:28.920 And then, of course, there was Henry Thoreau and John Muir and John Burroughs, a bunch of

00:39:34.780 other people in the American thing.

00:39:38.520 And they were doing some really interesting stuff.

00:39:40.700 They were sort of raising awareness about what we were losing and the livingness of the world.

00:39:45.200 And that was really important.

00:39:46.480 But over time, environmentalism has become a big part of the problem.

00:39:51.900 In my opinion, a lot of the environmental organizations are extremely wealthy, extremely powerful, and

00:39:58.440 they have become their own reason for being.

00:40:02.120 And they're just as misguided in many ways as a lot of the people that they're combating.

00:40:09.340 There isn't any way that we can destroy the planet.

00:40:13.020 It's not going to happen.

00:40:15.160 There's not really any way that we're going to destroy ourselves.

00:40:18.880 What's really at risk is human civilization, the technological civilization that we've built

00:40:26.060 up over the last, I don't know, 500 years, let's say.

00:40:30.540 That's very much endangered because it's based on extracting resources from what we consider

00:40:37.760 to be sort of a static environment from which we can pull as much as we want.

00:40:42.720 And that's definitely in trouble.

00:40:45.740 And it's not really savable.

00:40:47.080 If you really start looking at everything, we've already exceeded the carrying capacity

00:40:52.620 of the Earth.

00:40:54.000 We're literally burning the house to keep warm in the winter.

00:40:57.760 And we're right up against limits of all different kinds, not just peak oil, but peak

00:41:03.780 topsoil, peak water, peak everything.

00:41:06.500 And the system is starting to fray and crack everywhere.

00:41:09.660 And I think that's part of the reason why so many people are so afraid.

00:41:13.380 It's that they can just feel this thing happening.

00:41:16.560 And there's really not much that they can do to stop it.

00:41:20.140 For me, it's, you know, I used to laugh when I heard about, oh, overpopulation.

00:41:23.440 But now when you really travel and when you really get out, it's like, wow, there is a

00:41:27.900 lot of people, you know.

00:41:30.120 Well, in the United States, it was something like there's an additional 100 million people

00:41:34.880 now since 1980.

00:41:36.780 So I notice it here.

00:41:39.400 Everybody does.

00:41:40.360 And I know in England, it's a real problem because simply housing and housing prices,

00:41:45.620 land prices.

00:41:47.040 And we see it here.

00:41:48.240 There's very little stuff available for people that's affordable because, and we're all bumping

00:41:55.460 up against each other.

00:41:56.620 And it's starting to really fray because we're not really cultures that are used to that kind 0.99

00:42:01.360 of population density.

00:42:03.020 Yeah.

00:42:03.240 Well, a lot of it is mass immigration, which Europe and America is getting hit with.

00:42:07.180 And I'm surprised that environmentalists who worry about overpopulation don't say anything

00:42:12.340 about it.

00:42:13.400 Well, the problem is once you start talking about overpopulation, you get into a real dicey

00:42:18.700 area.

00:42:19.140 There's no way out that you can, you can't escape from that, the implications of talking

00:42:26.780 about that.

00:42:27.740 And pretty soon you're into, well, somehow the population of the earth is going to have

00:42:32.860 to decrease substantially.

00:42:34.780 And if we don't somehow decide how to do it ourselves, nature will do it for us.

00:42:40.080 Whether it's going to be massive epidemic diseases like Ebola, sooner or later, something

00:42:45.000 like that will break out into the human community.

00:42:48.560 And as the way the United States Health Service showed, they're just completely incapable of

00:42:53.580 dealing with it.

00:42:54.260 It almost got loose this time.

00:42:56.260 Sooner or later, something like that will get loose.

00:42:58.540 So it's either going to happen for us or we're going to have to, you know, really grasp

00:43:03.400 the nettle ourself and begin to deal with it directly.

00:43:06.440 But I don't see much chance of that.

00:43:08.740 We're just, it's too hard of a problem for human beings to directly face.

00:43:14.220 The implications are too serious and the ways to address it are too totalitarian and too

00:43:23.040 frightening and nobody's going to want to go there.

00:43:26.900 Well, it kind of is when I think about it, survival of the fittest that way.

00:43:30.560 I'm like, if you're not smart and you're eating the GMOs and using the chemicals and wearing

00:43:35.700 the polyester, nature might take you out. 0.98

00:43:39.600 Well, it's an interesting thing.

00:43:41.000 You know, that the survival of the fittest dynamic, that's not actually a phrase that

00:43:45.680 Darwin initiated.

00:43:46.680 Sure, I know.

00:43:47.360 It was Herbert Spencer that came up with that.

00:43:49.660 And so Darwin was really different.

00:43:52.800 You know, he said there is no hierarchy.

00:43:55.340 There's no higher.

00:43:56.580 He had a sign in his office that said there's no higher or lower.

00:43:59.640 Remember that, you know.

00:44:00.780 And when you start really looking at survival of the fittest dynamics, yes, sometimes that's

00:44:06.400 true.

00:44:06.740 But there's also survival of the luckiest.

00:44:10.340 And that's a really common dynamic that's very much overlooked by what the Harvard zoologist

00:44:17.440 Richard Lewontin calls the vulgar Darwinist, you know, which I think is a hilarious phrase. 1.00

00:44:22.520 But so there's a lot of other factors involved rather than simply that, you know, one guy

00:44:29.100 runs faster than the other sort of dynamic.

00:44:32.520 And so mostly, you know, because when you start looking at survival of the fittest orientation,

00:44:39.800 everybody starts getting afraid and they want to hunker down over their can of pork and beans

00:44:44.720 with, you know, a 30-06, at least here in America.

00:44:47.740 That's the way they do it.

00:44:48.740 And so it gets into this very strange thing.

00:44:52.820 But I've seen luck have too much of a play in too many things.

00:44:57.660 I'm 62.

00:44:58.500 I've seen it happen too many times.

00:45:00.840 Yeah, sometimes it's hard work.

00:45:02.320 Sometimes it's this.

00:45:03.200 But luck is the most amazing thing.

00:45:06.800 Well, let's talk about hallucinogenic plants because I've come to the conclusion that it's

00:45:11.240 best for me to take the hallucinogenic plants and fungi that grow indigenously in the homelands

00:45:16.500 of where my ethnicity has been or evolved for thousands of years because I feel the land

00:45:21.100 is a part of my racial memory psyche and mysticism.

00:45:24.100 And it's a land where archetypes originated that suit the profile of my racial DNA and evolutionary

00:45:29.360 path or collective soul of my people, I guess I could say.

00:45:32.820 And so the plants in that area, I think, would maybe even have some vital things to share with

00:45:36.220 me specifically about my family lineage.

00:45:38.480 What do you think about that?

00:45:39.380 I think that's an absolutely great and incredibly well thought out orientation and very deep

00:45:46.060 thinking, really.

00:45:47.100 And a lot of people don't really seem to understand that in a lot of ways, the plants that grow

00:45:53.320 around our houses, just even if you're looking at medicinal plants or within the ecosystem

00:45:57.300 you're in, they're the most suitable medicinal plants because you're part of that ecosystem

00:46:03.720 and they're dealing with all of the kinds of diseases you're dealing with.

00:46:08.040 Plants get cold, just like we do.

00:46:09.840 That's why they make medicinal substances that also work for us.

00:46:13.680 So when you move on to hallucinogenic plants, I mean, one of the fascinating things about

00:46:19.080 them that I go into in the book in massive detail in plant intelligence in the imaginal realm

00:46:24.400 is the way that they modulate the neural networks of every life organism on Earth.

00:46:29.800 Plants get high on hallucinogens just the same way we do.

00:46:35.480 The same things happen to them.

00:46:37.600 So does every other animal that's ingested.

00:46:40.420 And all animals do ingest hallucinogens.

00:46:43.640 So for us, it makes a, you know, people have to realize hallucinogens have been embedded

00:46:51.340 into the Earth ecosystem for hundreds of millions of years.

00:46:55.040 They're crucial.

00:46:56.360 And so, for instance, psilocybin, which sends out your, you know, fungal tubes all underneath

00:47:06.060 the soil that connect up all of the plants in a particular eco range, normally grassland

00:47:11.860 eco zones, they hook into the plant neural networks.

00:47:15.980 And what they do is then every so often they release psilocybin or psilocin, the hallucinogenic compounds

00:47:24.320 into the plant roots.

00:47:27.180 And it alters the way that the plant brain perceives the world around it.

00:47:33.840 And it allows it to innovate behaviors that are outside of habituated patterning.

00:47:39.520 So part of what an organism, a human being even, for instance, experiences when they take

00:47:47.220 a hallucinogen is that they are able to get more deeply into what is called the metaphysical

00:47:54.180 background of the world.

00:47:55.380 They start to be able to see connections and deeper patterns.

00:47:59.780 And then they're able to innovate behaviors on that depth of seeing.

00:48:04.160 So when you're talking about doing that in your local range, you're so embedded there

00:48:10.400 that it actually will connect you to deeper metaphysical understandings that are unique

00:48:16.600 to the ecosystem from which you've emerged.

00:48:19.400 And, you know, there's a lot of ancestral understandings in that place.

00:48:24.400 Would you say that the plant realm can be likened to the spiritual realm or is it actually a plant

00:48:29.420 realm that's more physical?

00:48:31.120 I know it's hard to answer that.

00:48:32.200 Well, I actually love what the great Japanese farmer, Masanobu Fukuoka, said about that.

00:48:37.660 He said, you know, you have to understand that if you kill nature, you kill God.

00:48:43.080 And if you kill God, you kill nature.

00:48:45.260 They're two sides of the same coin. 0.77

00:48:48.160 One cannot exist without the other.

00:48:51.240 And so there's a thing that happens during self-organization here that something more than

00:48:56.520 the sum of the parts comes into being that can't be found in any of the parts.

00:49:01.600 And it's part of this invisible realm that surrounds us every day of our lives, these particular

00:49:07.840 kinds of living meanings.

00:49:10.000 And so that's a very deeply spiritual world that human beings in all life forms have access

00:49:18.000 to.

00:49:18.560 And it's a crucially important dimension of the reality of this place that we're in.

00:49:24.800 And that's one of the difficulties with reductive science.

00:49:28.960 As James Hillman, the great union scholar and teacher once put it, he goes, when science

00:49:35.280 couldn't find the soul in the place they were looking, they gave up on the idea of the soul.

00:49:40.680 Mm-hmm.

00:49:42.000 Yeah.

00:49:42.840 So what state of perception is necessary, you think, for interacting with the plant realm?

00:49:49.100 I think the thing that's really important is to be able to work with meaning.

00:49:55.280 Human beings know about that.

00:49:57.720 They do it all of the time.

00:49:59.020 Like, even though they're often shamed by reductive scientists, for instance, everybody

00:50:05.100 knows that loves puppies.

00:50:07.000 When you see a little puppy walking across the floor that doesn't see you yet, and then

00:50:10.740 you call out to the puppy and it turns and looks at you, there's this exchange that happens.

00:50:16.200 The puppy's face lights up and it's like, it's you, it's you.

00:50:19.720 And this sort of energy comes out of the puppy into the human being and something goes out

00:50:23.920 of the person into the puppy.

00:50:25.180 That's an exchange that we know about intimately every day of our lives, but yet there's no

00:50:30.900 real word for it in our language.

00:50:33.680 We do it with, we go to a restaurant to meet a friend, we're scanning the room, stranger,

00:50:38.700 stranger, stranger, and then we see our friend and she's waving at us.

00:50:42.540 And then there's that exchange of energy that happens again there.

00:50:46.760 Gardeners know that a similar thing happens between them and their plants.

00:50:50.300 Barbara McClintock, the great genomic scientist, corn researcher said, each one of these plants

00:50:58.160 is its own individual human being or its own individual person.

00:51:02.060 They have their lives, they have their struggles, and I have to know them.

00:51:05.440 They're my friends.

00:51:06.760 I really get down there and learn with them and become close with them.

00:51:09.940 And I want to see how their lives turn out.

00:51:12.520 She said, to be able to do this work, you must have a feeling for the organism.

00:51:17.260 And that dynamic is that capacity for feeling rather than thinking is the thing that's

00:51:24.740 fundamental.

00:51:25.460 It's what pulls us deeper into an intimate embrace with the world where we start to be

00:51:31.600 able to experience everything as intelligent and aware and that we begin to notice the

00:51:36.660 communications that are coming toward us from the world that happen every minute of our

00:51:41.220 lives.

00:51:42.020 Oh, I have around 35 houseplants, so I know what you're talking about.

00:51:45.720 And for some reason, cats just love plants, too.

00:51:48.360 I don't know what it is.

00:51:49.780 They do.

00:51:50.580 Well, most people that grow plants know that.

00:51:52.920 And so it's sort of like science had to get caught up to where everybody was.

00:52:00.180 So many of us have been taught to denigrate our natural experiences just because there's

00:52:06.160 no real scientific proof for that.

00:52:08.260 But science has only been around about 150 years in the form we think about it, and human

00:52:16.140 beings have been around quite a bit longer than that, so of the rest of the life forms

00:52:21.040 on the planet.

00:52:22.120 Now, I forgot to ask you, what is your take on paranoia while on a hallucinogenic journey?

00:52:28.040 What is that?

00:52:28.780 Human beings are really swarm intelligences.

00:52:35.400 I talk about this a lot in there in the book, and everybody knows that.

00:52:40.240 Everybody's been at a party one time or another when some other part of them took over their

00:52:44.160 mouth and began talking and wouldn't relinquish control until they'd finished saying all the 1.00

00:52:49.160 stupid things that were happening. 0.99

00:52:51.040 Or just the thing people would talk about, they'd move away from home and they'd go home and all 1.00

00:52:56.300 of a sudden they'd be acting like an eight-year-old kid again, and they'd go, I'm a grown-up everywhere

00:53:00.540 but here.

00:53:01.340 So we know there's parts of us, or we get in the argument, eat the cake, don't eat the

00:53:06.020 cake.

00:53:06.900 So that dynamic, the part that gets paranoid during those events is a particular part of

00:53:14.260 the human being that when we get really high like that, there's a very vulnerable part of

00:53:20.420 the self that's very similar to a really early infant stage.

00:53:24.880 There's a kind of a wonder and an openness to the world.

00:53:29.540 You see the world really with luminous eyes in this way that mostly children do.

00:53:34.900 And that part is generally a very vulnerable part.

00:53:38.720 It doesn't have a lot of capacity for armed resistance to the world, you might say.

00:53:44.600 And so what happens is there's a part that naturally acts as sort of a protector for that

00:53:51.000 young part of us, and when that part, the young part gets sort of overexposed and there's

00:53:58.160 not a lot of tools for how to take care of yourself, the other part just starts seeing

00:54:03.340 danger everywhere.

00:54:04.960 And that's sort of where it comes from.

00:54:06.440 It takes a while to really learn how to work with paranoia and not let it bother you.

00:54:12.560 You just sort of have to realize it'll pass and you just don't act on it.

00:54:17.260 Just hang on.

00:54:19.380 Yeah.

00:54:20.460 Well, a lot of people in the U.S. also smoke, I think, too much pot.

00:54:25.200 So what do you think about marijuana?

00:54:28.000 I think marijuana is great.

00:54:29.940 It's like I didn't smoke it for, I didn't really like it because I always used to get

00:54:33.600 paranoid when I was a teenager for exactly the reasons I've just discussed.

00:54:37.500 But when I went into middle age for the first time in my life, I started to have insomnia.

00:54:43.220 So I started smoking it at night.

00:54:45.500 My son actually turned me on to it again.

00:54:47.920 And it was the greatest medicinal aid to insomnia that I'd ever known.

00:54:53.940 And I started to notice, too, because I'm a writer and I write a massive amount of stuff,

00:54:58.820 it really began to help my writing quite a bit.

00:55:01.360 And so a lot of those ridiculous lies about how it screws up function, it's just, I mean,

00:55:08.400 maybe for some people, but their function was going to be screwed up anyway.

00:55:11.780 I mean, you look at Lee Child, who is also English, but he lives in the United States.

00:55:16.560 And he writes all of the Jack Reacher mystery novels.

00:55:19.960 And he writes every one of them as absolutely stoned as he can possibly be.

00:55:24.920 And he's quite forthright about that.

00:55:26.580 So I think it's a marvelous herb for human beings in many, many respects.

00:55:32.480 And I have quite a lot of deep caring for it.

00:55:36.280 Yeah, I know in some places it's being legalized in America.

00:55:40.060 And I almost wish it would stay on the black market because it seems like then it's going

00:55:43.700 to be taxed and regulated to death.

00:55:45.920 What do you think?

00:55:47.660 Oh, eventually it's going to get regulated.

00:55:49.540 I mean, there's a big fight now.

00:55:50.960 Well, you know, the United States is going through one of its predictable Puritan upsurges 0.99

00:55:56.860 of moral, you know, rectitude, you know, and it's just absolutely absurd and ridiculous.

00:56:04.280 But nevertheless, in the election that happened yesterday, you know, two more states in the 0.58

00:56:10.740 District of Columbia legalized marijuana.

00:56:13.120 So now we're up to four states in the District of Columbia.

00:56:18.080 And so it's slowly starting to happen.

00:56:20.900 And yes, of course, they're going to tax it.

00:56:24.020 And of course, a lot of weird stuff's going to happen as this all gets worked out.

00:56:28.260 But it's really a lot better than the thousands upon thousands of people that are in prison

00:56:32.920 here.

00:56:33.240 I mean, there's people in prison here for 30 or 40 years for possessing less than an ounce

00:56:39.980 of marijuana.

00:56:40.920 It's just intolerable.

00:56:41.560 Sure. 0.97

00:56:41.880 Of course, it's ridiculous. 0.95

00:56:43.040 I mean, the whole idea of banning herbs is just ridiculous, you know? 0.87

00:56:47.200 Yeah, it's a bad thing.

00:56:49.480 And you know, that whole war on drugs that started in 72, it was, and most of the civil

00:56:55.620 rights, the legislation that's been passed inhibiting civil rights in the United States

00:57:03.420 and much of the Western world came from the drug war.

00:57:06.620 And it's had a very horrible effect on civil liberties.

00:57:11.040 And all the way around, it was just a bad idea.

00:57:13.900 Well, the government's the biggest drug dealer there is.

00:57:16.680 So there you go.

00:57:17.680 Yes, they are.

00:57:19.740 Well, Stephen, as we wind down, please give the audience your website details and let them

00:57:23.620 know how they can find all your books.

00:57:26.060 Okay.

00:57:26.560 It's gaianstudies.org, G-A-I-A-N-studies.org. 0.68

00:57:33.180 And so my books are available through Amazon.com pretty much everywhere and many bookstores as

00:57:39.840 well.

00:57:40.460 All right.

00:57:40.840 Thank you, Stephen.

00:57:42.260 Hey, thanks a lot.

00:57:43.660 Wait just a minute, everyone.

00:57:45.200 I have a confession to make.

00:57:46.800 Remember I said I have 35 houseplants?

00:57:49.360 Well, they're always talking to me.

00:57:51.260 On various occasions, they've told me that they don't believe in egalitarianism, feminism,

00:57:56.220 or the need for special rights.

00:57:58.320 And they don't think about racism, political correctness, and poverty in the third world.

00:58:03.180 And my plants only propagate offspring that looks just like they do.

00:58:07.420 And get this.

00:58:08.120 They also tell me that they love the green privilege I give them.

00:58:11.860 So everyone, my plants are right-wing extremists.

00:58:15.980 Well, folks, if you're feeling political and daring, be sure to check out my new video called 0.89

00:58:20.200 St. George and the White Whore. 0.99

00:58:22.300 Sound shocking?

00:58:23.360 Well, it is.

00:58:23.880 And it's available on the Red Ice Radio YouTube channel and on redicemembers.com.

00:58:28.140 You can find Radio 314 on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Stitcher, iTunes, and on Google+.

00:58:34.720 And, of course, the websites are radio314.com, redicecreations.com, and redicemembers.com,

00:58:41.580 where you can go to sign up for a membership to access all our material.

00:58:45.000 Have a good one.

00:58:45.600 There is unrest in the forest There is trouble with the trees

00:58:51.320 For the maples want more sunlight And the oaks ignore their bleeds

00:58:57.220 The trouble with the maples And they're quite convinced they're

00:59:27.200 They're right They say the oaks are just too lucky And they grab up for the light

00:59:34.860 But the oaks can't help their feelings If they like the way they're made

00:59:41.760 And they wonder why the maples Can't be happy in their shade

00:59:49.360 There is trouble in the forest And the creatures are happier

01:00:00.600 As the maples scream oppression And the oaks just shake their heads

01:00:06.520 Turn in on, at the oaks can't help their pronto-time

01:00:09.380 And they give you the dest Fairies 1.00

01:00:09.880 In order for the maples And isn't pure

01:00:10.960 So thank you so much for having already

01:00:11.580 In order for a haаже 0.96

01:00:12.220 In order for a ka本 0.95

01:00:35.480 Thank you.

01:01:05.480 Thank you.

01:01:35.480 Thank you.

01:02:05.480 Thank you.

01:02:35.480 Thank you.

01:03:05.480 Thank you.

Radio 3Fourteen - November 05, 2014

Plant Intelligence

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