I happened to open my notebook on the first page and saw what I’d forgotten I’d written
To tell the truth:
- tell the truth about where things are from.
- tell the truth about what things cost.
- tell the truth about who bears the consequences (people, places, plants, animals).
To wake from the trance of consumerism to see we are all citizens of the world.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the vision of the herbalists who led the herbal renaissance in the 1960s and 70s, a vision of living simply, of connecting with spirit, of giving back, of taking care of oneself with weeds growing in your back yard. I have a google alert set for herbal products and/or herb industry and daily I get a list of news with herbal products, lots about increasing the market for Indian herbs, some raise the alarm posts about damage to liver (which is always so much less than the alarmist headline suggests). So that may be slanting my perspective. But I also see so many websites with the picture of the practitioner as the headline. And it makes me wonder what herbalism is and what has become of that early vision. I asked Tom Newmark what happened. We were talking about regenerative agriculture and there have been reports saying that there won’t be any soil left in 60 years to grow any food. I asked what happened to that early vision of using herbal medicine as a way to change the world, not to make a profit. He paused and then said, “I don’t know. Greed? Profit motive? I don’t know when we stopped believing in flower power and peace on earth and started caring more about our retirement home. But we did.”