HERBS: FOOTPATH PHILOSOPHY

Date: Thursday, April 2nd, 2009 at 2:54 am

When my sons were young and going to kindergarten, my friends and I often sorted out all our own and the world’s troubles standing on the footpath beside a car-load of impatient children waiting to be taken to or from. We were christened the “footpath philosophers”.

The knowledge of herbs and their uses I have gained since that time has changed altogether some of the views I held then. No longer does it seem so important to “get on in the world”. Now I feel that a natural and satisfying existence can be more readily attained by sacrificing much of the technology and artificiality of that life presented to us as “good” in our constant exposure to advertising and economic pressure.

Do we have to consume foods with all the vitality processed out of them, because we have never bothered to find out for ourselves the nutritional gap between them and natural foods? (It’s so easy to open a packet!) Do we have to take pills and potions blindly, without inquiring into their long-term effects and the unnatural body balance they create? Doctors are not really to blame. They can prescribe only what is available and publicized to them by the drug and chemical companies, who, after all, are not philanthropic organizations, but competitive businesses required by their shareholders to make a sizeable profit. How many times has someone said to you, “The pills I had to take made me feel worse than the disease did in the first place.”