What you'll learn here - and what you won't (plus bonus rant)

I dunno if it's there's something up with the planets these days but I'm feeling particularly unencumbered by the need to treat anyone's feelings delicately right now.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still plenty smiley.

I'm just not in the mood to put up with falsehoods, excuses, wilful blindness or learned helplessness. In other words, the norms of society.



I've been watching a lot of Jordan Peterson's videos lately. What a guy. He makes people think, imagine that! While on the one hand his no nonsense approach to political correctness has a lot of lefty noses out of joint (I'm looking at you, nanny-state Canada), on the other hand his "clean your room" meme (ie straighten yourself out and take responsibility for your life) has netted him many thousands of followers, mostly young people who've been the victims of helicopter parenting, who are stunned and thrilled to discover that yes, one CAN take personal responsibility for one's life ..

Which is what I have been saying ALL ALONG. It's what I'm getting at when I tell people to lay off the commercial supplements and stay away from the fucking snake oil salesmen Naturopaths.

Yeah, I'm leading up to a rant here, I can feel it coming on ..

Here's the thing. Human beings are creative. Look at how far we've come, right? A few measly thousand years since we tamed fire and we've made it out of the caves and to the moon (so to speak). It was mostly a matter of survival, we had to be creative in order to protect ourselves against the elements, to build our societies; to flourish. And good on us, really.

But right now, we're stagnant, most of us are in a position that we don't have to invent or create or grow or make anything in order to make our lives better. It's all laid out for us. So we're restless. We don't even have religions (or at least any that we understand properly) to keep us in line any more. It's all too damn easy. So, because we need, deep down, to create, what are we doing? We're creating trouble for ourselves. Individually and collectively, big trouble.

In evolutionary terms, trouble has always been nipping at our heels, but for the average Westerner, who is the safest and richest human being the world has ever known, the majority of the troubles we have left are .. wait for it .. self inflicted.

Oh come on, you know I'm right.

But will we allow ourselves to see that? No, of course not, that would mean taking responsibility. So we spend BILLIONS of dollars on various kinds of "health care" that we WOULDN'T NEED  if we just straightened ourselves out. And the funny/tragic/ironic thing is, that blasted "health care" VERY OFTEN leaves us in worse shape than we were before we walked into the doctor's office bleating for help.

And I do not blame the doctors! I absolutely do not blame the doctors. They are just doing their best with a profit driven system of unsafe drugs and testing that is hugely burdened by bleating sheep who got themselves into the mess they're in and don't have the personal fortitude to get themselves out of.

What we have here is woolly-headed half-asleep sheep in need of shepherds (or a kick in the ass), but the Chief Shepherds - the drug companies, the medical device companies and YES, THE GODDAMN HERBAL SUPPLEMENTS INDUSTRY are a clusterfuck of wolves and tigers who feed on, need, and encourage the dependence of the woolly-heads.

And the majority of those poor doctors and nurses and medical technicians, and some (but not all) of the fucking Naturopaths are incredibly well meaning and really do want to help the woolly-heads, but they're encouraging dependence too. They might not mean to, but they are. It's built into the system.

Me? I'm more of an ass-kicker, which is why it's a darn good thing that I decided never to go into clinical practice as an herbalist.

And that's why I will never, ever, stop preaching to anyone who will listen that genuine health care is not to be found in a vegan gel-cap of dust posing as an herbal medicine. It just won't. That the tried and true methods of thousands of years of herbal medicine from dozens of cultures are NOT IN ANY WAY IMPROVED UPON by herbal companies throwing random herbs together into "formulas" for this or that ailment based on fuzzy reasoning rather than real world experience.

And ..

That until we realise that our lack of RESPECT -  self respect, respect for the ingenuity and wisdom of the real healers throughout time, respect for the plants that can both heal and harm, respect for our self regulating and incredibly complex bodies - is the problem, the downward spiral of the human being will continue.

If you keep coming back to this blog, you'll learn what it is to treat the medicine plants with the respect that is required. It's really very simple to learn to use a few SAFE plants, easily grown and prepared at home, to nip crap in the bud - fairly everyday crap like sinus gunk, digestive distress, raging hormones - and in the process become both competent and physically resilient enough that visiting a doctor becomes a very rare event.

I will NEVER make reference to blood, urine or stool test results, Vitamin D levels or the like. I might mention the colour of a tongue or whether a fever comes with chills or whether your gums are bleeding. Because truly, responsibility for our own health means learning how to interpret what our bodies are telling us without the damn tests.

If you can't imagine "looking after your health" without knowing your cholesterol levels or testing your blood glucose every few hours, that's fine. It just means that this kind of health care isn't for you. There is a happy middle ground between being a woolly-head and going it alone, just you and the plants you grow and the medicines you learn to make. It's perfectly acceptable to transition slowly, if you want to - perhaps wiser, for most.

But for those of you already with an inkling that you can and should be Human, not sheep, that it's your birthright to be creative, inventive and courageous - without being foolhardy, of course - then I suppose I'd best warn you, it doesn't happen overnight. Learning to be cynical of most of what you read is probably the first skill you need to hone.

Have a look at my recommended reading & viewing list at the top. Those are the best writers and herbalists of our time (that I've found so far) and a few from the past. My own posts on plant medicines are written only to give you a feel for what it's like to live this way - it's a way of life, not a life"style" - nothing I write is set in stone, because even at the 20-odd year mark I am still just finding my feet on the path.

So - this is meant as a welcome to the new crop of readers that seems to have arrived over the last couple of weeks, and a welcome back reminder to the old crowd.

wildcucumber is back in the saddle, taking no prisoners and not biting her tongue. Business as usual!