act2
FRANÇOIS COUPLAN
Expert in Wild Edible Plants
Expert in Wild Edible Plants
“If we want to cultivate, we have to start clearing Nature, and Nature in our region has always been a forest. So we start clear-cutting the woods, which in itself is already a painful thing to do. Once we have cleared the forest it’s not over, we constantly need to fight against Nature, because there are plants that grow by themselves, Nature expresses itself, and that is called “weeds”. That is an absolutely terrible term. Ralph Emerson said a weed is a plant of which we do not know the virtues; I would say it is a plant of which we have forgotten the virtues, because we have gradually forgotten that all these plants growing on their own are in fact the expression of Nature and could feed us directly. Gradually we’ve come to only accept what agriculture produces, and consider harmful and eliminate everything else that Nature grows.”
“Wild plants are truly like multi-vitamin pills, containing astounding amounts of vitamins, minerals, trace-elements, anti-oxidants, fatty acids, omega 3, complete proteins balanced in essential amino-acids. Wild plants are man’s basic food. Human kind has been eating, -within the plant domain-, exclusively wild plants for millions or hundreds of thousands of years. Only ten thousand years ago agriculture began and eating wild plants gradually began to be lost and in the western society of today, there’s no consumption of them at all. The result? we suffer deficiencies, avitaminosis, nutritional problems that are coming from the fact that our eating is not what it is supposed to be anymore. No need to beat yourself up; If you want to be in good health and provide your body with everything it needs, the right food for it is of course, the plants that nourished our ancestors for several millions of years. It is evident that the knowledge about plants that can nurture us, is as important as learning to read and write. These are essential things, and it is a question of survival, and at an individual level, a source of well-being.”
“Human is Nature taking consciousness of Herself. That’s where I cannot agree with the Deep Ecologists, who say “…if Humans disappear, well, too bad!, it doesn’t matter, Nature will manage, Humankind is not indispensable to Nature.” I don’t think that’s true. Could Nature evolve into a different manifestation other than Humans that will be more conscious than Humans? We have that essential role to play; that’s why we don’t have the right to be careless and suicide. In this time Humanity has separated so much from Nature that it is experiencing a collective suicide. Our responsibility is the development of our consciousness, to go beyond that suicide and take our own responsibility. We have the choice to go in one direction or another. We cannot rightly exercise it other than with consciousness. It is precisely to develop such consciousness for the sake of the wholeness of Nature, the wholeness of Evolution.”
Contact: Edible and medicinal wild plants
vai a sinistra
vai a sinistra
CHARACTERS