Herbo-primitivism and Anarcho-herbalism
by Jason GodeskyYou don’t get very many of the one-link, “lookie-here-ain’t-this-cool” brand of posts here at Anthropik. We try to provide more depth than that, but sometimes there is one link that’s just that interesting, and sometimes it stands on its own without any need for further comment. I found such a link today, via MetaFilter: “This is Anarcho-herbalism.”
A society of people who are responsible for their own health and able to gather or grow their own medicines is a hard society to rule. These days we are dependent on the power structure of industrial health care - the secret society of the doctors, the white-male-dominated medical schools, the corporate decision makers with their toxic pharmaceuticals and heartless greed and labs full of tortured beings. That dependence is one more thing keeping us tied down to the State and unable to rebel with all our hearts or even envision a world without such oppression. With a new system of healing, based on self-knowledge and herbal wisdom, we will be that much more free.
Offering a real alternative health care system will help to calm some people’s fears about returning to an anarchistic, Earth centered way of life. There is a false security in the men with the big machines, ready to put you back together again (if you have enough money). What is ignored is the fact that industrial society causes most of the dis-eases that people fear. Living free on a healing Earth while surrounded by true community and eating real food will prove to be a better medicine than anything you can buy.
See also, “Thesis #22: Civilization has no monopoly on medicine.” Of course, learning herbal medicine is high on the list of the tribe’s priorities; see, “Herbal Medicines 101.”
Huzzah! This is sooo true. Live Healthy and you don’t need all that junk they tell you will fix you.
Comment by ChandraShakti — 5 April 2006 @ 3:58 PM
Excellent link. I’m taking a herbal medicine course next month and I think its a great way to reduce ones dependence on the current health system.
Comment by Floyd Soul — 5 April 2006 @ 5:12 PM
oh, but why would you rather use an herb than a pill-form synthetic of the same herb with side effects requiring the use of another (or multiple) pill(s) to counteract the synthetic’s side effects? sounds like free thinking and thats dangerous…
Comment by handforged — 5 April 2006 @ 9:19 PM
This reminds me of my grandfather.
He is currently 76.
About a year ago, he went to a VA hospital for hearing aids because his hearing was ruined while working in an engine room on a ship in the Navy.
While at the hospital, he got his first physical since being in the Navy. The doctors asked him who his doctor was. My grandfather replied that he didn’t have a doctor. Then they asked him to which hospital he went. Again, my grandfather replied that he doesn’t go to a hospital. Finally, in desperate disbelief, the doctors asked him what medicines he took. True to form, my grandfather replied that he doesn’t take any medicines.
My grandfather is prime example of what living healthy can do. He gets lots of exercise, sleeps enough, eats very well, and keeps his mind sharp. Honestly, he gets around better than most 40 year-olds I know.
Comment by PAnative — 5 April 2006 @ 11:29 PM
I sooooo whole-heartedly agree. However, there is a sort of a flaw in this assertion: modern Western medicine is really good at meeting truly catastrophic problems.
All those wars developed some great emergency medicine. All that research money has developed ways to cope with a lot of really nasty health problems.
The reason this is a flaw is that we statistically may be better off without Western medicine, but when it’s your kid, wife, grandpa who’s in a life-threatening situation you want everything medical research and practice has to offer.
On the other hand, the good news is that a whole lot of the Emergency Medicine is pretty low-tech. It’s basically just simple techniques refined year after year. In fact, a lot of it is necessarily simple, since speed is such a concern.
Comment by Sam — 6 April 2006 @ 12:47 AM
I don’t have any philosophical problem with Western medicine. It’s another ethnomedicine, no better and no worse than any other. I treat it as such.
Comment by Jason Godesky — 6 April 2006 @ 9:06 AM