We in the USA and other western countries might sometimes find it strange or foreign to read about things like herbal remedies. We reflexively consider them to be quackery and uninteresting to us personally except in a remote way — it tends to be what eccentric folks might get involved with — hippies or maybe specialists of some kind.
I think this kind of attitude stems from the newness of the USA plus another huge factor: the factory and cubicle mindset of modernism. My hunch is that we can hardly overestimate the influence of the factory/cubicle model on the western worldview.
A holistic culture of whatever kind would seem likely to always have a direct connection to its local nature, plants and landscape. Everyone would tend to know a lot about nature — and use the knowledge. Sure, there would be those who were more expert, but certainly there would not be the cut-off from nature (or its strict segregation) that most Americans and westerners have experienced since the advent of the factory and office.
Until recently most Americans still farmed, but even that lifestyle in the several generations before its collapse was based on the specialized factory model. A farmer busy with corn or other commodity mono-crop may well not have known much about the other plants he lived amidst. His wife might have known more, especially about herbal remedies, but she was busy with other chores and a produce garden for the family.
Today we’re at the point where longterm knowledge and familiarity with a wide range of plants and herbal remedies often comes from 3rd World countries. Or else it’s from far-distant knowledge in western cultures. England was spoiled for a true connection to nature even as far back as the 1600’s when the forces of careerism, factories, church, media and market caused huge distortions, with herbal quackery snowballing under the motives of quick profit and fame.
I suppose that one can allege that indigenous cultures were sometimes misled by their lore-holders — medicine men and such — who wanted to increase their own power. This would be part of the dramatic tension of life in every time. Micro and macro forces tend to equally work against us unless we develop all our potential to resist them.
In the USA we were fortunate in the 60’s and 70’s to have the Foxfire series of books that preserved the lore (both helpful and what we’d call superstitious) of several communities that still lived on the land, mostly in Appalachia, away from factory, monocrop or office.
But it’s interesting how natural lore often strikes one as being strange. I have to think that this reflex can only come from our own alienation from nature rather than from any wrong or evilly unscientific aspect of such lore, even though some of it can be “tainted” by abuse of power that can be a factor in superstition.
In our glorification of science we might do well to remember that both objective and subjective forces are equally respected by science. In terms of medicine, some things work for some people but not for others. The subjective factor can even affect how antibiotics work on germs. Attitude is a huge factor. Set and setting can’t be underestimated. To “prove” some drug as a cure is hard as any drug company can tell you, but it may be more interesting, if less profitable in some ways, to discover that a certain remedy works for some people some of the time. This is the region that good healers seem to be able to work within. The subjective seems more conducive to the media model — and advertising — than to the factory model — but those models seem to be merging. It might be more closely related to fine art than we think: Not everyone can relate to art in the same way. Likes and druthers only being the tip of the iceberg.
We might also do well to consider that a factory/cubicle worldview might prevent cultural and personal chances for development in many directions.
Consider the role that adolescence plays in highly hierarchic specialized repetitive workplaces. It’s conducive to it. To tolerate such work people will tend to develop cultures that stunt themselves. They’ll stop thinking during the work hours and then limit their thought as well during rest hours to not risk their ability to go back to work. Thus we get the infamous “permanent adolescence.” How can this be good for health or even for the ability to perceive opportunity for meaningful improvement? Everyone needs the chance to push through all the stages and Rites of Passage that humans need to fully develop. Otherwise they can only be good employees in a childlike sense. And that’s not very good, actually. Good only for the short term. Creativity and change are cut off.
Everything connects together, doesn’t it.
(Sorting it out, though, is the trick. Certainly it’s not just a mash-up.)
I’m still flabbergasted at the idea that many of the older generation today still considers something like “health” to be a bit of a kooky or hippy idea. They think of it as something that a doctor can take care of for them. This includes the idea of Nature: the idea that it’s optional to conserve nature is still clung to by many in the “greatest” generation — as well as those of younger gens who want to justify Greed. Isn’t it just jawdropping that notions like preventative care or preserving nature are RECENT? …Of course it’s only recent for the modern world. People and nature weren’t and aren’t expendable in village-type cultures.
(Sometimes the idea of aboriginal profligacy is brought up, but I’d bet this was more an exception than a rule, the rule being conservation of things like tribal and family hunting/fishing grounds. It might also be a question of scale. Wholesale “wipe-out” slaughter of buffalo by Indians probably wouldn’t really damage the overall migrations — but outside influences can cause large-scale aberrations. Spanish introduction of horses and disease set in motion centuries of big change. And it’s true that inter-tribal warring often wiped out or absorbed all traces of defeated tribes, but I’m unsure at what point this would be called genocide.)
