Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Tell it to the Plant (Baloney Cubed)


I don't know how these catalogs find me.
This one offored "Holistic" courses and workshops. In my experience, when you see a word like "holistic", you're going to see a lot of half-baked sillyness nearby.
Sure enough, for a few hundred bucks you can take classes on "talking to the spirits", alleged past lives, and general mind-body voodoo.
Including this workshop:
"Tree WhisperingTM
Coming from the plant's point of view"
Plant's point of view? Huh? Do trees get embarrassed when their leaves turn red and fall out? Does the Chrismas tree feel sad when he's shown the curb? Do weeds feel persecuted? I'll bet bonsai have issues.
"Come from the plant's point of view by expanding our heart-oriented perception to feel tree growth energy and experience connection with nature's life force."
Tree growth energy? What are they talking about? I thought trees got their energy by converting sunlight energy to glucose. Silly me.
"Brief lessons in 'new' sciences and ancient wisdom..."
This sounds like the same crowd that thinks afixing an "ologist" to their idea makes it scientifically valid. Ancient Wisdom? Isn't that a positive spin on "folklore?"
The discription continues:
"lay the foundation for mediditive and sensory excercise that activate or validate our mutual collaboration with trees..."
I think this is fancy talk for :"we'll do stuff to help us appreciate trees." Maybe the inflated language helps justify the $280 price tag.
Curious as to what "mutual collaboration with trees " entailed, I looked them up on the web.
This is an actual quote from their web page:
"You’ll feel the Life Force energy of plants and know them as powerful, complex (yes, even intelligent) living beings."
Intelligent? Gosh on a platter, I thought you needed, maybe, A BRAIN for that?

I think I'll pass on this course, but I might contact them to see if they'd let my cactus audit it.

p.s. For those curious on why people think plants can think, read your mind, and tap dance when you're not looking-- and why it's a load of fertilizer, click here.

3 comments:

GhostBuild said...

Wow, if plants could talk... imagine all the horrifying carnage to which they were completely defenseless. Every salad and eggplant parmesan would suddenly be slathered piles of brutally mutilated executions. Every gutted bell pepper and grapefruit, an orgy of violence and bloodshed (er... juiceshed? seedshed?).

Ah.... I love the smell of evicerated lemons in the morning. ROTFL!

GhostBuild said...

Spelling! GACK!

Namowal (Jennifer Bourne) said...

You've probably heard of the "raw foods" movement. They only eat raw fruits, veggies and nuts. A few get very self rightous about how THEY are eating the TRUE diet. I wonder how they get along with someone who thinks a rutabega is an "intelligent being?"