52 let me know if and how his Syntropic Agriculture could affect, on a large or even smaller scale, the way our society works today. He answers me like this, painting a Platonic scene with the colors of Aristotelianism: «Well, I would like to first cite an ancient Roman proverb, later echoed by Feuerbach, that says You are what you eat. If you change the way of cultivating what we eat, of raising animals, this will have an influence. Also, I do my work driven mostly by inner pleasure, and in fact all species, all individuals of all generations are driven to realize their task by inner pleasure. And so, agriculture done in the way I am thinking of, could turn into an extremely attractive activity. This way, many people would begin to do agriculture, even people living in cities. They would begin to plant, and they would begin to graft trees, and they would begin to plant at least in front of their houses, or on their windows, or terraces. They would replant the forests, they would plant olive trees, and they would work and thrive. That would make them work together, sharing knowledge at one point and say “I did that, but it didn’t work well. Perhaps you will do it better!”. And so, once again, it would transform itself in a very attractive activity and everybody would like to do it, and would indeed do it. And it would change completely our society, and it would make redundant and useless toxic chemicals. Even medicine, most of the medicines we use, they wouldn’t be necessary anymore. It would result in that. And then the whole pharmaceutical and medicine industry would enter into collapse, because all diseases have their psychophysiological reason behind them. Then if you would work together with nature, enter in harmony, everybody would feel good. You would have health and you would act in a completely different way, and then it also would change our society completely because doing things together, working together, in cooperation, would no more result in outcasts, and no more result in prisons». «So,» he goes on, «no more necessity of other worlds, we would come back to the paradise. Not to mention that it would make us completely food independent, for me it's clear. Let's just say, if we did that, the climate would be completely different. Try once to go to the forest, to a beautiful forest: the temperature outside might be 40 °C, but if you're entering a forest it's 32 °C and it's very pleasant, not dry, it's very, very pleasant. And then the sounds it makes are all different. This is how my farm is. Some years ago, our ornithologist, in one and a half days of work spent here, found 32 different species of hummingbirds and about 120 species of other birds. It’s a lot of birds. Every hour of the day there are some birds around. And we know from scientific research that the song of the birds harmonizes life, and it improves the growth and health of the plants. People think I'm joking when I say I'm living in paradise, but it’s true». I look at Götsch on the screen as he speaks to me, with the light filtered through the canopies of the trees he himself planted more than thirty years ago, and I cannot help but ask him if, after a lifetime of work and research, he feels he has reached some final conclusions, or rather whether he sees it as a constant work in progress: «I came to some final conclusions. I said to people, some forty or forty-five years ago when I began, that one day, when I will no longer be able to climb trees and do what I'm doing, then I will begin to teach. Nowadays I'm still climbing trees, but I’m also teaching. I came to a conclusion that could be significant: that the learning process never ends – on the contrary, the more you have learned the wider the horizon, and the more you see, the more there is to see. Every day I find new things and new questions. I believe we got our capacity for abstract thinking, and for creating complex tools or instruments, not by accident – this is part of our human nature, and we should use it in order to create synergetic situations between different species. If we use it in a more adequate way, then every day will be more beautiful. There will be so many things we can pass to the next generations. And once again, at the very end, you can retire and
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