Plants run the world
The plants are trying to teach us. They’re just very subtle and we have a tough time listening.
“So what have you learned from doing ayahuasca?” people sometimes ask me.
The first answer I always give: It gave me a profound respect for plant intelligence. I’d been walking around all my life without realizing just how much plants run the world – and how much they have to teach us too.
(Warning: I swear I’m not high right now. But this will make it seem like I am. Oh well.)
Plants are so omnipresent in our lives we’ve stopped even clocking it most of the time. Trees burn to give us fire. Vegetables = plants we can eat. The meat and fish we consume all ate plants too. The clothes we’re wearing are made of plants – and they’re that color because of plant dye.
Then you start seeing plants, well, everywhere. They purify the water we drink. The medicine that heals us is made from plants. Aspirin, painkillers and fever reducers all come from tree bark. And thank plants for any buzz you’ve ever gotten from weed, beer, wine, coffee, tea, cigarettes, or cocaine.
The tires we drive on are made from plants. Also: the walls/doors/floors of our homes, the beds we sleep in, and chairs we sit in. Desks, cardboard, boats, guitars, and violins. Tiny things too, like balloons, rubber bands, erasers, pencils, gum, and toothpicks. In the bathroom, you’ve got soap, shampoo, toothpaste, perfume, etc. In the kitchen: tea, olive oil, mustard, sugar, and nuts.
It’s overwhelming. Take a deep breath. And remember that oxygen is produced by plants. Carbon dioxide? Plants out here getting rid of it like they’re nature’s crime fighters.
Photosynthesis!? Plants eat light. They’re the OG solar panels, capturing the energy of the sun and storing it for later. And they don’t even require a tax break to get it done.
“How strong, vital, enduring! how dumbly eloquent! What suggestions of imperturbability and being, as against the human trait of mere seeming. Then the qualities, almost emotional, palpably artistic, heroic, of a tree; so innocent and harmless, yet so savage. It is, yet says nothing.”
-Walt Whitman
The lessons
OK, so plants rule everything around us. What can we learn from that?
For one thing: humility. Plants don’t need the constant ego stroking we do. They don’t try to win awards or have praise heaped upon them. They just move toward the sun, say nothing, and teach us with their actions. Walk softly and carry a big leaf.
They are subtle professors. Study trees and you can’t help but see the power of community, how we can all grow taller if we work together. They demonstrate the importance of roots, how we flourish if we stay connected to each other, our ancestors, and the past.
Mindlessly, they demonstrate mindful behavior, staying present in the moment, slowly and consistently moving toward the light.
And they do it all with actions instead of words. One of the most glorious things about plants: They shut the hell up.
“Do as I do, not as I say, because I say nothing.”
-Plants
Manipulation
Even when they manipulate, plants do it gently. Imagine being a bee who’s convinced you’ve really pulled one over on flowers. You buzz around, get all that sweet nectar, and think, “These blooms are a bunch of suckers.”
You go to your bee grave never realizing the truth: The flowers have been using you all along to do their bidding/spread their pollen. You’re an air force transporting their precious cargo, moving their genetic material from one plant to another.
Maybe the plants are just using us too.
Yuval Noah Harari posits we were actually manipulated by a handful of plant species, including wheat, rice, and potatoes, during the Agricultural Revolution. He writes, “These plants domesticated Homo sapiens, rather than vice versa.” The perfect invasion is one where the conquered don’t even realize they’ve been conquered.
The roots
I’ve gone hiking a lot in the Redwood National Forest in northern California, home to the tallest trees in the world. One of the fascinating things about these trees is how narrow they are. Form a circle with both hands and you’ve got the circumference.
So how on earth are these slim trees the tallest in existence? It’s because the entire root system of the forest is connected. They use an underground network to help each other out. Above the surface, they seem like individual trees, but beneath the soil, they operate as a unit. When one tree falls, new ones sprout directly from it. If you think shrooms teach you about interconnectedness, walk among the redwoods. Teamwork makes the green work.
Our problem is pace. We tend to dismiss anything that doesn’t move at the speed of humanity. But that means we tend to miss out on subtle, slo-mo solutions.
German forester Peter Wohlleben, who wrote about the secret life of trees, on the slow tempo of the forest:
Trees live their lives in the really slow lane, even when they are in danger. But this slow tempo doesn’t mean that a tree is not on top of what is happening in different parts of its structure. If the roots find themselves in trouble, this information is broadcast throughout the tree, which can trigger the leaves to release scent compounds. And not just any old scent compounds, but compounds that are specifically formulated for the task at hand.
A different kind of wisdom
On my plant journeys, I’ve come to realize the challenge is to take these realizations and apply them to humanity.
Here’s Ram Dass on turning people into trees:
When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent, and some of them are straight, and some of them are evergreens, and some of them are whatever. And you look at the tree and you allow it. You see why it is the way it is. You sort of understand that it didn’t get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don’t get all emotional about it. You just allow it. You appreciate the tree.
The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying ‘You are too this, or I’m too this.’ That judgment mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.
Wohlleben discusses how trees inherently know something humans often fail to grasp: when to say “enough.”
The average tree grows its branches out until it encounters the branch tips of a neighboring tree of the same height. It doesn’t grow any wider because the air and better light in this space are already taken. However, it heavily reinforces the branches it has extended, so you get the impression that there’s quite a shoving match going on up there. But a pair of true friends is careful right from the outset not to grow overly thick branches in each other’s direction. The trees don’t want to take anything away from each other, and so they develop sturdy branches only at the outer edges of their crowns, that is to say, only in the direction of “non-friends.”
All this plant insight has me rethinking intelligence. As humans, we tend to think intellect is about ideas and inventions. But plants have a different kind of smarts, the sort that’s buried in one’s DNA. They possess centuries of wisdom that doesn’t need to be written down in a book. Like Gandhi preached, their lesson is in how they lead their lives.
And notice how they do it all without ego. They never ask to be worshipped or praised. They let us taste, climb, and trample them. They have an attitude of abundance. “We’ll make more,” they seem to say.
Well, until humans started going aggro and destroying forests, erasing jungles, and doing whatever we’ve done to the bees. Maybe that’s why there’s such a boom in mushrooms, weed, and ayahausca going on these days. Maybe it’s the plants reaching out to us. Maybe it’s their last gasp attempt to shake us by the lapels and go, “Yooooooo, what the hell are you morons doing? We gave you everything and this is how you treat us!?” The problem is even when they scream, it sounds like a whisper.
Anyway, I’m gonna go out and touch grass.
“When I am Among the Trees”
by Mary Oliver
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It's simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”Subscribe
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Quickies
🎯 Gonna change my name to Spam Risk just to screw with people’s Caller ID.
🎯 Headline: “As Houthis vow to fight on, U.S. prepares for a new, indefinite campaign.”
"When one indefinite campaign closes, another opens."
-Ancient military-industrial-complex proverb
🎯 I know a girl who goes on three dates a week but hasn’t had sex in nine months. That’s not a love life, that’s a meal plan.
🎯 "Streaming royalties for comedians suck!" Y'all doing it wrong. Put out a comedy album with "Taylor's Version" in every track title. Big bucks sure to follow.
🎯 “I’m a huge alpha–”
”Um, excuse me.”
”You didn’t let me finish. I’m a huge alfalfa sprouts fan.”
”Got it. So you’re a beta–”
”How did you know? Yes, I’m a Betamax stan too. Way better than VHS!”
🎯 Doctors Without Borders? I prefer Therapists Without Boundaries. It’s a bunch of psychiatrists who go to third world countries and end patient sessions by saying, "Wanna go grab drinks? I'll tell you all about what my last patient said. Dude is wild."
🎯 Teams now trade coaches. TV shows now switch networks. Magazines now get folded into each other. Somehow, the whole world turned poly.
🎯 Purchasing a media company that winds up hemorrhaging money is what ultrawealthy tech founders do to prove they aren't such brilliant businessmen after all.
🎯 Boomers had their sexual prime after the pill and before AIDS, made bank while destroying the environment, and still won’t let anyone else run anything. I dunno, sounds like they took the belt as Greatest Generation. That’s some pimp sh*t.
🎯 Sport Illustrated laying off everyone!? Uh oh, this doesn't bode well for my senior citizen swimsuit calendar biz.
🎯 Kinda crazy that Instagram knows who wants to sleep with you more than you do.
🎯 They gonna have to replace Journalism School with Algorithm School.
🎯 "Art is getting away with it."
-Andy Warhol
Actually, that line's from Marshall McLuhan in "The Medium is the Massage." McLuhan wrote, “Art is anything you can get away with.” But everyone thinks it was Warhol. So I guess Warhol really did get away with it. Art!
🎯 Captivating captions…
Comedy
🃏 I post clips of my standup (and more) at Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and YouTube.
🎟️ TOUR (HEADLINING)
2/10 Comedy Dojo (Morris Plains, NJ) | tickets
2/23-24 Steamboat Comedy (CO) | tickets
3/2 Priam Vineyard (Colchester, CT) | tickets
4/19 Comedy House NOLA (New Orleans)
4/26 Cheshire Craft Brewery (Cheshire, CT)
6/14-15 Denver Comedy Lounge (CO)
6/16 Boulder Comedy Show (CO)
🎟️ NYC SHOWS
EVERY TUESDAY | Hot Soup @ Comedy Cellar (FBP)
EVERY WEDNESDAY | Good Eggs @ NY Comedy Club (EV) – discount code: SCRAMBLED
5-spotted
🗯️
: “Why We Can't Have Nice Things.”There are also a few things you might want that aren’t being made because of a lack of public demand. But “public demand” isn’t the weather. You are the public. Demand it. But don’t demand it on social media. Demand it the way a businessman demands it. Pay cash to the local artists and the Etsy craftsmen and the antique dealers. If your taste is good, then producers of beautiful things will flourish a bit more, and the next person who comes looking will find that much more of it. If you come, they will build it.
🗯️ A.I. Can Make Art That Feels Human. Whose Fault Is That? [NY Times]
Every year, our art and entertainment has resigned itself further to recommendation engines and ratings structures. Every year our museums and theaters and studios have further internalized the tech industry’s reduction of human consciousness into simple sequences of numbers. A score out of 100 for joy or fear. Love or pain, surprise or rage — all just so much metadata. Insofar as A.I. threatens culture, it’s not in the form of some cheesy HAL-meets-Robocop fantasy of out-of-control software and killer lasers. The threat is that we shrink ourselves to the scale of our machines’ limited capabilities; the threat is the sanding down of human thought and life to fit into ever more standardized data sets.
🗯️ The media's addiction to toxic but buzzy personalities sucks. [NPR]
Too many supposedly serious news platforms refuse to accept that the worst outcome for shameless attention addicts like George Santos isn't breathless coverage denouncing his lies, but no coverage at all. No more updates on certain people's Cameo posts or social media outbursts…the real solution to handling some awful public figures is to deprive them of the media oxygen they need to survive.
🗯️ We Live in a Golden Age of Crybullyism. [The Nation]
America’s elites used to loom over large maps, chew on cigars, and plot the deaths and suffering of countless millions to further the cause of General Motors and United Fruit Company. But at least they never wanted to be our friends. These days, electeds and CEOs alike mope, complain, and cry as they play the victim.
🗯️ Author Henry Miller on turning 80:
Perhaps the most comforting thing about growing old gracefully is the increasing ability not to take things too seriously. One of the big differences between a genuine sage and a preacher is gayety. When the sage laughs it is a belly laugh; when the preacher laughs, which is all too seldom, it is on the wrong side of the face.
Thanks for reading.
-Matt
dear matt,
beautiful stuff!
i like "Teamwork makes the green work"
and all the rest
much love,
myq
and a happy New Year of the Trees to you too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_BiShvat