The 'war' against insects is a hoax!
They are not competing with you for YOUR food; they have come to eat THEIR food
When we start thinking about the nonexistence of “viruses,” it can become like the first domino in a standing row—knock down the domino labeled “viruses are real,” and it starts a cascade of dominoes falling, each one labeled “another assumption about reality that you never questioned before.” One of these that has its own set of ramifications—another set of dominoes that it pushes over, if you will—is the topic of last week’s article: the war/battle/military metaphor for how our bodies work and how life works.
The war metaphor basically gives us a cognitive framework for understanding our relationship to the rest of nature—to every biological being as well as to the whole of the natural world. In this framework, we are continuously threatened (and may be attacked) by this or that being, or by wild places, or wild weather, or other people. Sometimes we do have reason to feel afraid—tornadoes and floods can harm us, as can some humans. But as a narrative for all of our relationships with nature, the war metaphor is highly misleading.
This way of understanding how we interact with the world isn’t a “fact” that we are supposed to accept, but it is a framework of reality that shapes how we understand fundamental aspects of that reality. Last week, I talked about how this metaphor misinforms us about the ways that our body keeps itself healthy. In a nutshell, bacteria do not attack or feed on healthy tissue, as the disproven germ hypothesis and almost any doctor you go to with a sore throat would have it. Rather, bacteria’s food is diseased, decaying, and dying tissue.
Bacteria’s role in our body’s ecosystem is as the cleanup crew (nod to
for this language in a comment on one of my earlier posts). They are present when something is amiss in our body that has damaged or killed cells, doing their work of cleaning up. Getting rid of bacteria with antibiotics not only doesn’t address the actual problem—what is amiss—but it stops the cleanup crew from doing their appointed job, thus causing more problems for the body.As a gardener for most of my adult life, I learned just last year how this exact same misunderstanding exists in regard to insect “pests” in the garden. This relationship is always characterized as a “war” between the gardener and the bugs as to who will get the vegetables. Insects are described as lurking just out of sight, waiting for the right moment to descend on your plants. Gardeners have their arsenal of weapons to deter the insects, be they nasty chemical pesticides or natural and organic methods.
But what if insects are actually there in the gardens and farm fields for the same reason that bacteria are at the site of an “infection” in the body—they are the cleanup crew, there to break down unhealthy tissue and remove it—in the case of garden plants, to return ailing plant material to the soil? And what if, just as bacteria do not attack healthy body tissue, insects do not and will not eat healthy plants?
My head spun around almost as much when I heard this as it did the first time I heard someone say that bacteria don’t cause disease and “viruses” don’t exist.
According to entomologist Thomas Dykstra, this is exactly what goes on in the garden. Insects do not compete with us for food, says Dykstra. They are not attracted to healthy plants, only to those that are unhealthy to a greater or lesser degree. They aren’t eating our food. They are eating their food.
But, you may say, I have insects eating many plants in my garden. Does that mean my vegetables and flowers are unhealthy?
Yes, it does mean that. I don’t think there’s any other way to understand it. Our gardens, if they have insects, simply aren’t as healthy as we think they are. The vegetables and flowers aren’t just under attack by the army of potato bugs or Japanese beetles. The bugs are there because the plants are calling out to be returned to the soil.
This realization is quite uncomfortable! I, probably like you if you’re a gardener, have thought I was doing a pretty good job growing healthy vegetables! But, if Dykstra is correct, it’s a fact that must be faced. The silver lining of this blow to the gardener’s ego, though, is that the bugs are giving us a very clear message—we need to up our gardening game. Understanding more about the message being transmitted by the insects on our plants is the first step to doing that.
According to Dykstra, you can tell what level of unhealth your garden plants are at by what kind of insects you find on them. If your plants have aphids, they are in very bad shape and may not be able to recover. If they have sucking insects like stink bugs or leaf hoppers, they are less severely compromised, but still near death’s door. If they have attracted chewing insects, such as caterpillars, leaf miners, or Japanese beetles, their health level is higher but still well below optimal. And if it is insects in the grasshopper family that like to chew on your plants, they are just below or right at the minimum healthy range.
This video by Thomas Dykstra explains it all.
As Dykstra describes, you can use a fairly inexpensive instrument called a Brix refractometer to get a more specific reading on the health of your plants. The Brix refractometer measures the amount of sugar in the plant’s leaves—the more sugar, the healthier the plant. Because insect biology cannot digest sugar, to varying degrees, higher sugar content means the insects will leave your plants alone—first the aphids, then the stink bugs, then the caterpillars, and finally the grasshoppers, who can tolerate the highest amount of sugar, will leave in search of plants that are giving off that delectable odor of decay, rather than the unappealing healthy aroma of sugar.
Exactly how to remedy the situation of plants that are unhealthy enough to attract insects is probably something each gardener needs to learn through trial and error. The Brix level—the amount of sugar—in the plants doesn’t directly map onto levels of nutrients such as minerals. But, says Dykstra, if sugars aren’t adequate in the plant, minerals aren’t either.
So soil testing to see if mineral levels are where they should be is one place to start. Attending to the plants’ specific water needs would be another, and especially filtering chlorine and other chemicals out of the water if you can, since they are no better for plants than they are for us. You can even buy a device to structure the water you used to irrigate your plants, since structured water is better for them and for us. Examples here and here. (I have not used these and am not recommending them; links are just for info about structuring water for the garden.) Learn more about structuring water here.
Electroculture might help your plants. Many gardeners are reporting larger plants and higher yields by putting sticks wrapped with copper wire into the garden. Matt Roeske of Cultivate Elevate has some good information. I did not have good luck with this last summer, but I have friends who did, and I’m going to try again.
When using electroculture there is no need for the use of pesticides, manure, or fertilizers. This is primarily why this information was suppressed. All you need is the sun, the clouds, the rain, the nitrogen in the air, and the ability to harness atmospheric energy. These atmospheric antennas can be created from materials such as wood, copper, zinc, and brass. When adding these atmospheric antennas to your garden, soil, or farm they will amplify your yields, combat frost and excessive heat, reduce irrigation, reduce pests, and increase the magnetism of your soil leading to more nutrients in the long run.
Finding out more about plant chemistry would probably give you a better basis for understanding what’s going on with your plants—something I have not done yet. For example, how exactly does photosynthesis work? What are its optimal conditions? How do mineral levels relate to plant sugars?
Implementing regenerative plant feeding techniques such as using fermented nettle juice or eggshell extraction as a foliar spray or a root drench might be just what the plants need. Nigel Palmer has many videos along these lines.
The main point is to be aware that insects have not simply descended upon our plants like an army to eat our food before we can, but rather their presence indicates that the plants are unhealthy enough to attract the cleanup crew. All those insects on my garden plants are not competing with me for the food I’m trying to grow, laying siege to my food supply to starve me out. They are the garbage collectors of the garden ecosystem, just as bacteria are the garbage collectors of the body ecosystem.
There can, of course, be other reasons for plants not doing well. It could be I am trying to grow them in an unsuitable microclimate. Maybe the seeds were a bit old or not as strong as they could be. Maybe the plants need more light or less light, or the air temperature is too high or too low. And having insects on plants doesn’t mean you won’t get a bountiful harvest of delicious vegetables. I have done so in many growing seasons.
There is something else we learn from low Brix levels, though. We’ve been hearing for years that crops grown in increasingly depleted soil are increasingly lower in nutrients.
A Kushi Institute analysis of nutrient data from 1975 to 1997 found that average calcium levels in 12 fresh vegetables dropped 27 percent; iron levels 37 percent; vitamin A levels 21 percent, and vitamin C levels 30 percent. A similar study of British nutrient data from 1930 to 1980, published in the British Food Journal, found that in 20 vegetables the average calcium content had declined 19 percent; iron 22 percent; and potassium 14 percent. Yet another study concluded that one would have to eat eight oranges today to derive the same amount of Vitamin A as our grandparents would have gotten from one.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and-nutrition-loss/
I always thought that was happening at large commercial farms that use high doses of chemical fertilizers and poison pesticides—not my back yard vegetable garden! But all land can become depleted if not treated with care and attention to the quality of the soil. And every place has been affected by chemtrails, which seem to have increased in recent years, as well as other types of air pollution, and water that is more laden with chemicals including everything from chlorine to pharmaceuticals to heavy metals. Bottom line, if my plants are attracting insects, then they aren’t as healthy as I thought they were, and they don’t have the nutrients that they should have, for their own health or for mine.
And I can apply the same thinking to my own body ecosystem. Whatever I am doing, or maybe not doing, I am not maintaining my terrain in an optimal state if the cleanup crew has to work so hard that I have symptoms. Especially if they are symptoms that stay around for a long time.
The medical system encourages me to think I should always “treat” symptoms because it defines symptoms as “diseases,” and we don’t want “diseases.” We want to be healthy! And that means we take pills or syrups to suppress our coughs, stop our acid reflux, clear up our skin rashes, stop our diarrhea, etc. When we do that, the symptoms are gone, and then we are “healthy.”
Except we aren’t. If we were, we wouldn’t have those symptoms in the first place. And now the problem the body was trying to get rid of has been pushed deeper.
The same thing happens in the garden or the farm field. The insects show up one morning and start making holes in the plants. So we use the poison or non-poison sprays, or whatever method, to get rid of the insects. When the insects are gone, the plants are “healthy” again.
Except they aren’t. If they were, the insects would not have been there to begin with. And now the plants are covered a substance that doesn’t increase their health or nutritional value, and probably further detracts from both.
In both the body and the garden ecosystems, it isn’t just “I’m healthy” or “I’m sick.” There are levels or degrees of health that I have not been aware of—and it is starting to look as if my general level of health, or that of my garden, is actually mediocre. My plants and myself could be healthier than we are, if we had more awareness of what true health is (i.e., a body that doesn’t have to have very disruptive detox symptoms two or three times a year or chronically; a garden the insects stay away from).
And I think that lack of awareness is significantly due to the war metaphor that is so prevalent in framing my relationships with other biological beings, and that disproven germ hypothesis depends on. Seeing life as a battle sets up an incorrect context for those relationships, so I fight when I don’t need to (e.g., take pharmaceuticals to suppress detox symptoms by killing “invaders”), and don’t benefit when I could (e.g., love my body by doing routine detoxing of heavy metals and other toxins). Seeing life processes as a continuous battle against “germs” that are out to get me as well as forces like gravity and aging also subtly encourages me to accept conditions, both within me and around me, that are not as full, vibrant, joyful, beautiful, and bursting with health as they could be, because there’s always a level of stress when “attack” could come from anywhere at any time, and we never really “win the battle.” It encourages me not to think that level of health is within reach—even to doubt that it can exist.
This is what the war metaphor has given us—a false picture of what health looks like, both in our bodies and in our gardens and farms. And the same industries that profit from this false picture are the ones that most strongly promote the battle imagery for how we stay healthy. The pharmaceutical companies and the pesticide companies urge us to kill the cleanup crew with toxic drugs and toxic pesticides, ensuring that we will always need more of these chemicals because the underlying terrain isn’t becoming healthy with their use but rather increasingly unhealthy—while they distract us from the fact that their remedies are actually causing the problems in the first place!
One thing this brings home to me is that we are living in an increasingly toxic world. It’s affecting us, and it’s affecting the plants we grow for food, from backyard raised beds to massive fields of wheat. We have to work deliberately at detoxing both our bodies and the soil that we grow our food in, since our bodies are struggling to deal with the level of poisons we are exposed to via air, water, food, cell towers, etc. And with the daily aerial spraying of who knows what exact chemicals coming down onto the soil and the plants (and onto us), we need to be even more aware and vigilant to do what we can to counteract those chemicals.
There is much more that could be said about how the war metaphor for our relationship with nature misleads us—teaching us to be afraid of the sun, of animals, of the weather, of getting dirty in the soil, even of being outdoors, all of which are beneficial to our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Of course, the sun, animals, weather, and so on, are real and exist. Being afraid of microscopic entities which are supposedly part of nature but in reality do not exist is part of the same continuum, pushing us toward “protection” delivered via a needle (see my previous article, “Germ theory” hooks us to needles and drugs).
The most important thing we can do, I think, to counter these effects is to reclaim our agency in regard to our own health, as well as that of our gardens. We are not “attacked” by bacteria or “viruses,” but we are subject to increasing amounts of toxic substances that enter our bodies. We are also subject to malnutrition, which adds stress to the body’s efforts to detox and increases the amount of dead and dying tissue that requires the cleanup crew of bacteria to swing into action, creating symptoms. The same exact thing can be said for our gardens—they are subject to toxic inputs on all levels and to malnutrition from inadequate soil, resulting in a degree of decay in the plants that attracts insects to break it down and return it to the soil.
The difference between seeing ourselves as random victims of microbes and seeing ourselves as being subject to toxins and poisons that enter our bodies is that we can take an active role in keeping our terrain as clear as possible, whereas the unproven germ hypothesis keeps us in a victim position and makes us dependent on the medical system for the “fix.” We thereby lose our agency.
But seeing the causes of “disease” as toxins and malnutrition, we retain our agency because we can take action to reduce the amount of toxins we are exposed to and support our bodies in their continual effort to eliminate those poisons. We can, for example, support our bodies with high levels of nutrition such as organically and regeneratively grown food and give a miss to the toxic “food-like substances” on offer in most grocery and convenience stores. We can also become active in organized efforts to stop 5G tower proliferation and aerial spraying—we need not feel like helpless victims.
We can get outside in the sun as often as possible and ground ourselves by walking barefoot on the earth to recharge our electrical system. We can strengthen our bonds of affection with family and friends. We can stop watching mainstream media and distance ourselves from the fear-mongering. We can let go of toxic thoughts about “catching” something from someone nearby who might be coughing, and monitor ourselves to catch and let go of thoughts about being a victim.
There is so much we still do not know about how our bodies work, how plants work, and how all of nature works. One of the most exciting things about living in a time like this when so much of what we thought we knew is turning out to be untrue, is that we get to open a whole bunch of doors we didn’t even know were there and see wide vistas of possibility for what could be true that we couldn’t see before. I would love to hear questions that come up for you around the topics I’ve written about—I know I have questions! Let the exploration begin!
Thanks for reading! I’d give you a preview of next week’s article, but I’m not sure what the topic will be yet. I hope you’ll come back for a surprise!
More to read on Substack
For the gardener in you
And on the topic of the nonexistence of “viruses”:
Mike Stone’s latest research on the lie of virology
Sam Bailey’s interview with Dan Roytas, author of a new book on the myth of contagion
Christine Massey’s latest on “avian flu”
Another great article! I really like the analogies to the garden and the health of plants. Since you briefly mentioned them, here's another "rabbit hole" for you (not that you don't have enough yet): what exactly is a "vitamin"? Is it based on theoretical assumptions and hypotheses (like the viruses), or has anyone actually proven the existence of a vitamin by observing its behaviour (through microscopy, for example) and by biochemically characterizing its structure? Why has the vitamin supplement industry exploded into such a high profit market in recent decades? Which corporations are really behind the vitamin supplements? When was synthetic vitamin C (ascorbic acid) first produced and how was the population eventually tricked into taking it in such high doses? Why does the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) for Vitamin D3 (also known as Cholecalciferol) clearly state that is it for human consumption, but for laboratory purposes only? Why is this substance registered as rat poison in the European Union, but at the same time the gatekeepers such as Peter McCollough, Ryan Cole and many others are constantly advising people to eat, eat, eat Vitamin D3? Which highly toxic chemicals are utilized during the process of synthesizing all these "vitamin" supplement powders and tablets? What are we really putting into our bodies, and who profits from that? Happy digging (I can provide quite a bit of documents on that). It's time to expose the vitamin fraud :)
That's my experience too. When I have pests on my veggies, spraying with some (organic!) infusion made from garlic + herbs helps for a day or 2, but if I give the plant a good helping of nutrient rich soil mixed with mature humus the pests disappear, and I don't need to spray at all.
Or when the peach trees have curly leaves, I sprinkle epsom salt around the stem to nourish the soil, and new healthy leaves grow.
The solution is always to treat the soil! The soil is the plants' immune system (among everything else)