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00:01:48.920hello and welcome to for the wild podcast i'm ayana young today i'll be speaking to
00:02:02.940world-renowned environmental thinker and activist dr vandana shiva economy as the care of our home
00:02:11.020economy as the art of living not economy as wall street or the billionaire's logic of extraction
00:02:17.680vandana is a leader in the international forum on globalization and of the slow food movement
00:02:25.840director of navdanya and of the research foundation for science technology and ecology0.78
00:02:31.560and a tireless crusader for farmers peasants and women's rights she is the author and editor of a
00:02:38.440score of influential books including her latest from chelsea green publishing oneness versus the
00:02:44.7201%. Well, Vandana, thank you so much for joining me in conversation again. I'm truly looking
00:02:52.580forward to this. So welcome. Pleasure to be talking again. So I'd like to start our conversation
00:02:59.600in recognition of what you call compassionate courage. In the movement for Earth, your voice
00:03:05.920has remained one of the very few that has not succumbed to big green or the commodification
00:03:12.340of environmentalism. But instead, time and time again, you speak to the crises of our time,
00:03:18.160a crisis of illusions in which we refuse to confront our penchant for destroying life.
00:03:25.380And this to me is so rare because lately, it feels the more traction climate and environmental
00:03:31.140movements gain, the more watered down they become. So I have this question swirling around
00:03:37.960courage and direct action and how we can awaken others to the necessity of direct action and how
00:03:45.820have you remained unwavering in your commitment to speak truth to power even when it means standing
00:03:51.100up to those who were once at your side what does compassionate courage mean amidst late-stage
00:03:56.680capitalism well compassionate courage actually means the same no matter what time you live in
00:04:03.320Except that at the end of an age of colonialism, which named itself capitalism, because all the wealth that was accumulated was not from the miracle of money.
00:04:15.620It was from the violence of land grab, resource grab, genocide.
00:04:22.240And it just got structured in a system which said land is dead, labor doesn't produce, capital is a miraculous creator of things.
00:04:30.960um compassionate courage becomes even more important when we are not just ruled by these
00:04:37.960illusions but there's an intolerance of the illusion makers to truth so compassionate
00:04:45.140courage then means standing by your truth and living by your truth and non-cooperation with
00:04:52.380illusions constructs that create the billionaires that create the inequalities that even create the
00:04:58.500pandemics, because why would the most amazing wilderness of the world, Amazon, be burning
00:05:05.400if it wasn't for money to be made from GM or soil?
00:05:08.820So the illusion of a patent, the illusion of money making, the illusion of genetic engineering
00:05:14.060as a superior system, the illusion of now impossible burger as a way to save the planet,
00:05:20.000not cooperating with these illusions is compassionate courage.
00:05:23.840And it comes from recognizing that we are one with all beings on the earth.
00:05:53.500And you write that compassionate courage comes from our understanding that the world is interconnected.
00:05:59.720Our shared sense of interconnectedness emboldens our courage.
00:06:04.120Now, in the country in which I'm speaking to you, I feel many listeners may be disappointed to see that many members of our planetary community have detached themselves from this sense of interconnectedness, remaining deeply committed to an extractive and individualistic mindset.
00:06:19.660And in a settler societies like the United States, I think about how this is emboldened by our obsession and obligation to the so-called nuclear or patriarchal family, so much so that we have fundamentally lost our understanding of our larger family or the world as family.
00:06:39.840So why is the disavowal of patriarchal structures necessary in order to retain a sense of interconnectedness?
00:06:45.660interconnectedness? Well, you know, there have been many kinds of patriarchies, but not in all
00:06:51.960societies all the time. Even Europe really got patriarchy. In the last few thousand years before
00:06:58.300that, the feminine was at the center. And in the old archaeological sites, they don't find weapons0.96
00:07:03.620of war. They find the divine goddess. In indigenous cultures, even today, there is no patriarchy.
00:07:09.800So patriarchy married to money-making, which becomes capitalist patriarchy, is really taking two very, very violent systems at the structural level and making them even more, amplifying their violence and their structural linkages.
00:07:29.360So if you think of it, who's the individual in this capitalist patriarchal structure? A man, a property-owning man. Can you imagine if instead of this, if the unit was the earth family or the community, as indigenous cultures have always seen their identity, you wouldn't have resource grabbing.
00:07:55.060You wouldn't have genocide. You wouldn't have privatization of land, of biodiversity, of seed.
00:08:01.880And you would not accept the harm done to your fellow relatives, whether the relatives are plants and other animals or other cultures.
00:08:11.220So at the heart of the myths of what is called capitalism, but I call it colonialism, it's continuation of colonialism, which is very masculine in form, which is very patriarchal in form.
00:08:28.060At the heart of it is denying the life in nature, therefore the life of all our relatives in nature, and denying women's capacities to produce, to create.
00:08:45.320by saying this is not production and creation.0.95
00:09:11.540of fragmentation, of illusion, of superiority,
00:09:13.620of the settlers and the occupiers and the colonizers over those they colonize,
00:09:19.480or anthropocentrism, the superiority of the human species over other species,
00:09:24.480all of these were necessary constructs to invade and grab and extract.
00:09:31.960And we begin by recognizing that we are members of one earth family.
00:09:36.920We begin by recognizing that respect for all life and respect for women
00:09:43.280and respect for the indigenous and the respect for the small farmer and the respect for the workers
00:09:48.360is one respect based on recognizing that they are the true creators of wealth.
00:09:56.440They are the true creators of knowledge.
00:09:59.880In Oneness vs. the 1%, you point out that we are living in times where, quote,
00:10:04.480the 1% controls the wealth and power to destroy our planet and our common lives,
00:10:09.740with no responsibility or accountability for their actions,
00:10:13.280because they have found clever ways to create illusions, end quote.
00:10:18.180This illusory spell that so many have found themselves under
00:10:21.800feels like it's been generations in the making.
00:10:25.240And I'd like to ask you, what is the illusion
00:10:27.820and how are we actually complicit when we refuse to dispel it?
00:10:32.900Or perhaps, why do you think the global majority
00:10:35.920has proven itself so dedicated to upholding a system of the elite?
00:10:40.540You know, as someone commented, do you really mean 1%? I said, no, I mean 0.0001%, except that it looks very ugly on a book cover. And 1% subsuming that very tiny number, who, as you notice in the data, the technology barons walked away with nearly a trillion dollars, while people lost their homes, they lost their food, they lost their work, they lost their livelihoods.
00:11:07.840And more people are dying of hunger today than of COVID.
00:11:35.500Because capital itself is an illusion. Because the word, its Latin roots is kaput, which used to mean heads of cattle, and that's a real well. But it also means finished.
00:11:49.760giving capital creative power a construct creative power is the first illusion and because so much of
00:12:01.280what people had has been taken away from them and they've been made dependent on the money machine
00:12:08.440they really think that if you have more growth maybe we have a little bit of chance that we'll
00:12:15.120bread on our table. And that's why there isn't a rebellion against the bailout, like there wasn't
00:12:20.800a rebellion in the 2008 bailout with the financial collapse. These trillions that are being given
00:12:27.820are being just harvested by the billionaires. The second illusion is that corporations are persons.
00:12:35.740You know, colonialism mutated into capitalism through the East India Company. And the East
00:12:42.140India Company took the 300 rogues of England, merchant adventurers, they were called, put0.69
00:12:48.340them together in a group. And basically, they took the power to invade our lands, my country0.98
00:12:54.300in particular, which is why they were called East India Company, but also to have limited
00:12:58.920liability. So if the ships carrying our spices reached home, it was their wealth. The 300
00:13:07.300to divide it amongst themselves. But if the Dutch East India Company got it, or the French got it,0.82
00:13:13.860then society had to pay for it, and they still made money. So limited liability was the beginning
00:13:19.620of a system where they never lost. It was a socialization of the risk and the privatization
00:13:26.420of the gains. And now they are moving into basically a zero-cost economy. They call it
00:13:33.980zero cost, where they'll have no liability of any kind. New illusions of our times. I've just
00:13:41.220released a book this evening before I came to talk to you in India. It is called Two Futures
00:13:48.740of Food, Health and Humanity. And it was triggered by three patents. One, a patent on impossible
00:13:55.400burger and fake lab-made breast milk in the name of saving, protecting the earth from climate
00:14:01.700change. Bill Gates is everywhere these days. The second is on nanoparticles introduced in our blood
00:14:09.260for iron deficiency and anemia, when all I need to do is take a few leaves of the sahajan, we call it,
00:14:19.800the omoringa leaves, or turmeric, and they can provide you all the iron, all the green leaves.
00:14:26.540So I put that together and said, here are all the alternatives that nature gives us.
00:14:32.280And here is a violent invasion created by Google through a new life sciences division, five years old.
00:14:39.840You know, they're taking on thousands of years of knowledge that humanity has evolved about our bodies and our health.
00:14:46.680And a five-year-old company made with the motto that we must defeat Mother Nature.
00:14:53.600They want to put untested nanoparticles into our metallic nanoparticles.
00:14:59.620And the third, the patent on the human body, mining our data, our brain data, our body data.
00:15:05.520So, you know, my work has been guided so much by the beginning with Monsanto and others wanting to patent seed.
00:15:13.960That is an illusion because a patent is an exclusive right to what you have invented.
00:15:33.440And Google should totally be prohibited from doing this.
00:15:36.440And Gates, wanting to have the Impossible Burger and take patents on it,
00:15:42.120with GMO-Soyer, blood made in the lab, and calling it a healthy diet?
00:15:48.620And he calls it, he calls real food, Bob Brown, I think Rob, calls it unimprovable technology. Real food is unimprovable technology. Our bodies are unimprovable technologies. Invasions, violence, takeover is superior technology.
00:16:07.620And I have written repeatedly in my book Oneness Versus 1%, as you will have noticed, if the first colonization used religion as the civilizing mission, the contemporary colonization of the earth, of the wild, of our bodies, of our self-organization, of our freedom, is using technology as the new religion for a civilizing mission.
00:16:31.340And what it is pitted against is the freedom of life as self-organized,
00:16:37.500which to me is what wild is, against slavery in old forms and new forms.
00:16:45.040And patenting is at the heart of slavery.
00:16:47.520Columbus set sail with a letters patent.
00:16:51.940And now the big tech is taking patents, not just on software where they got rich,
00:16:57.360but now on our bodies and living organisms.
00:16:59.820And this is the wake up for humanity. And this is where people of concern need to be responding. You know, you talked about big environmentalism. The reason it lost courage and it lost compassion is because it started to be driven too much by money.
00:17:16.840And when you're too dependent on money, you have to listen to the messages and instructions of the masters.
00:17:25.040But when you are inspired by nature, by the wild, you listen to the instructions of the earth.
00:17:35.000Wow, Pandana, that was a frightening response and also very empowering at the same time.
00:17:43.920You know, what I've noticed over the years is that when we talk about the perils of technology, it's through a very individualistic framing.
00:17:52.340You know, we discuss the implications of social media on our mental health in terms of anxiety and depression, or we talk about the attention spans of future generations.
00:18:01.340but less are we holding conversations about the implications of technology and our submission to
00:18:08.200it in terms of how we are setting ourselves up to become accessories to artificial intelligence and
00:18:13.840the digital world and yeah this is why i think you're writing on how technology will subjugate
00:18:19.940us as a society is so vital to bring into consciousness so i'm wondering if you could
00:18:25.460expand on what you were just speaking about with our listeners of how you think technology will
00:18:30.420restructure our capacity to survive in a sovereign manner?
00:18:35.020When I started, I trained in physics, but I did a lot of interdisciplinary work in science and
00:18:41.520technology policy. And the discourse in the 70s and 80s used to be on science and technology
00:18:47.360assessment. We assess technologies. And when you assess a technology, the first question you ask
00:18:54.740is, do I really need it? The second question you ask is, how does it compare to existing
00:19:00.960alternatives? The third question you asked is, does it have any risks and hazards? And the fourth
00:19:09.060question you ask is, how does it serve nature and how does it serve society? Now, all of the four
00:19:17.060cases I've addressed in the book, and I'll be very happy to send you the links, but you can look for
00:19:24.460Two Futures of Food, Health, and Humanity, published by CISA and Navdanya, released today.
00:19:32.500And it is, from what I gather from my colleagues, already available in digital form. The three
00:19:39.060cases I've taken here, based on the patents these companies have applied, it's not, this is not
00:19:43.700coming out of my mind. This is reading their patents. Nanoparticles in our blood, necessary?
00:19:50.620No. Better than alternatives? Not compared to all the biodiversity we have.
00:19:57.320Risks, huge, unknown. They haven't even been assessed.
00:20:01.820And do they improve nature and society? No.
00:20:05.240They will create new diseases for which the same companies will have new miracles and new technological fixes.1.00
00:20:12.180Or take breast milk, artificial breast milk in the lab. Is it necessary? No.0.99
00:20:17.680all we have to do is make it easier for mothers to have situations where they can go away to0.99
00:20:24.800breastfeed their babies we need more Christians in the workplaces anyway now they've made all work
00:20:29.960work from home superior lab milk superior no risks assessed not at all and does it improve1.00
00:20:40.420The wholesomeness of our bodies, of the baby's health, we know for sure the reason the baby food, the movement against baby food, the lactogen tins and the fabricated food was so strong is because the evidence was there that this causes harm.
00:20:59.040So we've got to bring technology back to where it belongs.
00:21:07.520If assessment through democratic process and choice through democratic process and full informed consent is missing, then you are moving very quickly into the use of tools as dictatorships.
00:21:23.140Technology then becomes the tools in the hands of the masters rather than a tool at the service of nature and humanity.
00:21:31.920And those of us who worked in these fields for so long know that if I plant diversity in our fields, as I do with Navdanya, the movement I started, there will be lots of insects, but no pests.
00:21:44.520Diversity is a technology, but it's not a harsh technology.
00:21:51.66082, I was launching the organic movement of India, and we decided where else but to Gandhi's ashram, the nonviolence prophets.
00:21:59.220And I'm going to be offering from the 1st to the 4th of November a course with Satish Kumar on nonviolence and compassion as the most important political movement of our times.
00:22:12.040And people can go to the Earth University website of Navdanya and they will find details of those courses.
00:22:18.620but coming back to the Gandhi ashram you know he had celebrated non-violence and I saw them using
00:22:26.640pesticides and I said how can you in Gandhi's ashram use pesticides and this you know we were
00:22:32.780impressed a French scientist came and sprayed pesticides and the birds dropped dead and the0.55
00:22:37.320insects dropped dead and we were totally overwhelmed by the power so violent power0.84
00:22:44.300has brainwashed us. Violent power has taken away our capacity to live and think through creative
00:22:54.660power in non-violent form. This is the power of the wild. This is the power of women. This is the
00:23:00.420power of indigenous people. This is the power if humanity has to have a future. This is the kind of
00:23:06.300power that the young people marching on climate change need to reclaim. Not panic, not march
00:23:12.380because of panic, but much because you love the earth so much that you're not going to let anything
00:23:17.640come in the way of preventing actions that are harming the earth, whether through extinction
00:23:23.640or through climate change or the pandemic or any of the other existential crises we face.
00:27:05.940And Gandhi then pulled out the spinning wheel and said,
00:27:10.080we will not be free till we reclaim our economic freedom.0.60
00:27:13.280And if the empire of cotton is enslaving us, then we will make our own cloth.0.87
00:27:21.500So when I realized the corporations were wanting to,
00:27:25.940the agrochemical poison cartel wanted to own life through pageanting, through GMOs,
00:27:31.500I thought back to our history and I remembered0.62
00:27:36.200that it was the spinning wheel that mobilized India's self-confidence that we could be free.
00:27:45.300It was in our power. No one was using spinning wheels at that time. They'd all been destroying.
00:27:50.580We taught ourselves to spin. We taught ourselves to make hand-loat clothing again. And from nothing, we jumped back. About 20 years ago, I looked, 75% of our clothing came from hand-spun, hand-woven cloth. And beautiful textiles at that.
00:28:10.840So when I realized that the corporations wanted to own the seed,
00:28:14.900I took inspiration from the spinning wheel and said,
00:28:18.720the spinning wheel of today is the seed because the empire of cotton0.92
00:28:22.560has given way to an empire over life itself through trying to own life.0.94
00:28:27.900And just like the spinning wheel is small, and because it's small,
00:28:31.680it can be in the hands of millions, the seed is small
00:28:35.640and can be in the hands of the poorest peasant.0.50
00:28:38.560And this is what I've done through Navdanya the last 33 years, defend the freedom of the seed and its wildness, because non-GMO seed is a wild seed, a non-hybrid, which does not breed true.
00:28:57.600You know, hybrids don't breed true, but non-hybrids.
00:29:05.480And when farmers co-create with that seed to make 200,000 rices in India from one grass, or thousands of corns in Mexico out of one theocente, this too is wildness outside the apartheid.
00:29:26.360I call it the ecological apartheid, which said we are outside nature.
00:29:34.620No, when we are free, we are wild because we are part of nature.
00:29:40.360When we are enslaved through fossil fuel technology or digital technology or toxic technology of the glyphosate and the Roundup and the pesticides, that's when we lose our freedom and our wildness.
00:29:53.900So the three things that have constantly inspired me in all the things I've done begin with the small,
00:29:59.980which is why I don't get panicky when big money isn't happy with what we do.
00:30:28.520This is so personally good for me to hear.
00:30:33.100So thank you for everything that you're saying.
00:30:36.300And I wanted to bring up that this past year, divisions have become amplified in many parts of the world.
00:30:44.520And I think many are contending with the reality that hatred is not easily wiped away.
00:30:50.260And the changing of ruling political parties does not remediate the hatred that has grown in the cracks of deepening inequalities.
00:30:58.720Now, you speak to the reality that social violence and disintegration is becoming the norm.
00:31:04.600And I'm curious to hear how you think we can operate amidst all of the hatred that our generation is being left to bear.
00:31:12.000How do we dismember the politics of hate that have become so pervasive?
00:31:16.760I think there are three aspects of transcending this constructed hate. I call it constructed hate because it's not essential to human beings to hate.
00:31:30.580and it isn't in every period of history
00:31:33.600that people who have had historical inequalities
00:37:19.900And, of course, the self-governance then spreads from the individual to the communities, to the local, to the regional, to the national, and to the planetary.
00:37:31.200So the word Swaraj, Raj is to rule. Swaraj means to rule through yourself, self-rule.
00:37:40.900And this was the word across the world at the time of British colonialism.
00:37:47.000Even in Hawaii, the word they used was self-rule and home rule.
00:37:53.240This is exactly the same principle as the principle of the seed being self-organized complexity in evolution.
00:38:01.680Like nature evolves in freedom through self-organization, true free societies evolve in freedom through Swaraj.
00:38:11.800And Swaraj also means not just understanding the limits of the market and the limits of a state married to a market, but having the compassionate courage to say no.
00:38:30.040So I've had to practice it from the days of saying no to patents and seed when the GM lobby wanted to dump GM soya on us and made our own edible oils and our cold press mills illegal.
00:38:45.760I had to march with my sisters for bringing back our oils.
00:38:52.220So I work on five freedoms that are related to our everyday lives and to the majority of our Indian people.
00:39:45.820And if you project, if you read this new book I've released today,
00:39:50.180and you project the patterns into the future,
00:39:54.200You know, I projected the patents of that time into the future and said, no, I will not allow seeds to be patented.
00:40:00.040If you project those patents into the future where we are reduced to users, algorithm define our value, and then we are assigned cryptocurrencies.
00:40:09.400Already in India, they made cash illegal, the big notes illegal.
00:40:13.740Don't be surprised if in a very, very short term, they make cash illegal across the world.
00:40:19.620And then cryptocurrencies not governed by central banks. No reality fixed by the algorithms of the foretech giants. Do we want to live in a world where our value is determined by those who've taken our value away?
00:40:35.260Do we want to live in a world where we don't have the freedom to go to the local farmers markets, where everyone is under surveillance? Surveillance capitalism is what Zuboff has talked about.
00:40:49.620So we need to project into the future the reality that they are talking about, that they are now putting into place, and say, that path is not my Swaraj.
00:42:42.680the analysis you just gave on cryptocurrency is not one that i have heard and that's really
00:42:52.800frightening and important for us to look into deeper so i've made a note for myself to dive
00:43:01.960into that a bit more because i didn't even consider the cash would be taken away and
00:43:07.520that's a whole other level. Well, I'd like to transition our conversation to discuss the ways
00:43:13.580in which corporations like Monsanto have been extending their grip into the world of data
00:43:19.380collection, which isn't nearly discussed enough. And why are corporations like Monsanto so interested
00:43:26.220in remote sensing technology, data collection, and forms of artificial false knowledge? How does
00:43:33.100coincide with the calculated attempts at severing ancestral knowledge and, for lack of a better
00:43:39.400word, the dumbing down of our land tenders and seed keepers, which poses a significant threat
00:43:46.260to our ability to adapt amidst changing climate regimes. When I wrote Oneness vs. 1%, Monsanto
00:43:54.700had just announced its entry into digital agriculture. It had bought out the world's
00:44:02.420biggest climate data corporation and the world's biggest soil data corporation. And through remote
00:44:08.460sensing, what they are hoping to do is be the only people who can tell you
00:44:16.220what your soil is like and then prescribe to you their chemicals. They're not going to tell you.
00:44:25.160Feed the soil with organic matter and let the earthworms and the mycorrhizae bring life back0.99
00:44:30.300Because they can't make money out of that. So the digital agriculture spin is we will reduce chemicals by 1%. But in the process of drones and driverless tractors, they're going to create ever larger farms that will use ever more chemicals.
00:44:54.440the theme on Monsanto's website and I've cited it in the book was the future of farming is without
00:45:02.300farmers so they don't just want to erode our knowledge they want to make farmers disappear
00:45:06.280and the Monsanto legacy you know Monsanto is now bought out by buyer the Monsanto legacy is being
00:45:12.380pushed ahead by Bill Gates who appears to be the big philanthropist of our time I have just
00:45:19.260released another report on the gates to the global empire, on how he's taking over seed,
00:45:25.560agriculture, all the seed banks of the world, health, of course, the media, education,
00:45:35.200engineering the climate through geoengineering, and driving species to extinction through gene
00:45:40.120drives. But he is doing exactly what Monsanto said they would. And he's calling his version
00:46:32.140and then Microsoft sells it back as big data.
00:46:36.460And that's the reason everyone's being given a smartphone.
00:46:40.360That's the reason Bill Gates had an agreement with Mr. Slim,
00:46:44.280the billionaire of Mexico. So the digital technologies, the poison technology, and big0.98
00:46:50.320pharma, and big finance are all coming together in the next grab. And if they manage it, there
00:46:59.840will be no life on earth. It is a recipe of fast-forwarding extinction. This is the reason
00:47:06.560we all need to wake up. If you're worried about species disappearance, wake up to this
00:47:12.300digital dictatorship. You're worried about climate change. Wake up to this. You're worried about
00:47:17.800democracy and freedom. Wake up to this. No matter what your concern, it is being impacted. And it is
00:47:25.980so invisible. And that's the reason I wrote the book. I really felt it was important for the
00:47:31.260people to know. Yeah. And in this new edition of Oneness versus the 1%, you've updated it to
00:47:40.600acknowledge the role of Bill Gates, like you're mentioning, amidst the coronavirus pandemic
00:47:45.280and how billionaires alike are making money off of disaster. And there have been many theories
00:47:52.180running rampant during this time, some of which it feels are being used to keep us distracted and
00:47:58.360disconnected. So from a clear voice, I'd like to ask you about what you're observing, what is being
00:48:05.620obstructed? And what are organizations like the World Intellectual Property Organization
00:48:11.120getting away with while our eyes are turned away? Well, what's being obstructed is the
00:48:18.080ecological awakening that we are interconnected. What's being obstructed is that our health
00:48:24.300depends on our immunity. And the same virus can be floating around. But if your immunity is good,
00:48:30.420you will not be affected. And if you are compromised, you will be affected. If you
00:48:37.660have chronic diseases because of the junk food industry, it could become fatal. All of those
00:48:44.620linkages are being blocked. There's so many ways to treat a viral infection. Those pluralities
00:48:57.340are being blocked. What else is being blocked is an exploration of how in the year 2020,
00:49:05.260when we know new pandemics are coming from the destruction of the wild, the invasion into forests,
00:49:11.160the violation of ecosystem boundaries of forest ecosystems, at that time we should be looking
00:49:19.640And how do you stop this expansionism? And instead, you are being pushed into relentless expansionism. What is also being blocked is the exploration of a food system that doesn't cause disease and doesn't destroy the planet.
00:49:39.560it, my book, Soil Not Oil, I worked how 50% of the greenhouse gases come from industrial
00:49:44.460globalized food systems. And yet in ecological systems and regenerative agriculture, we have
00:49:50.080100% solution, not just to the climate crisis, but to food and hunger. This is being blocked
00:49:57.980by financing Impossible Burger and making that look like the future of food, as if it's
00:50:05.880already been determined. No, we need an amazing debate on what is food. Is that junk from a lab
00:50:14.460food? Is it worthy of being called food? Or is it just hyper-processed junk, which will increase0.82
00:50:20.760the diseases because it will create a new war against our gut microbiome? And then, of course,
00:50:27.120finally, what's being blocked is our thinking. When we are turned into data minds,
00:50:32.640brain is mind our bodies are mind it means we as an autonomous intelligent decision makers
00:50:41.260get blocked and that's why never before has humanity faced so many multiple challenges to
00:50:50.540its own species existence as we face today and many of these are they in the WIPO offices they
00:50:58.580are there in the patent offices. But most people don't read patents, but maybe they'll read the
00:51:03.140book. And through the book, reclaim their oneness and get the power through that oneness with the
00:51:10.860earth, with the wild, with all other wild relatives. To say five technology barons cannot push us over
00:51:20.540the brain. Yeah, I want to talk a little bit more about, I think, the WIPO patent from March 26th
00:51:29.260of this year, 2020. And it seems like it declares, quote, human body activity associated with the
00:51:35.740task provided to a user may be used in a mining process of a cryptocurrency system. The body
00:51:42.940activity that Microsoft wants to mine includes radiation emitted from the human body, brain
00:51:48.620activities, body fluid flow, blood flow, organ activity, body movement, such as eye movement,
00:51:55.400facial movement, and muscle movement, as well as any other activities that can be sensed
00:52:00.480and represented. And this is something you mentioned in your book. And I just, I'm curious
00:52:06.360to hear a little bit more about this. It's just such a bizarre patent. And I'm thinking you were
00:52:13.440saying earlier that there could be a connection to COVID, or is that something you were mentioned
00:53:04.280and how they want to govern themselves.
00:53:09.240Because if they don't read these patents,
00:53:11.540They will be thinking, oh, I'm doing this to protect my health. And they'll walk right into the surveillance prison.
00:53:19.480thank you so much for bringing this up that's something that we really need to hear
00:53:27.560now Vandana global society's fault lines are becoming more and more apparent and
00:53:35.500this visibility is welcome after we've been calling for the rupture of these dystopian
00:53:41.840and exploitative systems yet this is a time of great uncomfort and of course there are those
00:53:48.500who point out that, you know, they've already been living in an apocalyptic world, which leads
00:53:53.040me to think about the multitude of emotions and thoughts and experiences our world family is
00:53:57.780holding. And I know this is overwhelming for many, making it difficult to think about where we should
00:54:03.620be orienting ourselves. In Oneness vs. the 1%, you share a quote from poet and philosopher
00:54:09.860Robin Drana Tagore, and it's, quote, contemporary Western civilization is built of brick and wood.0.92
00:54:17.480It is rooted in the city, but Indian civilization has been distinctive in locating its source of regeneration, material and intellectual, in the forest, not in the city.
00:54:29.400India's best ideas have come where man was in communion with trees and rivers and lakes, away from the crowds, end quote.
00:54:37.480As someone who has found a life of purpose and dedication to the temperate rainforest, I really resonate so deeply with this quote.
00:54:45.680And as we come to a close, I wonder if you might share how, in a moment where so much is happening, where we're all feeling so much, how we might ground ourselves, our actions and aspirations in reference to the forest.
00:55:00.620I think there are three ways in which we can and must ground ourselves in the forest.
00:55:09.040First, to return to the forest for lessons of democracy.
00:55:13.160And that's what Tagore has said in that quote, that we learn democracy from the forest where everything is diverse and everything is interconnected.
00:55:23.520True democracy as coexistence of diversity and mutuality of diversity, I think is the first.
00:55:29.380The second is to realize that the forest is not a wilderness that's doing nothing and should be wiped out and cut down for a mine or GMO soya in the Amazon or palm oil in Indonesia, but the forest is the heart of the planet and should be our heart and our mind too.
00:55:52.940The third, and this has been my life's dedication, industrial agriculture and Hitler's chemical tools moving into the farms through agri-chemicals, agrotoxys, the pesticides, the herbicides, even the chemical fertilizers, that this created a monoculture and the destruction of the wilderness of the farm.
00:56:18.100in india we protected it and my work in navdhania which means nine seeds is for diversity not just0.84
00:56:27.960the diversity we plant but the diversity that grows when we plant non-violently the other day
00:56:35.180on our farm i just counted in one square foot 12 edible plants and medicinal plants that we hadn't
00:56:43.580soul, but are there to give us bounty and abundance. So, you know, wrap up the roundup
00:56:51.900and allow nature to thrive. And the fourth very, very important part of this is we have to remember
00:57:00.700that we have a forest within. Our gut microbiome with a hundred trillion microbes is a forest
00:57:07.900and we have to nurture it and we nurture it through the link that food provides between
00:57:14.840the earth in her diversity and our bodies with the gut diversity when those two are in sync
00:57:22.080there is health for the planet and there's health for our bodies
00:57:26.020yeah no um from my last question vendana i wanted to bring up the total irresponsibility
00:57:37.180in which corporations handle life, you know, clearly is no surprise, especially from this
00:57:42.340conversation, behaving as if there's no sanctity to what we experience or witness during our time
00:57:49.360on earth. And I think about this in context of geoengineering, which I might have mistakenly
00:57:55.700thought to have been pushed to the periphery, not that it was something that is still actively
00:58:01.340being pursued or being taken seriously, yet whether modification continues to be funded
00:58:06.660So I'm wondering if you could speak to this a bit, and where does geoengineering currently stand?
00:58:12.900Well, we just released the Gates report, and our etc. colleagues presented the latest on geoengineering.
00:58:21.000The research on it continues, and Bill Gates is a big driver.
00:58:25.400They called him the sugar daddy of geoengineering.
00:58:28.980Without his money, it would be very dead.
00:58:31.080And he doesn't just fund these reckless experiments with the planet.
00:58:37.480He actually buys votes by spending public relations money to influence the UN outcome, both on geoengineering as well as on gene drives.
00:58:50.220So the report on the gates to a global empire is available for free download on the Navdanya International website.
00:58:57.500And for anyone who wants to know both about more of Bill Gates than I've written in Oneness vs. 1%, as well as geoengineering and the extinction technology of gene drives, please go visit the website of Navdanya International.
00:59:12.980And when we realize these powers are too big, that is when our powers must be unleashed in unity, in solidarity.
00:59:22.980And what I've done over the many years is when you bring 20 groups that are all victims together in one tribunal, I did a seed tribunal.
00:59:43.740And then it becomes the unity of the earth and all the people who are victims of harm, whether they be farmers, whether they be consumers, whether they be cancer victims, whether they be farmers who committed suicide because of debt.
01:00:01.460All this becomes one problem. And corporations and the billionaires and the philandro-imperialists like Bill Gates rest on having the public believe their story.
01:00:15.800That is why we must tell our stories. We don't have the media, the dominant media. We don't have it.
01:00:22.060But we do have communication with each other, like my conversation with you.
01:00:27.440And we must talk to each other and realize we are all in the same crisis.
01:00:35.420And we will all get out of it together in unity.
01:00:40.800Well, thank you so much for your time, Vandana.
01:00:43.320This has been medicine for my soul, as I'm sure for the listeners who are joining us.
01:00:52.540Thank you and stay strong, all of you.
01:01:00.800Thank you for listening to another episode of For the Wild podcast.
01:01:04.780The music you heard today was by John Newton, Lady Moon in the Eclipse, and G-Jaw.
01:01:11.100For the Wild is created by Ayanna Young, Erica Ekrem, Francesca Glasfell, and Melanie Younger.