The Botany of Desire

[last lines]

Michael Pollan: For me the most important lessons to take away from these tales is that we are not simply standing outside the web of life, but that we are part of that web of life, and that everything we do, what we choose to eat, what flowers we choose to - to put on our tables, what drugs we choose to take, these are evolutionary votes we are casting every day in - in many, many different ways.

[pause]

Michael Pollan: When we use these metaphors when we talk about plants having a strategy to do this, or wanting this, or desiring this, we're being metaphorical obviously, I mean, plants do not have consciousness. But this is a fault of our own vocabulary. We don't have a very good vocabulary to describe what other species do to us, because we think we're the only species that really does anything.

[pause]

Michael Pollan: But to the extent that you can put yourself in the place of these other species and look at the world from their point of view, I think it frees us from our sense of alienation from nature? And we become members of the biotic community, one among many species, all of them together creating this wondrous web that we call life.