We underestimate the plant kingdom. Plants are so ubiquitous and stationary
that we ignore them and take them for granted. We assume that plants are
passive and dumb. We call lazy people "couch potatoes" and dull people
"vegetables." It is natural for us to have these negative feelings about plants
- after all, we are animals.


But we forget that animals can't live without plants. Plants recycle carbon
dioxide and create oxygen, which we need to breathe. And most of our food
comes from plants.


Plants are alchemists that combine soil, water, and sunshine to create
delicious fruits and vegetables for us to eat. We can't live without these fruits
and vegetables, and we owe our lives to plants. So plants are our benefactors
and friends.


But sometimes, plants take advantage of our dependence on them. Some
plants create addictive chemicals that make us chemically dependent. For
example, cane plants create sugar, coffee and tea plants create caffeine,
tobacco plants create nicotine, coca plants create cocaine, and poppy plants
create opium.


Addictive plants are not our benefactors or friends, and we should avoid
them. We should distinguish between nutritious plants and addictive plants.
Nutritious plants enable us to fulfill our potential for life and free us, but
addictive plants undermine our potential for life and enslave us.


Nutritious plants enable us to live in a democracy, but addictive plants
disable us and create a "phytocracy," which is my term for a world controlled
by the plant kingdom ("phyto" means plant; "cracy" means government).
Phytocracies are characterized by addiction and all its inevitable
consequences: sickness, poverty, misery, corruption, violence, and war.

Competing interests:
None declared