Oh, the forest

Dr Johnson Krull gave a fluent presentation:

• As of today, the average life expectancy of humankind has nearly doubled compared with 300 years ago. In the 17th century, average life expectancy was 43; now it is 67. This marvellous result is due to the remarkable progress of medicine. World medicine has searched down to the cells to track down viruses and correct the errors of creation...
  The whole hall applauded thunderously.
  Suddenly a doctor from Africa asked to speak. He said:
• I take a somewhat pessimistic view, but because it seems reasonable I ask permission to present it. I think people live longer because it is harder for them to die. Is that right?
  Everyone fell silent, not knowing what trick this doctor had in mind. The African doctor cleared his throat and went on:
• People find it harder to die because they are ill and cannot die. Medicine keeps people alive for a long time with their illnesses rather than letting them die. And then we calculate humankind's average life expectancy based on very many patients who want to die and cannot.
  The whole hall gasped in surprise.
  The doctor from Africa continued in the same even tone:
• Cancer patients who cannot yet be cured still have to live, still have to bear pain, still have to undergo chemotherapy or radiotherapy, to gain three years that let us calculate a higher average life expectancy for humankind. Diabetic patients have to have joints removed and their legs cut off little by little in order to live another seven years, contributing to humankind's average life expectancy.
  I think the greatest achievement of modern medicine is prolonging the life of one person in a family and making the whole family poor from the cost of treatment. Health insurance also runs at a loss because patients are ill for so long, hitting the national budget.
  I am not at all advocating helping patients die sooner so that the country is rich and the people healthy. I want to look at the health of the whole Earth from another angle.
  We believe that environmental pollution has caused widespread illness: yes. We believe that the loose, pleasure-seeking lifestyle of a not-small number of people has caused new illnesses to spread: yes. We believe that more stressful life in the Industry 4.0 era has weakened the immune system and given illness the chance to spread: yes. But I see something else, and that is the forest. The FOREST, yes, the forest.
  Please look at the slides to see the specific comparative figures that I have collected for more than 40 years. You will see that when the area of Forest decreases, the rate of illness rises. I repeat: illness without death. Any region where the Forest shrinks fast is a region where more illness appears. My Africa is an example. In the past the forests of Africa were dense and the rate of people falling ill was very low. People died only in fighting, from being chewed by lions, from being swallowed by snakes. Life expectancy in Africa is said to be low because of those pointless deaths; but while alive, people lived very healthy lives. There have been periods when Africa was a source of labour for other countries through slavery. Now the Olympic track is still dominated by Africans.
  But when Africa's Forest shrank in area, we too began to suffer illness like people on other continents.
  I have taken pains to look for the correlation between health and forest area, and have discovered several interesting principles. These principles are new yet not new. Forests interact with humans physically, chemically, biologically, and through a new kind of field, like a magnetic field but not a magnetic field...
  The doctor from Africa went on and on, and everyone forgot the time because he was so convincing.
  Finally, he concluded:
• So, either we protect forests resolutely, or we shall die of illnesses of every kind. We shall protect forests resolutely so that forests protect us in return, or we lose the forests and are left forlorn and lost. We shall not die from a world war, but from running out of forests.
  Let us join hands to protect forests more strongly.
  Everyone stood up and shouted together
  "Forest or Death" 🚵‍♀️

There is a song someone wrote that says: "The day everyone understands one thing, that the green trees in the forest know how to love, the forest gives my heart so much to dream on, drops of morning sun or afternoon rain..."
Only people with deep ethics can love every petal and every leaf, and love vast forests. An ordinary person looks at a tree and sees only a tree; a wise person looks at a tree and sees the foundation of life on Earth. The exchange between trees and soil, water and air creates what benefits all species. Besides that, trees also give off an invisible biological field that supports the spirits of animal species. So the vast, boundless forests have created a biological field that shelters the brains of all animals.
When we destroy forests, we gradually destroy so many benefits to humans, destroy the quality of our own affections, and gradually destroy our own ethics. Humankind should devote its resources to protecting the Forest instead of treating one another as enemies and building weapons to kill each other. The forest is like a father, like a mother, yet the forest stands still and helpless, watching its own children kill it. A centuries-old tree is truly more than one's own grandfather. But we keep regarding forest trees as senseless and insensate so that we can cut them down without mercy.
We look at a tree several thousand years old and feel moved, imagining how many upheavals in the Earth's history it has passed through. But the heedless see only the great size of the trunk and imagine the money to be made. We cannot avoid a feeling of love and reverence for the tree, and we are astonished at the thoughts of those who want to exploit and fell it.
Vietnamese people still have the culture of cherishing the old tree at the village entrance or by the river. In the capital, Hanoi, we still come across a major road that has to avoid an old tree. The road has to bend around it. Yet everyone is delighted by this.
Let us love the forest as we love what is dearest to us.