October letter 2025

Can you imagine a bonzai tree?

Shaped by clever human hands and still rooted in and nurtured by the soil of global nature.

Hence nature and culture combine in a construction where the one is as essential as the other.

The tree is harnessed and bent, but the love and the cleverness of human hands and the gifts from soil allow it to thrive.

We are nature with the capacity to shape and create what we name as culture. Without that capacity we would not have thrived to the extent that we do.

Still much culture is scrutinized, questioned, doubted. This goes not least for the expressions of culture that we find in music, theater, paintings, sculptures, writings, in short: The different shades of art.

To some people, art is seen as useless. At the same time, we see that pieces of art can reach the highest prices imaginable. When we create something extraordinary, we can step back and sense pride in our human capacity. We need that pride for the survival of our species.

All cultural expressions resemble the bonzai tree. Art and other human expressions are combinations of our own nature’s ability to cultivate. The one is as essential as the other.

Cultivated products of human nature are mirror images of who and what we are. How tremendously important then that those mirror images can render us pride in being human.

To disregard, downscale or even mock cultivated products of human nature is to disregard, downscale and mock ourselves. That leads to shame, the fierce enemy of pride. Shame ties our energy up, pride releases.

Culture encompasses everything from art and language to tecnology and cooking. Still, everything is not necessarily cultivated. In some fields of our nature, cultivations still have a long way to go.

There are natural forces within us that need to be harnessed and sometimes even bent.

Even though we need our natural aggression to reach the treetops where the coconuts are handed over to us, we must curb our aggression, in order for that energy to serve common needs. Our aggression can go astray as we see it when that force in our nature displayed in warfare.

Then, what about sexuality?

We do need our sexuality to reach those heavenly states of excited and relaxed pleasures.  Sexuality prolongs our lives and prolongs human living. Still, our sexualities need to be harnessed and sometimes bent, in order for that energy to serve us all well.

To curb, harness or bend our natural sexual forces can be ignited by shame and lead us into despair, discrimination, unwanted submission, violence, abuse, ill health and even warfare.

When nurtured by love and cleverness, our sexuality can thrive within and between us in an interplay of nature and culture where the one is as essential as the other.

The result is peace of mind, peace between us, and increased quality of life.

Esben Esther Pirelli Benestad

President of the EFS

 From the dinner that was hosted in Croatia for the EFS Executive Committee Away day