Naturally

I put together for my educational channel (sorry for my poor narration), this video highlighting just some facts about other lifeforms, facts that might make you think differently about our place in this world alive.

It’s a hard nut to crack. All our lives, we are swamped with messaging that cheers us humans as “top dogs”, the pinnacle of creation, closest to G-d and the rest - everything else that moves, breathes, grows is “inferior”. It’s a built in cultural default and bias. The aftermath and effect of which, is our destruction and domination of the living world.

I believe, if first we can’t see all living things as worthy, valued, important - then we don’t have a chance at all of ending our own violent ways towards our brothers and sisters. Hate is kept close to one’s chest.

And now we have smart people saying that AI is conscious - celebrating the brillance of the machine (as human) while depreciating all the wonderous organic life that abounds out there. We truly are on the wrong path.

I think we use the wrong yardstick to judge the intelligence, the sentience, the emotional lives of the natural world. We see everything through the narrow vision of our own perception. We compare animals to ourselves but that’s wrong.

Take the mirror test for example. It is a common “test” to tell if animals are aware of themselves as living entities, if they have an “ego”. But what if, awareness of “self” is through some other means than the eyes, recognition? Or what if this awareness isn’t at all what consciousness truly is?

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.” ―William Blake,The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

I think we need to lower ourselves and live AMONG life. Get rid of our hubris. We are not kings of beasts. We are just naked, alive and at home with many “others” in our house.

Naturally

Pigeons dream of flight.
Killer whales teach their young how to topple boats.
Octopii have vivid nightmares.
Trees remember their youthful days.
Crocodiles shed tears. They might even cry.
Flat worms grow a new head when one is lost.
Aborigines buried their dingoes in the same way as a family member.
Rocks could possibly be alive, just living very slowly.
Those lobsters in boiling water DO scream.
Rats distinguish between Riesling and Sauvignon blanc.
Regret is commonly shown by Japanese macaques.

Consciousness could well be just the ability to imagine an end to what is.