(08-01-2015, 05:22 PM)Aion Wrote: I think I can only conclude that I do not understand the nature of our need to consume life at this time
We'll have to ask the Logos that one.
In the meantime, my own experience (which, I realize, is different from yours) is that plant life doesn't die when we consume it. Rather, its consciousness merges with ours. It's just a different kind of consciousness. It's more primal and amorphous.
Whereas, animals are individuated.
(08-01-2015, 05:22 PM)Aion Wrote: I do not understand the exact nature of why you and I seemingly have come to completely different conclusions.
I don't either. In an effort to understand you better, what do you perceive when you step on a blade of grass? Do you perceive it writhing in agony? If, as you say, plants are close to 3D, then where are the boundaries of the individual entities? We are all One, yes, but you are still you and I am still me too. A dog is a dog, with his/her own personality...clearly there is an individuated entity residing in that dog's body. Same with cows, chickens, pigs, etc.
Where, then, does the grass soul reside? Where is the mind/body/spirit complex? Oh, it doesn't have one yet? Where, then, is its mind/body complex? If you tear off a few leaves from a lettuce plant, is each leaf an individual, sentient entity? What happens when you take a cutting from a plant and it grows into a new plant? Like, say, a co-worker gives you a cutting from her ivy, and you plant it at home, 10 miles from the office. Did that ivy turn into 2 mind/body complexes? How did this happen? Were there 2 souls to begin with? or was there only 1 soul originally...and if so, where did the 2nd soul come from?
If you are arguing that plants are sentient, individuated entities, then maybe you can explain what happens when you grow 2 ivy plants from a single cutting. Or, 20 cuttings! The lady in the office has a huge ivy and gives away 20 cuttings, and 20 other people take their cuttings home and grow 20 new ivy plants.
That is reproduction, you might say. Maybe...though reproduction means that a new body is created. That's Not what happened here, because the original cutting was part of the Ivy #1's own body!
That would be like cutting off someone's arm and it growing into a new human body, while still retaining the original body part (the arm) from the original person's body.
Do you see how crazy this gets?
It's kinda like those people who say men and women are exactly the same. Um, no they're not. Their plumbing is different! There might be all sorts of gender issues, etc. but the fact remains that the plumbing is...different.
It is the same with plants and animals. Animals have a different physiology...for a reason! I contend that it's because they have reached the point of developed sentience.
They have the ability to fly, swim or run away...for a reason. The reason being that they are sentient enough to have developed free will and the will to live. Plants aren't mobile for a reason...they don't need to be, because they aren't harmed when parts of them are torn off. They simply grow back. Even if the whole corn stalk is killed, when you think in terms of amorphous consciousness, the whole field of corn losing a single stalk is kinda like a human losing a fingernail.
Yes, they do have consciousness! No doubt about it. Plant a field of corn and spray it with toxic chemicals and then violently chop it all down, when it never even got a chance to live a decent life with bugs, and yeah, of course the group soul is going to protest. How could it not? But that doesn't mean that every stalk of corn is an individuated entity. It's more like the whole field of corn is an entity...with each stalk of corn sort of like a fingernail on the body of a sentient entity.
Did you know that science has shown evidence that the body of bacteria is spread out all over the entire planet? When bacteria in, say, Tokyo suddenly developed resistance to a certain antibiotic, simultaneously other bacteria in test tubes developed the same resistance across the world in, say, Chicago. After years of no resistance, all the bacteria became resistant, even the bacteria in test tubes, totally cut off physically from other bacteria.
The logical conclusion to this is that it has a group mind...a collective consciousness.
Life on Planet Earth has evolved from the primal/amorphous TO the individuated. Now, having come full circle, to evolve further we must take our individual consciousness and merge it with other individuals to form a Social Memory Complex.
In the meantime, there are degrees and stages that the consciousness goes through. Plants are somewhere in-between the primal, amorphous existence of bacteria, and the higher, self-contained, physically demarcated animals, whereas animals are in-between the less amorphous but still somewhat amorphous plants and...humans.
This is what seems obvious to me. But of course, I could be wrong. Maybe you are right and there is absolutely no rhyme or reason to any of it, and all the vegetation on the planet is living a life of agony.
If that's the case, then this planet is HELL.
...