Plants are sentient? They do react to stimuli, but I can't begin to imagine the qualia of a plant.
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Why vegetarianism?
- Thread starter Starlight
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They interact with their environment and communicate with each other.
In that case "connecting with the spirit of," say, my favorite beach is something I've definitely done. But...the beach isn't alive. I mean, living things inhabit it. But the beach itself, the geographical landmark, has no consciousness of its own. It doesn't "teach," other than as a metaphor or anthropomorphism.
It's not the frame of reference that's throwing me off. It's using the words of mysticism but then redefining them as something much more secular than how most of us use them. That idiosyncratic use of language makes it tough to get to the bottom of what you're describing. But I appreciate your attempts at clarification!
That's cool, but it's really not sentience. I mean, atoms all interact with their environment. Are plants self-aware? Do they have emotions? Do they feel pain?
Studying plant sentience is an emerging field of science: Why some scientists believe plants may have consciousness
Let me ask think: do you think there are degrees of consciousness or sentience? Or are humans no more sentient than amoebas?
I don't know. I've never been an amoeba.
Are you sure, and where did you learn this?
Personally, I wouldn't generally call Spirit of Beach "alive" or "conscious" either. We just don't really have a well-developed language of animism in the West. The Wikipedia article honestly does a fairly decent job at it, but even it has to hinge itself in using clunky words. And "animism" is in no small part a construct created by Westerners attempting to understand indigenous religion and how indigenous people form different relationships with the non-human world than Westerners typically do.
For a much, much more accessible introduction to the feel of animism, "Spell of the Sensuous" by David Abram is great. It's not some obnoxious, impenetrable academic text. It's more a work of environmental ethics or environmental literature but it captures something of the spirit of animism in its pages and is something of a classic these days. I missed it somehow until it was brought up in my study of environmental ethics in grad school.
This is something the book I recommended talks about a little bit - about how Western approach more or less caused early anthropologists to read more "supernaturalism" into indigenous cultures than may actually be warranted. Ultimately what is "secular" or "not secular" is a construct anyway, so I try to look more at what the words are trying to point at. It does make it harder to articulate to others, though.
A fun quote from Abram to close:
"Where does perception originate? I cannot say truthfully that my perception of a particular wildflower, with its color and its fragrance, is determined or "caused" entire by the flower - since other persons may experience a somewhat different fragrance, even as I, in a different moment or mood, may see the color differently, and indeed since any bumblebee that alights on that blossom will surely have a very different perception of it than I do. But neither can I say truthfully that my perception is "caused" solely by myself - by my physiological or neural organization - or that it exists entirely "in my head." For without the actual existence of this other entity, of this flower rooted not in my brain but in the soil of the earth, there would be no fragrant and colorful perception at all, neither for myself nor for any others, whether human or insect.
Neither the perceiver nor the perceived, then, is wholly passive in the event of perception."
--- "Spell of the Sensuous" by D. Abram, pp 53
Neither the perceiver nor the perceived, then, is wholly passive in the event of perception."
--- "Spell of the Sensuous" by D. Abram, pp 53
Well, there's the land use (or rather land abuse) problem. Human activity has kicked off a sixth mass extinction event. Raising non-human animals for food isn't the entire cause of this, but it is a major one. So... if you like having a biologically diverse inhabitable planet to live on, there's your reason I suppose.
Quite true, but so do a lot of our modern systems and devices. My thermostat interacts with its environment and communicates with the furnace. This doesn't mean it's conscious or self-aware.
Interesting. Possible. But considering the "automatic" alternative, it hasn't yet met the test of parsimony, IMHO.
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Haven't you been following either the moral or environmental issues we've been discussing?
From my own experience of the beach, in addition to understanding what a beach is. That's what you just asked me about, right?
Phew! So we agree, beaches don't "teach" other than as anthropomorphism.
point at. It does make it harder to articulate to others, though.
I do agree that we should use words that convey meanings in as clear a way as possible. And frankly I applaud your desire to get past semantics to the core of what you're really talking about, because semantic arguments really do get old. I just want to get to the bottom line in most conversations, lol.
This is why I find it so bizarre, and frankly, muddying the waters of getting at what we're really talking about when you invoke phrases like "Spirit of Beach," if what you really mean is just, "what beaches are." So in the sentence above, instead of saying "Personally, I wouldn't generally call Spirit of Beach "alive" or "conscious" either," you could've just said "personally I wouldn't say beaches are alive or conscious either."
But I suspect that by saying "Spirit of Beach," rather than "beaches," you really are trying to get at something that seems an awful lot like supernaturalism. But when pressed you insist it isn't, while still using words like "Spirit."
This is similar to the Buddhist concept of interbeing. Yes, perceptions are caused both by the reality of the thing being perceived in addition to the ability of the perceiver to accurately perceive them. I do suspect, to be fair, if we went back in a time machine to the pre-colonial Americas, we'd find that's not nearly all that Natives meant when they referred to "spirits" in rocks and trees and animals, though.
Sorry, I don't think that is true. And I don't believe you can show any proof for it.
I don't kill people, because I don't have right for that and because I don't want to do so.
I disagree with that, will though, I think people should be less greedy and not overeat.
Interesting, not that I would not believe it, but could you give some source for that?
Yes, it may be added to many things. By what I know, it naturally exists in milk only, if meat products are not counted. But, I am not sure would drinking milk be enough for to get enough it.
Yup, that's fine. There's probably more to it than that, but this is probably more or less true to simplify. We learn based on what we experience, and by what our surrounding culture teaches us about things. The USA is a culture that impersonalizes most of nature, so that's what most humans end up doing too and this isn't questioned much. There's no need to; it's a way of thinking that leads to a way of life that works for folks.
Anything you can learn from is a teacher, so no, not how I would put it. I oversimplified in my earlier response there, but was trying not to do that "muddying the waters" thing. It would have been more accurate to say "I wouldn't generally call Spirit of Beach "alive" or "conscious" either, at least not with respect to how anthropocentrically many humans understand these terms." But that probably just confuses things more for you?
Maybe that could be articulated as "respect and honor all things as sacred." That's what it means at the end of the day to embrace modern animism - it does not matter if you believe something feels pain, is alive, or whatever other quality you want to assign... everything has inherent value, dignity, and worth. Not just animals. Also plants. Which is why the whole "yeah, I don't eat meat because non-human animals feel pain" annoys me a bit. It's well-intentioned, but it overlooks the plight of plants and the land itself. There's no "moral high ground" to being vegetarian. There's no way to eat at all without being a "sinner." Humans must kill other beings that have inherent value and dignity to live.
Maybe. But if the more "mundane" angle is difficult to articulate with those who do not also walk the path, the stuff I do in the otherworlds and the journeying? Probably impossible. Plus, words like "supernatural" are problematic when applied to nature-based traditions. The term implies there's an "above" or "beyond" nature, which is not the case for me. It's all just nature. Nature's just bigger and more animate/peopled/spirited than modern domesticated humans acknowledge. We don't have to live in direct contact with the greater-than-human world on a constant give-and-take basis. We lost our need to regard them all as people, and thus animism declined. Now the world is just a bunch of soulless objects, to use and abuse at whim, to not regard as having any value beyond their usefulness to us.
Ew. No thanks.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
Sources[edit]
Bacteria and archaea[edit]
Vitamin B12 is produced in nature by certain bacteria, and archaea.[59][60][61] It is synthesized by some bacteria in the gut microbiota in humans and other animals, but it has long been thought that humans cannot absorb this as it is made in the colon, downstream from the small intestine, where the absorption of most nutrients occurs.[62] Ruminants, such as cows and sheep, are foregut fermenters, meaning that plant food undergoes microbial fermentation in the rumen before entering the true stomach (abomasum), and thus they are absorbing vitamin B12 produced by bacteria.[62][63] Other mammalian species (examples: rabbits, pikas, beaver, guinea pigs) consume high-fibre plants which pass through the intestinal system and undergo bacterial fermentation in the cecum and large intestine. The first-passage of feces produced by this hindgut fermentation, called "cecotropes", are re-ingested, a practice referred to as cecotrophy or coprophagy. Re-ingestion allows for absorption of nutrients made available by bacterial digestion, and also of vitamins and other nutrients synthesized by the gut bacteria, including vitamin B12.[63] Non-ruminant, non-hindgut herbivores may have an enlarged forestomach and/or small intestine to provide a place for bacterial fermentation and B-vitamin production, including B12.[63] For gut bacteria to produce vitamin B12 the animal must consume sufficient amounts of cobalt.[64] Soil that is deficient in cobalt may result in B12 deficiency, and B12 injections or cobalt supplementation may be required for livestock.[65]... Vitamin B12 - Wikipedia
The bacteria and archaea come from the ground and then passed on to us with what we eat. One can get usually more than enough from eating meat, but if one is a vegetarian then there can be a problem with low levels, and I am one of those who has to take B12 suppliments.
Stick to Vegetarianism.
