All right, I guess I’m forced to pick up where I left off last time: the morality of humans and/or other animals. And my view that humans are just another species and that if we could communicate with monkeys, for example, the way we communicate with each other, we’d find that they view the world in similar ways to us.

For the record, if anyone can convince me that humans are special; that we have a morality and right to run (destroy?) the world the way we do; that we have a right to enslave, abuse, kill, enjoy and pillage other species, plants, earth and rocks, and even other people, the way we do, I would love to be convinced. Frankly, my viewpoint is so simple and without prestige. Who doesn’t want to be king/queen/conqueror and ruler?! Hook a sister up with some power!

But I prefer real power to a chimera.

My view is this: we are all part of a big, big organism: the cosmos. There is life going on that we cannot see - right beside me now – all around me, in the air, other molecules bumping and swishing around: dancing, I hope! Dancing forever and always, like my Mom on a Friday night at the local community hall. Bumping, swirling, swishing: making room, coming together and separating; singing, laughing, stomping and sweating. And every so often some of these molecules come together in such a way that they create novelty, something that didn’t exist before and that by taking little bits of that, and little bits of this, from each, or perhaps from several, of it’s progenerators, new forms are created. Forms – stuff, life – we cannot even imagine would exist.

If we could talk to animals and plants we’d increase our ability to see this stuff exponentially because each life form has a vastly different experience of the world. From the plants, we’d learn such bizarre and at first, alienating, things. Same for from the animals and earth. Our world is so unbelievable rich and teaming with life that it’s either creepy or entirely – mind blowing – depending on your tolerance for novelty and the unexpected, and your tolerance for lack of power and control.

We are folded into this ongoing experience: my cells are dying and rejuvenating as I write; as are yours, as you read.

It’s sad and terrible and joyous – you decide. We decide! Or, the unknown decides.

You can try to make love with the unknown or try to kill with it – and either of these, you might be surprised to hear me say, could be the right thing to do. The only thing I know is that existence will never “stop existing”. It will mutate/evolve, grow/die, change and remain the same, like a flock of birds coming together and pulling apart, a beautiful, corporeal, ghostly entity. Beautiful, faraway, unlike a human being, yet exactly like a person on some deep, unownable level. Like a dragonfly you have to allow to land on your finger, or a Sims game character you cannot control the evolution of, except by changing the environment around it.

If we could see into the soul of an animal, plant or rock, we’d see the same beliefs, organizations, communications, we have: monkeys imagine a monkey god; plants, a plant god and rocks, a rock god. Monkeys organize as they need to, for the survival of the species (though they are “imperfect”); as do plants (though they are “imperfect”); as do rocks… They communicate. It’s totally arrogant to think that we are the only life form that has an evolved language. Ie. Mother: “All that heavy metal music you listen to sounds the same!” Teenager: rolling eyes at the inability of mother to hear the difference between one of their favourite bands and another.

Or the difficulty a non-Chinese native speaker has in discerning/voicing the difference between several words/vowels that all sound identical to them. If we lived with wolves, we’d eventually learn to communicate in wolf. I’m convinced it’s exactly like any one of the thousands of human dialects – and that to a wolf, all human languages sound the same. Ditto for plants, and rocks. Maybe an earthquake is an earthen rock concert?!

Image from: http://planet-pictures.blogspot.com