John in desperate backlash :P wrote:
>>>I would argue that at the moment we are bound to [the earth].
>>>Try existing without taking another lung full of air?
Glen (That's me) wrote:
>>We were once bound by the sea but now we have evolved past it by
>>bringing a piece of it with us. Next time, start listening to your >>
>>moist bowels and tell me when you hear the ocean.
John:
>Hmm.. We are still bound by the sea. Every drop of water in your >body
>comes from an ocean, and not so long ago either.
Actually, every drop of water in your body comes, originally, from a star
larger than our sun that went supernova before our solar system came into
being. The ejected material from the supernova had created heavier more
complex elements like oxygen in order for the sun to form and ultimately,
the Earth, a watery orb that we are not bound to that melded hydrogen to
oxygen in order to form us. Earth is like a test-tube of chemical
interaction. The chemical interaction isn't bound to the test-tube at all.
We are however bound to the universe itself since logically the universe is
"everything" and thus we couldn't escape if we tried. Thus we are bound to
the chemical lab facilities and such. Luckily, because our universe is
steady-state, we won't have to escape. :) So perhaps, John, you could make a
case for the "universe" itself being a being. But you're so far saying that
the test-tube alive. Is that right?
John:
>Checkout "Hypersea: Life on Land" by Mark McMenamin and Dianna >McMenamin.
>It asks "why is life on land so spectacularly >successful? Because 450
>million years ago life created hypersea - a >vast new ocean of
>interconnected tissue. We are part of that ocean >and cannot escape from
>it.
We can obviously so escape from it. If we really want to, we the human
species can evacuate the Earth completely. We are bound by our origins but
we are not bound physically to Earth. Since the Earth's "sentience" is
dependant on animals like us in this context, and since we could just pack
up and leave to another planet if we wanted to, the REAL sentient being is
Humanity not the Earth. Earth _could_ be considered a being (void of
sentience) if we use Life itself as the source of the arguement, in which
case I will agree then that Earth is a being, but it doesn't have
self-awareness without Humanity.
And then this gets into the idea of "What is life?".
In conclusion then, I suppose Earth could be considered a globular amoeba of
unthinking being but Humanity is most definitely a formless and boundless
sentient being, not bound by Earth.
>>By the way, if you're under house arrest, does the house suddenly
>>come alive?
>
>No, but you are alive because you are part of Gaia's (the Living
>Earth's) Body, See the book of the same name by Thomas Volk.
Well, I guess since I'm living in south central Canada, I don't see the
distinction. The house keeps you alive too, if say... the temperature
outside is -32 Celsius with a windchill factor of 2000. Yes, indeed, the
house in this case becomes a being according to you and you're glad to be
arrested because there's no way you'll be wantin' to go outside without
trepidation.
>That's what I like to see, an optimist! Given the fact that the
>ecological footprint of the human species is equal to conuming six
>biospheres at the moment and we have only one, and given that 40% of
>the photosynthetic potential of the planet is being used for human
>purposes, and it is doubling every 28 years (i.e. 28 years ago it was
>20%, 28 years before that 10%), it doesn't give us much time to get >our
>house in order.
That's what I like to see, a pessimist! There may be a cataclysm in the
future that'll wake us up, maybe there will be a severe reduction in
population from plague, as alluded to in "Twelve Monkeys", a brilliant
un-Hollywood movie about a mental patient who thinks... or is... a
time-traveller helping to obtain research about the human past on the one
hand and on the other trying to come to grip with his own psyche. Get it at
your local Blockbuster.
At any rate, it would be very hard regardless of the circumstances for the
entire umpteen billion people on the face of this Earth to simply vanish -
that's unrealistic. Even the Maya didn't vanish completely and they still
survive today, albeit with a now altered culture and language. Or the
American Indians as a whole who had suffered mass extinctions to their
language, culture and livelihood but they're STILL around. Hell, what about
the dinosaurs -> birds.
>Hopefully we can reduce our planetary impact below the
>170 species per day that are currently becoming exitinct - to >something
>that is sustainable for the periods of time you talk about >Glen.
>
>And where does language fit into this picture?
First, we had been talking about the definition of the term "democracy" and
then we moved on to the term "being". Secondly, we are also discussing the
future of humanity and which ties into the future of language which no doubt
will become more complex and specialized as time continues. We may even see
a "new phase" of abstraction from vocal communication to something beyond...
perhaps "mental communication" via computer prosthetics. Language at that
rate would not be composed of phonemes anymore but of chemical interactions,
terabytes and photons.
- gLeN
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