No , the the tree needs us to create nuclear treaties with our neighbors to prevent us from destroying our earth . Also for space exploration so we can colonize another planet .
@cuddlerforu24
...how do you know this? What information regarding trees do you have that I lack?
It sounds to me like you're anthropomorphizing vegetation.
Herm...? 🤔 @UltimateChungus & @cuddlerforu24
If nothing on earth were to survive, due to nuclear war, wouldn't that include trees...?
Or do nuclear bombs not affect vegetation...?
@quixotic_life: I'm not sure the trees would care. (Me, taking sides in an extremely predictable manner.)
@DarrenWalker ~ Ah... so the crux is the assumed "need" to continue this current shared existence, and whether the trees would care about their fate either way/at all?
That it's a human desire for maintaining this connection (roots and all) vs the trees themselves "feeling" a need to survive and that they don't actually "care" either way, about anything, including us and our one-sided relationship to them, because they're trees and don't have "feelings"?
I don't have an opinion to share, but am I at least on track for the point being made?
(Me, predictably confused... but working on it...)
@quixotic_life: Looks like you've got it! Yup—a human can say a tree needs to keep existing, but the tree... well, it just exists until it doesn't. Has no thoughts or feelings on the matter (with or without quotation marks). Same as rocks that way, trees are. And dirt. And planets. And stars. They don't need to exist, they just do (or don't).
Edit: That's my argument, anyway.
@quixotic_life
If nothing on earth were to survive, due to nuclear war,
Nuclear war is so overrated. A simple Yellowstone eruption would inflict many times more damage than all the nukes in world. Besides, I'm pretty sure that areas like NewYork or LA would get more than half of all the nukes in the world anyway, as that's a wet dream of any aspiring dictator, thus leaving not that many nukes for the rest of the planet
Besides, even if all the nukes were deployed, it wouldn't cover any significant portion of surface. You would have giant pockets of unaffected sub-ecosystems that would then settle at a new equilibrium anyway. There's hundreds of closed ecosystems in lakes underground or under the ice (Antarctica). Not to mention hot vents deep in the ocean.
As much credit as I would like to attribute to humans, we really only have the potential to wipe ourselves (and other fauna/flora) out. We most certainly do not possess [yet] the capacity to destroy the Earth itself.
The half-life of Uranium-235 is less than blink of an eye on a geological timescale.
@DarrenWalker
And dirt. And planets. And stars.
Dude, I can't believe you offended Black Holes by omitting them from this list
Black Holes are the future of our universe! Trillions and Trillions of years after our Sun becomes a White Dwarf (after successfully obliterating our planet), Black Holes will continue to shape the Universe that has long expanded beyond the visible horizon of Pure Darkness in the sky...
Interesting philosophical argument regarding the nature of awareness.
But in this case maybe a more practical approach will also work. Humans treat others more kindly when they see something of themselves within the others. People are capable of incredibly selfless acts when they feel a common bond. So I say let’s anthropomorphize the trees. Let’s see ourselves within them. That way we will take better care of them. And simply by existing, they’ll take care of us. Whether the trees are really aware might almost seem irrelevant.
@cualtzin ~ 👏👏👏 Perfect!
@cualtzin: It has been said that humans have to believe the little lies in order to believe the big ones. Maybe it's true that the truth isn't useful for people—but me, I kind of prefer to know what's really so, not just what's convenient to believe.
Trees aren't sentient.
I recommend all posters in this thread who think trees are not a big deal to be open to some research. If you read a few books to learn about the stark difference between naturally occurring forests versus artificially planted ones for example, your understanding of them not being sentient and unworthy of respect would be challenged. I think it’s naive to consider them as just objects that help us so therefore we should take care of them because it’s in our best interest. Trees will be the last sign of life once even arthropodas are extinct, which is something another poster mentioned as well. Book recommendation in particular: The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben. Humans may be the “dominant” creature (by extraordinary force), but we are mere paper compared to the billions of trees in the world. Trees as a worldwide community will never be conquered by us, even the “silent” ones we plant—reference their communication methods between each other to understand this point. I hope the novas and black holes keep us all faaaar away so we don’t take advantage of them like we have the trees.
@Allerdale: I know about the differences in the way trees grow in different circumstances. Doesn't endow plants with consciousness, I'm afraid. And what makes anyone or anything worthy of respect, objectively speaking? Humans decide, individually, what they think things're worth—to them, to the planet, to the universe.
All worth and value are assigned by sentient minds. Value isn't real the way a rock is. It has no objective reality. As a pattern of thought, it differs from mind to mind, and where there are no minds it doesn't exist.
Why do you think the planet cares whether there is life on it or not? Assume humanity is gone and only plants remain—so what? This ball of rock and dirt never had a single thought about the things on its surface, and trees don't have thoughts either: no tree or community of trees has ever passed the message "beware humans carrying chainsaws." Trees 'communicate' the way cameras 'see': without awareness, without thought, without sentience.
This isn't to say it's not fun to play with amusing fictions about ents and so on. It's very fun! But not a good thing to actually believe if it's truth you're interested in.
lol ~ because @DarrenWalker said...
"Why do you think the planet cares whether there is life on it or not?..." "This ball of rock and dirt never had a single thought about the things on its surface..."
and it reminded me of this one... 😉
and maybe feelings are universal, and felt by everything everywhere, and we just aren't equipped to understand because it's not how we process our own.
IDK ~ To me it's a more reasonable consideration than some of the alternative schools of thought (around the unprovable) out there.
Also, just for fun, check out EverythingIsAlive.com
@Allerdale Interesting. I thought that an argument for self-interest might be considered more cynical than naive. But I do hope, as you state, that they are a worldwide community which will never be conquered by us.
One tree I would love to see in person is El Árbol del Tule in Oaxaca MX.
@quixotic_life: And maybe all vegetables scream when we bite into them, but we'll never know because we're just not equipped to hear their screams and wouldn't recognize what we were hearing even if we could hear it—but I dunno. I prefer to believe things that have actual evidence going for them, not things that can't ever be disproved no matter how hard you try.
Sure, there's no way to prove that there's not an invisible, intangible dragon living in my bathroom. But really, why believe without evidence? Because there's no evidence? Whee....
That said, I like trees. It's a subjective thing, my liking of trees, and as patterns of thought go this is one that might not even last as long as my mind does—but at the moment, in my own brain, there exists a pattern of neural activation which puts out subjectively pleasant output in response to tree-related input. I see a tree. I feel good about the tree. Trees, I think, are nice.
This is, however, a fact about me—not trees. Objectively speaking, trees are neither nice nor un-nice. They just are.
@DarrenWalker - That plant is probably dead by the time it reaches your plate. I never had a steak moo at me.
@Mike403: You can't prove that dead things don't feel pain. Maybe they do, and just can't express it, or maybe dead things do scream but we can't hear or understand. It's possible! It is, in fact, impossible to disprove!
...You see the problem with believing things without evidence, yes?
@DarrenWalker ~ I ♡ your mind! 🥰
Dead things have no pain receptors sending through the dendrites to the brain because the brain and nervous system are all dead. My what an off course sentence for me to say in a thread about tree hugging
@pmvines - There's people who believe that bad people go to a place full of pain and torture when they die.
@pmvines: Ah, but you can't prove that this is the only way to experience pain. Perhaps plants—dead or alive—feel pain in ways humans simply can't understand.
...Believing a thing because there's no evidence against it is stupid.
@quixotic_life: Thanks! I kind of like my mind, too.
@DarrenWalker interesting concept. Pain is a response to stimuli so brain and system devoid of what is needed to experience the stimuli and process it into a pain response is.very much like the age old question of if a tree falls and nobody is around to hear it does it make a sound , which brings us full circle to trees and saving the thread from veering too far off topic 🤣
But seriously death is like being unplugged and you have to be plugged in to have a response to stimuli
Pain is to alert you to danger so you learn to avoid it in the future. A dead person/animal doesn't need to avoid anything
@Mike403 I dont believe the going to hell and experiencing pain and suffering deal . However if we are merely masses of energy inside of bags of bone and flesh like some believe., and that energy ends up taking form elsewhere once it leaves our bodies. I could see how there is a possibility for pain beyond our definition of what we know as death
@pmvines: Ah, but what about a spiritual response to stimuli? You can't prove that plants don't have souls!
...Really, why I have to go this far to demonstrate how absolutely insane it is to believe things without proof, I don't know. Isn't it obvious that if you choose to believe a thing not because there's evidence for it but because it's impossible to have evidence against it, you've gone off the deep end?