look just gonna be really ndn about it for a moment but no one can claim to know the internal experience of animals. no one can claim to know the internal experience of plants. no one can claim to know the internal experience of the earth. theres a part of my heart that is always the girl telling my philosophy professor that we cant know the flower turning towards the sun is "purely instinct." and if u disagree then thats fine idc its just My Soulful Opinion in afraid
its frustrating doubly to talk abt on here bc not only is everyone gonna laugh me out of the room like they did when i tried to bring up animism in my white philosophy classes but also like. i know people are gonna get mad like "oh so animals can have morals?" etc of like. look i Knowww and i agree that the anthropomorphism of animals by people is harmful absolutely! but this colonial empirical stance of that nothing feels emotion or has desires in this world except for human beings is so sick to me. what a terrible rotten world to live in where plants dont love the sun and love the shade and love the rain. "they dont have the brain synapses firing to-" 1) thats not all that emotion is oh my lord 2) constantly they are coming out with more science that proves that plants communicate with each other in Scientifically Proven ways. your need to have the world fit an aristotelian victorian bullshit diagnostic criteria is sick
Yes! I'm Yurok so I always kind of feel like I'm going to get side eyed by people when I talk about this.
Look, I don't know if I believe in souls at all, but I do know that my dog gets embarrassed. My cats get jealous. The wasps in the back yard trust me.
I posted a comment about how plants have SOME kind of intelligence and listed some of the recent research. Someone came and replied that it isn't intelligence, it's chemical or electric signals. He said we need to "be more discerning about what we call intelligence." I have never read such white ass colonizer bullshit in my life.
What the ACTUAL fuck do people think human intelligence is? It is fucking chemical and electrical signals in the god damned brain. Animals' brains are made of the same exact stuff working with the exact same chemicals ours are. Why would those chemicals work differently in an animal brain?
And if it was all just chemicals, then those chemicals would always trigger the same response. Plants are capable of choosing to ignore those signals. Being capable of making a choice is SOME kind of intelligence and I doubt how much someone has if they deny it.
No, I don't think they experience the world in the same way I do. Our perception of reality is based on our brain interpreting signals. That is unique to every single living thing on earth so even other people are experiencing it differently. But they ARE experiencing the world in a meaningful way. And the fact that a lot of people don't think they do is very much a sickness.
And anthropomorphising animals really is dangerous, but that's not what I'm getting at. I'm not saying that they're basically people. I'm saying they have just as much of an inner life as we do. And that assuming that all that looks like is unthinking instincts is one of the most damaging things white Christians brought over with them.
