Did you know plants can learn from experience?

[Nía]

Pavlov’s plants: new study shows plants can learn from experience

Do plants, like animals, have consciousness? If plants learn, choose and associate, what does this mean for our ethical relationship with them? Can humans learn from the adaptive capacities of plants?

-`ღ´-

[BlatzAdict]

Pavlov’s plants: new study shows plants can learn from experience

Do plants, like animals, have consciousness? If plants learn, choose and associate, what does this mean for our ethical relationship with them? Can humans learn from the adaptive capacities of plants?

-`ღ´-

yea it means they love each other and want to live, they don't want hoomins to eat them up

it means how can we only look at eating meat as depolarizing, perhaps it is the act of consumption that is depolarizing period. 


Plants talk to each other and have been proven to have extensive root networks that connect mother trees to their young, they transmit stuff that the young might need, there is a sharing process that occurs between plants.

We are destroying our eco systems because the way trees are replanted are not with respect to the genus' that are found naturally ocurring. Instead what is replanted are trees that generally do not have to do with the local trees, so because of that they don't establish root networks that connect them, and those trees that end up getting replanted fall to disease more easily because they don't have their community or care network that would have been established if the underground mycellium and root system were left intact.

With that said there needs to be a completely new look at how to actually preserve nature.

fox hutt gave a wonderful lecture at homecoming about plants talking to each other too!! 

I was surprised no body else knew about it.
 




what do you guys do with your time? lol I do this kind of study all the time is it boring? I don't know I think it's really exciting. 

Everything is one and connected. 

[Nía]

it means how can we only look at eating meat as depolarizing, perhaps it is the act of consumption that is depolarizing period. 

Here's an argumentation for a least harm approach (in contrast to a non-harm approach, which, as you pointed out, seems at the moment to be unachievable to human beings not living on sunlight alone): Plants Feel Pain Too? What’s a Vegan To Do? Shadow work, he we come!

-`ღ´-

P.S. I think it's an exciting topic, too.

[Nía]

[Nía]

German forester says trees are social beings with friends and personalities

[Nía]

Kenny Ausubel: Plants are Sentient Beings

"Science now shows that plants appear to be sentient beings. They perceive light, smell, touch, water, and many more variables than we do. They can learn, remember and communicate." - Kenny Ausubel, Bioneers Co-Founder and CEO

P.S. There's also been other threads dealing with similar issues (I might copy and paste the links together, one day...):
Suzanne Simard: How Trees Talk To Each Other | TED Talk
Scientists find Plants communicate Telepathically
plants know when they're beating eaten, "hear" and recognize different vibrations
... and maybe more...

[Coordinate_Apotheosis]

Sigh, I wish I didn't need to hurt my food to consume it 3:

I think stumps are kept alive because there's more to a tree than its visible trunk, branches, and leaves.  There's an entire energetic body still attached to the stump.

[Nía]

[Coordinate_Apotheosis]

I guess you can put a price on a (2D) life. 3D is so strange sometimes.

[Diana]

This is awesome. I always feel like doing something similar every year at Christmas time.

[Jeremy]

Guess you guys will have to start sun gazing for energy then

[Nía]

Gary: A question comes in from a fellow named S who writes: “My question is about the practice of sun gazing and the way I feel inspired to practice this for longer periods. What is the mechanism of sun gazing and why or how does sun gazing help us to become more open as a channel for universal love?”

Hatonn: I am Hatonn and we must admit that we do not know the answer to this question, for we are unaware of the benefit of such an experience. We apologize for our lack of information but we would not suggest such a practice.

...

Gary: (...) It confounded me that you, Hatonn, a social memory complex, could not speak on that question, and my supposition was that it was due to the limitations of the instrument and not so much your own limitation of knowledge. If you could speak to that question, please.

Hatonn: I am Hatonn and am aware of your query, my brother. Our reluctance to speak and to suggest that we did not know the answer to the query was because we do not know of any real value to such an experience and would not recommend it.

[Jeremy]

Ah well, guess you'll just have to choose whatcha wanna hurt more plants or animal

[Nía]

We all do.

[Jade]

Luckily most plants have evolved so that herbivores are a part of their life cycle!

[Minyatur]

Plants can definitely be seen as a kind of animal that is closer to the earth.

I think vegans of this foum usually seem to invest themselves in these 2D lifeforms and are able to feel the feedback of what they interact with. That plants are closer to the earth makes them closer to the earth's nature of providing freely and a loving relationship toward them helps them in their evolution.

I even noticed that areas where it can be useful to use a tree's branches to help yourself move tend to make the trees self aware as they do seem to like the contact with humans.

As a reminder, anything is something of it's own and any kind of generalization is closer to plundering than courting (maiden archetype). Treat each thing as it's own being.

[Diana]

Ah well, guess you'll just have to choose whatcha wanna hurt more plants or animal

That is a consideration. But there are marked differences between plants and animals that can be observed in canvassing this choice.

1. We know animals suffer when tortured.

2. We know animals don't want to die when slaughtered.

3. Animals have nervous systems so we know they feel pain in the way we understand pain.

4. Animals have offspring. And we can observe them protecting their offspring and exhibiting heart-wrenching distress when their young are harmed or taken away as in the case with dairy cows and calfs destined to be veal.

5. Try cutting off a leg of a cow and see if it survives. You will absolutely know the cow is suffering.

On the other hand:

1. We DO NOT know if plants suffer in the way we humans understand it. I think they do have responses to the environment and they have a consciousness like everything else, and that they respond to love.

2. No living thing "wants" to die, and yet consider that plants can die off and the root system produces life again. This happens in the desert where I live. Grass will grow after a rain then die off. My point is, since we don't really know what plants feel, and they are programmed to deal with dying off and reviving, it suggests to me that the suffering a plant may feel is not the intense, life-threatening suffering an animal would feel (including humans who are, of course, animals).

3. Plants have no nervous system as we do so we can say they don't feel pain as we do. They may have their own version of pain. And yet, you can trim plants and they thrive better than if you don't. (While you can't cut the leg off a cow and see it thrive.)

4. Plants freely and desirously give parts of themselves up to be eaten as in the case with fruits in order to spread seed. You can take parts of a plant for food and the plant lives.

5. Plants are closer to light, since they photosynthesize.

This is not to say that loveless commercial farming of plants is good in any way.

But the differences between how plants and animals survive in this world suggests that eating plants is less harmful and hurtful than eating animals. Since we must eat something to survive, then eating plants seems the kinder course, and a step closer to living on light.

[Coordinate_Apotheosis]

Diana, that is an interesting way to look at things.

Have you ever read the book Hands of Light? In it the author details seeing the aura of a leaf, and in demonstrating how the energetic body of a leaf forms the blueprint for the physical portion to grow along, she cut the leaf.

In cutting the leaf, she saw the aura turn a bloody red and 'viewed' it as pain.

I think a plant life form is less interdependent on every portion.  You could argue every leaf is its own 2D entity, belonging to a more mature 2D entity, the tree and its trunk, branches, and roots.  Also that we can cut off a branch, to say a lemon tree, and attach it to another different tree, and that tree will still take the branch which will still grow fruit upon it, might show how closely related trees are to one another, but moreso, how 'alive' every individual part of a tree is.  A cut off limb can still grow.

So whenever I prune a rose bush or trim my palm tree.  I apologize with each cut, because a part of me believes I am hurting this loving entity that just is trying to be.

My neighbor's kids have given me funny looks for doing this lol

As for fruit, I think its different per.  I think berries garnish more joy than pain in being consumed, like popping a pimple (as a gross example lol) it hurts at first but its better feeling afterwards, perhaps the act of chewing is fun to crushed pulp.

Then there's fruits like watermelon, who I think are badly hurt when sliced open, but enjoy having the red fleshy inner parts eaten.  Or a banana or orange, who probably don't like getting peeled, or being chewed, but might enjoy as the chewed mush being digested.

I usually apologize to my fruit.  I want it to have an idea that I am grateful, and not just doing what I do to hurt it.

This is especially important to me when I eat meat.

I think sungazing is a misinformation technique posited and pushed to people to see how susceptible they are to altering their perceptions to fit spiritual information into their consensus view of reality.  Looking directly at the sun for more than a couple seconds will damage the optic nerve, frying it where direct sunlight is focused through the lens of the eye like a magnifying glass being used to burn ants, only the ants are your optic nerves.

Instead, gaze at NASA's closeup view of the sun.  Its easier, healthier, and more entertaining.

[Diana]

Have you ever read the book Hands of Light? In it the author details seeing the aura of a leaf, and in demonstrating how the energetic body of a leaf forms the blueprint for the physical portion to grow along, she cut the leaf.

In cutting the leaf, she saw the aura turn a bloody red and 'viewed' it as pain.

I have the book Hands of Light. What you're missing is that she "viewed" it as pain, but all we can say is that it indicated change. My point is we know animals suffer but we only guess about the suffering of plants. And that suffering, if it is suffering as we know it, must be mitigated by the points I made previously. Understand that I am not being callous to plant life. I have often wished I had the art of telekinesis so I wouldn't harm the grasses I walk on, which, even still, I avoid but not to the point of being obsessive.

Plants offer themselves as food in many instances, such as fruit. You can harvest broccoli many times and the plant keeps producing. We may conjecture that it hurts the broccoli plant to cut off the flower (the broccoli head), but it cannot be the same as cutting off an animal leg.

What I am saying is I look to do the least harm. And observation tells me eating plants does less harm than eating animals. Many don't agree with me here on this idea. That's fine.

[Coordinate_Apotheosis]

Oh I'm not confronting or challenging those points, I agree with them more than a percentile can do justice.  Your logic makes sound sense to me considering you can remove a tree limb and reattach it to another.  You can't do that with an animal.  I just wanted to point out that plants do feel pain in some ways, but I think this is akin to the pain humans feel when exercising, is it a harsh and severe pain, or is it just 'doing the round of being delicious nutritious and healthy' (...like a...physically...fit person??? -cough-)

I also think preparing foods 'kills' them in a sense that raw broccoli isn't as energetically potent as cooked broccoli, so the process of preparing the vegetables and fruits I think can be more painful to them than the actual consumption of them.  Overall I just want my food to know I consume it as a necessity, and the sweet coincidence of their deliciousness does not mean I am okay with my inflicting suffering upon them.  It's sadly an inevitable consequence of needing to consume nutrients to survive to continue my lessons here on Earth.  And...Yet...The hallowed experience of connecting to my food in thought, and thanking it, and feeling sorrow for it's pain, sort of helps envelop me in my want to be spiritual.  I'll often finish a meal feeling like I'm in a dream when I properly thank my meal.

It's nice to know I'm not the only one who avoids walking on grass because I don't want to hurt it.  I honestly thought I was the only one who did that.  I have to stop thinking that lol

[Cyanatta]

More about how insanely awesome that "fungal network" actually is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XI5frPV58tY

[Nía]

What Plants Talk About (Documentary)

-`ღ´-

[Nía]

Researchers Have Found That Plants Know They Are Being Eaten

[Nía]

Indigenous stories lead scientist to discover plants can hear

[Nía]

Plant Neurobiology Shows How Trees are Just Like Humans

---

[xise]

Ah well, guess you'll just have to choose whatcha wanna hurt more plants or animal

This line of reasoning often leads to a common misconception: assuming or believing plants and animals suffer equally, so therefore it doesn't matter which you eat (though there is a very strong argument that the typical annual or biennial food crops do not feel suffering as intensely as 2D land animals or do not possess the same level sentience - but putting that aside for movement.) Due to the nature of the food chain and energy loss, every organism needs to consume more the further it gets away from the sun or it's main source of energy (some creatures live of the heats in deep undersea vents). Due to this loss, 2D animals that are eaten for meat calories consume many, many more plants calories than simply eating the plant calories straight as a human. 


Now this is a general rule, and there are exceptions: you could still argue that harvesting wild animal meat that died due to natural causes. This is not really feasible on any scale due to logistics of finding a recently dead animal and health and safety concerns, but it's possible. Harvesting grazing animals that thrive on land that cannot be farmed is a more real exception. However, given modern farming technology, this is a very small subset of land that is grazable and not farmable, much less than 10%, so meat production would plummet as grazing animals naturally is also much, much lower density than factory farms in terms of land usage, on the order of 5x or more. So you'd basically have maybe around 2% of the meat production as you currently have. But this all theoretical, and you cannot reasonably buy meat from non-factory farmed sources that graze on unfarmable land in today's world. Typically unfarmable but grazable land is borderline for grazing anyway, so it's not really profitable.


I think the bigger realization for applying compassion to all other-selves and entities of all densities, is that just like human slavery ended, and hopefully animal slavery will end, plant slavery too will hopefully eventually end. As we find products that replace using plants and trees in everyday products. Wood-free building materials exist nearly everywhere, because many current and ancient societies lived in places with few trees, however in forested areas wood building products are cheaper. As technology grows, we eventually will be able to go meat and plant-matter free in our dietary habits, but the technology to efficiently create nutritive substances from just the elements in limited in our world today.


There is an entire field focused on sustainable construction, and it does bother me more to chop down trees to build a house in a forest than it does to use non-wood building materials to build a brick, adobe, or stone house in the plains or other area. I definitely haven't significantly yet changed my behavior regarding all of this, but it's on the radar for sure.

[Nía]

Book review of Peter Wohlleben's 'The Hidden Life of Trees': The Secret Life of Trees: The Astonishing Science of What Trees Feel and How They Communicate

[Nía]

Study Reveals Plants Know When They’re Being Eaten

[xise]

Ah well, guess you'll just have to choose whatcha wanna hurt more plants or animal

This line of reasoning often leads to a common misconception: assuming or believing plants and animals suffer equally, so therefore it doesn't matter which you eat (though there is a very strong argument that the typical annual or biennial food crops do not feel suffering as intensely as 2D land animals or do not possess the same level sentience - but putting that aside for movement.) Due to the nature of the food chain and energy loss, every organism needs to consume more the further it gets away from the sun or it's main source of energy (some creatures live of the heats in deep undersea vents). Due to this loss, 2D animals that are eaten for meat calories consume many, many more plants calories than simply eating the plant calories straight as a human. 


Now this is a general rule, and there are exceptions: you could still argue that harvesting wild animal meat that died due to natural causes. This is not really feasible on any scale due to logistics of finding a recently dead animal and health and safety concerns, but it's possible. Harvesting grazing animals that thrive on land that cannot be farmed is a more real exception. However, given modern farming technology, this is a very small subset of land that is grazable and not farmable, much less than 10%, so meat production would plummet as grazing animals naturally is also much, much lower density than factory farms in terms of land usage, on the order of 5x or more. So you'd basically have maybe around 2% of the meat production as you currently have. But this all theoretical, and you cannot reasonably buy meat from non-factory farmed sources that graze on unfarmable land in today's world. Typically unfarmable but grazable land is borderline for grazing anyway, so it's not really profitable.


I think the bigger realization for applying compassion to all other-selves and entities of all densities, is that just like human slavery ended, and hopefully animal slavery will end, plant slavery too will hopefully eventually end. As we find products that replace using plants and trees in everyday products. Wood-free building materials exist nearly everywhere, because many current and ancient societies lived in places with few trees, however in forested areas wood building products are cheaper. As technology grows, we eventually will be able to go meat and plant-matter free in our dietary habits, but the technology to efficiently create nutritive substances from just the elements in limited in our world today.


There is an entire field focused on sustainable construction, and it does bother me more to chop down trees to build a house in a forest than it does to use non-wood building materials to build a brick, adobe, or stone house in the plains or other area. I definitely haven't significantly yet changed my behavior regarding all of this, but it's on the radar for sure.

And to be fair, one aspect that I forgot to mention is seafood. If you're only thinking along terms of sustainability in terms of the Earth, it would basically wipe off land-based meat production except for a very small subset of non-farmable land used for grazing animals. However, in terms of non-farmed seafood (all fish/seafood farms are still better converted to seaweed production in terms of resources), the oceans do have a vast amount of natural fish that can be harvested within certain limits without destroying the ecosystem, and these ocean areas cannot easily -with our technology -be turned into seaweed farms. 

So from a sustainability perspective, seafood is still very much on the menu. Assuming of course that mercury, radiation, and other pollution doesn't take ocean-based food off the menu (which I suspect it probably will in the next century - hell fish in the river are full of pharma drugs from human wastewater, and double digit percentages of fish in freshwater areas in many NA lakes are mutated due to pollution - plenty of articles on google on this).

Of course, the sustainability argument isn't the end all or be all of the dietary concerns, else you'd have absurd results such as concluding that we should be eating the flesh of loved ones who pass away - humans and pets included - which of course doesn't sit well for most of us.

[Dekalb_Blues]

~
Ha! I knew a sapient pearwood tree that I could trick time and time again with the old "hey kid, your shoelace is untied" gag. It just never seemed to learn.



Ah, now most folks just bore me
Always imposing
And I'd rather meet a tree
Somewhere out in some cornfield...

(This song was written by George Harrison and originally recorded by Ringo Starr -- but Don McLean was
actually given first dibs on it.)