Living, Experience, Action, Choice, Emotion

Animals, Natural Law, Psychology, Consciousness & Thinking, Symbols & Reality

6-kingdoms-of-lifeWe, humans, create words to reflect reality. The naked eye for discerning reality can clearly see there is a fundamental difference between plant life and animal life, at the very least. Here are some discernible classes of living things we have come to understand with the help of technological instruments.

Can this reality of differences in life forms be seen in etymology that accurately reflects reality? Can this understanding of reality, that plants and animals are fundamentally different, be seen in the roots of our language used to describe reality?

Etymology on life, live, leave, leaf, experience, active/act, do, fact, passive, plant, interact, pain, organism, organic, work, bio, choice, taste, plant, plane, place, sprout, sense, sentient, feel, emotion.

 

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Life, Live, Leave, Leaf

Life
Old English life (dative lif) “existence, lifetime, way of life, condition of being a living thing, opposite of death,” Meaning “property which distinguishes living from non-living matter” is from 1560s. Sense of “vitality, energy” is from 1580s. Extended 1703 to “term of duration (of inanimate objects).”

Life, described as an aspect of physical matter, distinguished from others not like it, non-living, is from the 1560’s. Even later, the word was applied to any object that has a “term of duration”, as in the lifetime of a product that any industry makes. Anything that comes into being in a period of time, such as animals, plants, or man-made products, can be said to have life, because it was not existing previously, and now exists, and presumably will no longer exist in its complete form after the forces of time and erosion wear it down. Simply existing as an object in reality qualifies as “life” in this meaning. But that is not what most of us consider as ‘life’. ‘Life’ does not seem to be a very useful word etymologically if we consider anything in existence as having life. The other meanings apply more to living as a being in reality that interacts (which are animals), as a “way of life”, and the “condition of being a living thing” which is contrary to “death”.

 Live
“to be, to live, have life; to experience,” from PIE root *leip– “to remain, continue” (source also of Greek liparein “to persist, persevere;” see leave) Meaning “to make a residence, dwell” is from c.1200.

The original source of ‘live’ means to remain, continue, which biological forms are less remaining and less continuing than nonbiological forms that exist in time for longer periods. Rocks, for instance, last longer than biological things. So it does not appear that it means that. The later meanings have more pertinence and clarity of expression, such as to experience. The PIE root leip is related to leave. Also the later convention of making a residence, is related to those with mobility and having a place of residence to inhabit, as it serves as a protection and guards us. Also, what resides is what is to be left, like a residue, and the residence is left behind while the mobile life can live outside of the residence. Plants and animals leave a biological residue after they stop sustaining the biological vehicle.

Leave
Old English læfan “to let remain; remain; have left; bequeath,” causative of *liban “remain,” from root *laf- “remnant, what remains,” from PIE *leip– “to stick, adhere;” also “fat.” Seemingly contradictory meaning of “depart” (early 13c.) comes from notion of “to leave behind” (as in to leave the earth “to die;” to leave the field “retreat”).

Leaf
Old English leaf “leaf of a plant; page of a book,” perhaps from PIE *leup- “to peel off, break off”

Leave has the same root as live, which is PEI leip, but instead of remain or continue, it is stick and adhere. Leave is additionally described with to have left, as in what is left over (Old Saxon farlebid) or left behind. This can be related to trace, as in leaving a trace behind. Only causal agents move on their own and leave traces from moving.  Something like grease or oil can be sticky and adhere as it is moved by a causal agent. Things can leave tracks to be traced, but not everything can do that on its own. A mover can move itself, be moved by others, move others, or move other things. Things left behind, that leave tracks, represent a causal agent mover, they also stick and adhere to that source force in their current state of existence as a remnant track left behind. The causal force started something and created an effect, a track to be traced. This force remains and continues after the effect upon reality that creates a track of its existence, something left behind that is attached, adhered and sticking to the source by way of causal relations.

That is how the word ‘live’, can relate to the etymological source, even though it does not make sense at first. A decoding of the symbolism (words) and their references to reality must be synthesized to provide the connectivity between the word and the etymological root source. To live, is to be a causal agent, that can leave something behind, like tracks. In the greater sense, everything biological also leaves a track when it ceases to have life, becomes dead and moves on but leaves the matter behind that decays and disappears, much as tracks disappear. In this view, it can be taken as all biological life. To live, is not life, which will be looked at. To live, is more like alive. When you “feel alive”, you are moving and energetic, either in physical body or the internal realms of consciousness. It is not passive to “feel alive”. When someone is “feeling alive”, they often go for a run, or express extravagant behavior, because they are so full of energy that result in mobility and action.

To bring back plants; from leave we can think of leaves, and leaf. Leaf is from PIE leup, similar to leip, the ‘u’ and ‘i’ change. It is originally to peel or break off. To think of leave again, something that remains, that is left behind, can be something that is broken off or peeled off. That is how I see leup (leaf) relating to leip (leave). A book page is peeled away from the whole, similarly a leaf is a thin peel representative of the whole. A leaf and leaves on a tree are called such because they fall off, peel off, break off, that leaves a trace of the tree it came from, but they don’t make tracks of their own, because they do not move on their own.

Plants can leave traces with their released body parts, such as branches, leaves, or dropped fruits, nuts, or seeds. Plants cannot leave traces on there own, for they are not mobile. Plants require a part of themselves to become detached, “dead” and leave a trace of themselves behind, a remnant. Animals cannot do this. We don’t break off remnants of ourselves and leave them behind as part of our yearly growth. The traces animals leave are from our mobility. When animals die, then they leave a trace behind from themselves, as do plants when they die as well, and then all biological life is recycled into the earth. That does not negate the difference in animal and plant life.

Experience, Act/Active (Axiom), Do, Fact, Passive

Experience
“a trial, proof, experiment; knowledge gained by repeated trials,”
“experienced, enterprising, active, industrious,” present participle of experiri “to try, test,” from e,- “out of” (see e,-) + peritus “experienced, tested,” from PIE root *per- (3) “to lead, pass over” (see peril)

Live, to live, to be, living (and later I will relate this to alive), is to have an experience, as well as the ability to leave behind tracks.

An experience is an active undertaking.

I know that I, as a human animal, part of animal kind, am capable of trying things, judging, experiencing, and I can see this same type of experience in other nonhuman animals. Plants do not share the same type of reality and living as animals.

Active
Act
from agere “to do, set in motion, drive, urge, chase, stir up,” from PIE root *ag– “to drive, draw out or forth, move” (cognates: Greek agein “to lead, guide, drive, carry off,” agon “assembly, contest in the games,” agogos “leader;” Sanskrit ajati “drives,” ajirah “moving, active;” Old Norse aka “to drive;” Middle Irish ag “battle”).

Act, is related to axioms:

“‘Ag-‘ relates to ‘ga-‘ (from kind) in meaning as well as being the inverse in letters. ‘Ga-‘ indicates an association, togetherness, completeness or wholeness. Ga relates to ge- and genus, generation, care, etc. All of this generation, care, begetting, happening, is the action, the effect that culminates from internal causal forces of consciousness – thought and emotion. Action has the same source as axiom, ag-. To get to ga-, the resulting complete wholeness of something manifesting, you need ag-, an active driving force, that drives, draws and moves us. These are from within consciousness. These are images that reflect reality directly, or indirectly through a conception. We then generate with these internal forces the external results we produce as a whole complete manifestation from our consciousness — thoughts, emotions and actions — out into the world. At least that is how proper manifestation occurs in unity consciousness.” – Axioms, Consciousness, Existence and Identity

Do
Old English don “make, act, perform, cause; to put, to place,” from PIE root *dhe– “to put, place, do, make” (see factitious).
Factitious
“made by or resulting from art, artificial,” from factus “elaborate, artistic,” past participle adjective from facere “do” (source of French faire, Spanish hacer)
Facere
the Latin word facere (to make; act, take action, be active; compose, write; classify; do, make; create; make, build, construct; produce; produce by growth; bring forth) from PIE root *dhe–
Fact
1530s, “action, anything done,” especially “evil deed,” from Latin factum “an event, occurrence, deed, achievement,” in Medieval Latin also “state, condition, circumstance,” literally “thing done” past participle of facere “to do”. Main modern sense of “thing known to be true” is from 1630s, from notion of “something that has actually occurred.”

Passive
Old French passif “suffering, undergoing hardship” (14c.), Latin passivus “capable of feeling or suffering,” (see passion). Meaning “not active” is first recorded late 15c.;

Look at the word ‘act‘ and its cognates with the related PIE root *ag- (“to do, set in motion, drive, urge, chase, stir up,” cognates of “leader”), and see if that applies to plants in general, or to animals in general? Doing things… setting things in motion… chasing.. stirring up… leading… It seems fairly clear to me that active living beings are animals, not plants. Plants are not active in this sense, and are “passive” living beings in the sense of being non-active, not in the sense of passions and feelings like other animals physiologically express through their consciousness. Plants are passive in that they do receive and suffer attacks, with some having programmed sense responses to release defensive chemicals, etc. They cannot go anywhere, they cannot run away, they are not active, they are not mobile, the are not interactive. Is a rock passive? Yes. It will endure, suffer and bear weight or whatever is done to it. A rock is more passive and less active than a plant, since a plant grows and moves in that limited way to have the most limited activity while bearing whatever is done to it as a passive thing, like a rock.

Death, Kill, Murder, Plants

Death is not kill, and is not murder. Murder is death. Kill is death.

Words matter. Order matters. Different actualities of existence (death, kill, murder) do not result in the same definition. This is identity, where differences create additional definition.

A plant can die, but it is not killed or murdered. Animals die, possibly as a result of being killed or murdered. This is all contained in the etymology.

See my other article on Killing and Murder for those specifics.

As for plants, they do not harm and therefore do no murder. Since they are not capable of harm, they are not capable of being being killed is response to harm done. There is no killing. There is no murder. It is only death of a biological life form. A planet can die. A star can die. Does the star have a will to create harm? Can it therefore create murder? Can it therefore kill in response to harm? No. Animals are capable of using their will to engage in action and harm others. But, they are amoral, in that they do not understand what morality is, and therefore they cannot murder, as murder is a moral word based on a violation of rights that we recognize as higher order consciousness moral beings.

Plants grow and die, grow and die, they don’t create new things (nests, etc.) and change things themselves like animals can do with their will. Plants die and create soil for the actual environment that exists for animals to exist in. Without plants, there are no animals. Plants are required for animal life on earth (I don’t know about the sea). They grow and die and create the initial environment for animals to live, and they continue to provide what is required for animals to live. No plants means no higher order life. I have spoken of this “plant purpose” before.

Doing and acting, is related to making, creating, and again we see the link as I mention previously in etymology on Axioms, Existence and Consciousness, on ‘ag’ and ‘ga/ge’ for generation (creation), etc. Animals are Causal Agents that can alter the environment and create new things. They do not create the environment, as plants do, but alter and use it to their advantage, as plants are purposely there to provide for animals to live. Birds can build nests for example, which is something created from the environment.

Rocks are facts in that they exist, but they don’t create, they are facts because they were created. Facts are not “to do”, they are what have been done by other forces that made them be what they are. A causal agent manifests a change in outside of itself through its ability to act, move and interact with other objects in the environment. Universal forces created elements and eventually made different rocks on this planet. We, causal agent forces, can take a rock, sand, etc., and make stones for a house. Animals are all causal agents of some degree. Facts are what is. In French ‘do’ is ‘faire’, and ‘a fact’ is ‘un fait’. The doer and what was or is done is not the same. The animal causal agent doers can have things done to them, while the intangible forces of the universe and creation cannot have things done to them, they can only do what they do. Animal causal agents are active and passive (acted upon), while forces are active (not acted upon).

Doers are making, acting, putting, placing. This requires mobility to put something or place something, and you need to have the ability to put or place.

Plant
perhaps from *plantare “to drive in with the feet, push into the ground with the feet,” from planta “sole of the foot,” from nasalized form of PIE *plat- “to spread, flat” (see place (n.)).

A plant is something that is placed, it doesn’t do the placing, it doesn’t do.

Interact
“to act on each other,” inter (“among, between, betwixt, in the midst of,” from PIE *enter “between, among”) + act

Plants are active only in the most minute of degree. They are reactive (stimulus-response) otherwise, and passive (acted upon, not acting upon) until reactive through stimulus from the environment. All biological life-forms have this capacity. Interactivity belongs to animals alone, whereby they can act upon each other, reciprocally in real-time, in the now. An animal has free will to go for a walk at night, while a flower can only bloom in the day, not from free will, but from stimulus-response programming.

Pain

Plants grow, they are alive, but not in the same way as animals. Plants are life to sustain animal life. All life vs. life that actually lives.

Pain
late 13c., “punishment,” especially for a crime; also “condition one feels when hurt, opposite of pleasure,” from Greek poine “retribution, penalty, quit-money for spilled blood,” from PIE *kwei- “to pay, atone, compensate” (see penal). The earliest sense in English survives in phrase on pain of death.

Pain, to feel pain, originally it did not only mean to feel hurt and harm in sensations and expressing it through consciousness manifestations and expressions, of which can be seen in many animals, such as ourselves. A pain was brought upon another, such as an animal, not a plant. Pain was originally also punishment, and sourced from retribution, penalty, and earlier pay, atone, compensate.  Usually, something precedes a need for payment, like a purchase or debt. Where does this debt come from? Consequences to actions have debts owed, sometimes they are positive as in rewards, and sometimes they are negative as in punishment. Rewards are positive consequences to harmony with Truth and Morality. Repayment of a wrongdoing, righting a wrong, the right to redress a wrong, is getting someone to pay, atone and compensate for their actions in reciprocity. Plants cannot do this, while animals can.

We can see in reality that only animals express fear and pain through consciousness manifestations like running, shaking, defecating themselves, crying, elevated heart-rate, etc. Plants don’t do this. Plants also don’t pay, atone or compensate because they are not causal agents capable of creating an effect that caused harm. Other nonhuman animals are capable of incurring payment of debts from other animals, or their own kind, in social settings. To incur a punishment is a result of consequences to actions. An action harms another and the consequences are a punishment. This is Natural Moral Law. Plants are not part of morality, they have no actions, they are not active, they do not interact.

Free Will Choice

Is free will choice detectable in others through our senses? Yes. Can we see it in animals? Yes. Can we see it in plants? No.

A certain plant, and another plant, will always make the same “choice”, because it is responding to the variables in the environment, such as light, humidity, water, and objects in close proximity. All biological body-vehicles have programmed aspects of life, but not all demonstrate free will choice, some, like plants, operate more as a base biological functioning body, with the same output responses or “behavior” displayed for specific stimulus input. Animals can differ in choice, because they have different senses and have a perspective from vision. Animals respond in the now, to demonstrate their free will. Plants have greater sensing capabilities, according to the technology that shows us this. Animals have less sensory capabilities, but are mobile, interactive, and have sensory stimulation in higher degrees of activity. Plants cannot express choice, while animals do (humans are an animal that express choice, for example). Plants are more basic, in basic programming, stimulus-response along with a program guidance operating system and possible “collective hive-mind” to survive as a biological life form. Plants can sense the environment and go towards water, they use chemicals to transfer information about the environment as sensory data.

A plant will never be purely identical to another, as nothing can be exactly like something else, they each have different positions in space/time and different environmental variables affecting them. But the program produces the same lifeform, although unique in some ways. A bacteria culture can grow differently, as a culture, in one dish as compared to another even though they were identical cells, and so do plants grow differently despite being the same. Basic body-vehicle growth and propagation is guided by programming for survival, more than it can be said to be guided by free will. Free will is seen through the display of mobility in the now. A planet is mobile around the sun, but along a certain path, not free mobility.

Probability choice, of a variety of available options that lead to greater chances of survival and success, is an ability that even fruit flies have. Plants are predictable in stimulus/response. Lower order animals make choices based more in survival (stimulus-response) than in the freedom of other choices, while higher order animals like humans are capable of understanding (processing) more aspects of reality, survival and evolution, like morality and responsibility to our actions, to make different choices than simply based on survival.

Lower order animals have basic free will, or more specifically organic free will (because they have organs, and plants don’t), not the higher order free will capable of philosophy, wisdom, right-action, morality.

Does a cell have free will or does it follow programming? What about your muscles? The lungs? The individual components are not a free will consciousness like humans or other nonhuman animals are.

Organ, Work, Bio

Organism
“organic structure, organization,” from organize + -ism
Organize
“construct, establish,” from Latin organum “instrument, organ”
Organ
from Greek organon “implement, tool for making or doing; musical instrument; organ of sense, organ of the body,” literally “that with which one works,”
from PIE *werg-ano-, from root *werg– “to do”
Work
Old English weorc, worc “something done, discreet act performed by someone, action (whether voluntary or required), proceeding, business; that which is made or manufactured, products of labor,” also “physical labor, toil; skilled trade, craft, or occupation; opportunity of expending labor in some useful or remunerative way;” also “military fortification,” from PIE *werg-o-, from root *werg– “to do“

Animals can toil in physical labor, to do things, actions, performed by a someone, because animals are someones. Organs, are only in animals, and they represent work and action. Plants do not have organs. Plants are not organic, despite the clever conventional imposition of the altered meaning we now use. Do you see how we are being deceived by words? Plants sense, but they don’t feel as we use the word to mean, as other animals feel like humans do feel, but plants don’t. Manipulate words, create confusion, and you manipulate the sense (6th sense of consciousness) of understanding reality.

Organs move, they respond to stimulus, but they don’t have free will. If plants have a form of “free will”, plants don’t have free will like animals do. If plants “feel”, plants don’t feel like animals do. I can’t use my senses to see that plants have free will, or that they feel. Can you? I can see this in others in the animal genus, though. Use your senses and understand that plants are not animals. Invalid attempts to equivocate them outside of reality is a fallacy of false equivocation based in misrepresentation of perceptions. There are accurate equivalences, such as plants and animals are both biological life forms. A plant grows according to programming, just as any biological life form grows according to programming, DNA it is assumed. The consciousness, capable of memory, knowledge, recall, trials, etc. is for animals, and progresses in higher orders as consciousness is able to express itself in higher order physiological life forms.

Organs do work inside animals. Animals can do work. Mankind has enslaved many of the bigger animals for physical labor: oxen, horses, etc. Plants are not used for physical labor, they are not interactive mobile sensory manifestors, they are passive, making chemicals and sensing in various ways as a sensory input-stimulus and producing a response according to programming of survival, slowly growing in their environment in order to “move” in space, technically. The plant moves through space by occupying more of it as it grows, that is all. Plants don’t do work. Animals can. Animals have the will to move about and exercise force against other objects at their will. Plants will exercise force against objects in their path of growth according to their programming, or they will grow around it.

Organic
1510s, “serving as an organ or instrument,” from organon “instrument”. Sense of “from organized living beings” is first recorded 1778 (earlier this sense was in organical, mid-15c.).
Bio
word-forming element, from Greek bio-, comb. form of bios “one’s life, course or way of living, lifetime” (as opposed to zoe “animal life, organic life”), from PIE root *gweie- (1) “to live”

Organic is not all biological life. Biological is not the same as organical (the term for ‘organic’ before it became simply organic). In the etymology for organism and organ from above we can see how it relates to work, which is for animals. This is corroborated in the etymology for ‘bio’ which states that ‘bio’ is ‘life’ which is not the same as ‘zoe’, “animal life, organic life”, which is the distinction I now understand. Biologic is not necessarily organic.

Bio relates to simply being alive, which is all biological life. Animals have more than this, and have lives of their own. [factitious etymology from above] Animals do, read above.

Plants can do a form of work, like push things, destroy concrete, etc. but this is done over a long period of imperceptible movements, not interactive in present time action, not that of the interactivity all animals live in.

Plants are not animals. We are animals. It is very simple. There are no justifications or excuses to wiggle your way out of the higher order consciousness reasoning of understanding objective morality, once you let go of the attachment to yourself. Only when you can face the mirror honestly, can you realize the objective morality of this issue. Until then, you will deny this behavior as being amoral and fine for living.

Plants don’t move and interact like animals, but they do grow quicker. Animals grow much more slowly than plants do. That is their compensation for non-movement, for immobility, they can grow to occupy space more quickly. Animals actually can move. Plants can grow more in order to move in some way to maximize survival potential. It is programming for success and survival. I can see this with my observations of reality. Animals are not plants. Animals have their own lives, personalities, who see, taste, etc.

Choice and Taste

 Choice
“action of selecting“, from verb choisir “to choose, distinguish, discern; recognize, perceive, see,” Old English ceosan “to choose, taste, try;” Replaced Old English cyre “choice, free will,”
Choose
Old English ceosan “choose, seek out, select; decide, test, taste, try; accept, approve”
from Proto-Germanic *keus-
from PIE root *geus- “to taste, relish”

On choice again, i.e. free will. ‘Try‘ comes up again, earlier from experience which is related to active living, as opposed to simply being a life in passive stationary living.

We see people sometimes ask animals to choose between one person and the other, a food or anther. A child that lacks awareness of reality to that degree may also be bewildered by the incomprehensible request to choose one thing over another, to judge, discern, possibly recognize and distinguish memories and recall the previous taste that was tried. There is a recognition of seeing many things to choose from, and the desire to seek out one among many, that may change in the future, as our tastes may change, and not necessarily only tastes of the tongue, but mental and emotional tastes, etc.

People don’t ask plants who they like more, who they want to stay with, if they want a treat, etc. A plant can be said to choose certain minerals, but so too can a program be said to choose certain data or certain whatever it is programmed to choose for its benefit and growth. Organic bodies also do this to select what is input into their bodies and self-propagate without the conscious awareness of the being required to operate its functions. A biological plant life exhibits this basic functionality.

Taste
c.1300, “to touch, to handle,” from Old French taster “to taste, sample by mouth; enjoy” (13c.), a frequentative form of Latin taxare “evaluate, handle” (see tax (v.)).

A tasting is done by sampling of the mouth, in the normal sense of the word. It is related to tax, because tax was to handle or evaluate, which is what taste does, to touch or handle something in the mouth and evaluate it, hopefully for our enjoyment. We can figuratively taste things as well, such as “give me a taste of your idea”, etc.

Plant, Place, Plane

Animals can help us find things, guide us to other people, etc. Plants don’t do this. Wake up people. You can’t justify animal murder with eating plants. You cannot explain away wantonly immoral acts by referencing another act you want to claim is just as immoral and therefore validates the first objectively immoral action. Animals are not plants. Wake up. Ignorance of the behavior as being immoral does not justify the continuation of the behavior, either.

Animals have personalities, that differ. You have to actually get to know them to discover this, much like people. Plants, aren’t something you get to know, they don’t interact with you as a personality, as a person, because they are not an animal, they are a plant.

Plant
Old English plante “young tree or shrub, herb newly planted,” from Latin planta “sprout, shoot, cutting” (source of Spanish planta, French plante), perhaps from *plantare “to drive in with the feet, push into the ground with the feet,” from planta “sole of the foot,” from nasalized form of PIE *plat- “to spread, flat” (see place (n.)).
Place
“place, spot,” fem. of platys “broad”
Plaice
from Greek platys “broad, flat,” from PIE *plat- “to spread”
extended variant form of root *pele- (2) “flat; to spread” (see plane (n.1)).
Plane
“flat surface,” c.1600, from Latin planum “flat surface, plane, level, plain,”
from Latin planum “flat surface, plane, level, plain,” noun use of neuter of adjective planus “flat, level, even, plain, clear,” from PIE *pla-no-
suffixed form of root *pele- (2) “to spread out; broad, flat”
Spread
c.1200, “to stretch out, to lay out; diffuse, disseminate” (transitive), also “to advance over a wide area” extended form of PIE root *sper- (4) “to strew” (see sprout (v.))
Sprout
from PIE *spreud-, extended form of root *sper- (4) “to strew”
sprout (n.) “shoot of a plant, sprout; a twig,”

Feet are spread flat, planted in the ground, the same as plants firmly in the ground. Flat footed stances allows for sturdy, solid footing on the ground, to attempt to be as immovable as possible, like a plant does not move, is not mobile. This is how plants live in default. We can imitate their immobility by firmly planting our feet into the ground. Plants can imitate our mobility to a limited degree, by growing in extension towards other areas of space, but they do not move like animals. We don’t need to grow to occupy space, we occupy space by moving into it with our Free Will. Other nonhuman animals do the same. Mobility is gifted to animal life, not plant life that is fixed and planted into the ground.

Sensing, Feeling and Emotion

Sense
from sentire “perceive, feel, know,” probably a figurative use of a literally meaning “to find one’s way,” or “to go mentally,” from PIE root *sent- “to go”
Application to any one of the external or outward senses (touch, sight, hearing, etc.) in English first recorded 1520s. A certain negro tribe has a special word for “see;” but only one general word for “hear,” “touch,” “smell,” and “taste.” It matters little through which sense I realize that in the dark I have blundered into a pig-sty. In French “sentir” means to smell, to touch, and to feel, all together. [Erich M. von Hornbostel, “Die Einheit der Sinne” (“The Unity of the Senses”), 1927]

Sentient
1630s, “capable of feeling,” from Latin sentientem (nominative sentiens) “feeling,” present participle of sentire “to feel” (see sense (n.)). Meaning “conscious” (of something) is from 1815.

Sense is having mainly to do with the impact from reality, in sight of perception, in feeling or in understanding, mental vision, how we find the meaning in things that exist.

To sense is to find your way, to perceive, feel, and then know, hence to go mentally, and etymologically rooted as simply ‘to go’, PIE ‘sent’, which is the same root for send/sent, and sentient.

In terms of mere growth, that all biological life have, things do ‘go’ (PIE sent-). But sense, is rooted in ‘sent-‘ which is ‘to go’, with additional meaning of going mentally to find one’s way, and then additionally figurative meaning of perception, feeling and knowing, and therefore conscious and consciousness relating to sentient. There is a basic level 1 aspect of biological sensory apparatus for survival, and there is more complex level 2 mental sensing through consciousness functionality in varying degrees as per each respective organic body.

Feel
Old English felan “to touch or have a sensory experience of; perceive, sense (something),” in late Old English “have a mental perception,” from Proto-Germanic *foljan, from PIE root *pal– “to touch, feel, shake, strike softly“.
The meaning in Old English was “to perceive through senses which are not referred to any special organ.” Sense of “be conscious of a tactile sensation, sense pain, pleasure, illness, etc.; have an emotional experience or reaction,” developed by c.1200, also “have an opinion or conviction;” that of “to react with sympathy or compassion” is from mid-14c. Meaning “to try by touch” is from early 14c. From late 14c. as “know (something) beforehand, to have foreknowledge of.” To feel like “want to” attested from 1829.

‘Feel’ describes sensory experience through perception, later as mental perception. Feel is rooted in PIE pal which is to touch, feel, shake, strike softly. Feel seems to develop in English from the mental aspect of perceiving reality through any sensory capacity, as whole body sensing without any reference to a particular sensory organ, as a whole sensory understanding through the mental faculties connecting all perceptions; then to touch, pleasure and pain. The original root word though is touch, feel, shake, strike softly. This can be done with physical touch, or emotional touch, or mental touch, as to “feel our way through an idea”, at least in our colloquial phrases.

Sense and feel (sourced from PIE pal) eventually developed from the root ‘pal’, with touch and related words like strike, shake, and ended up into the Old English as being related to a whole body sensory perception in the mind about reality, as being related with consciousness, with sentient, and mental perception. Then it went back to the ‘pal’ root of touch, shake, strike, as in physical or physiological sensations in the body vehicle that can express this.

I can touch, shake and strike a rock, does that mean it ‘feels‘? I can touch, shake and strike a plant, does that mean it ‘feels‘? Look at reality, and see how this word applies. It is not simply sensory chemical transfer of “feeling” something from your programmed biological sensory vehicle. The proper, deeper, meaning to ‘feel’ is about the whole body affect in physiology, in feeling, through the mental processing of reality whereby we can be affected by reality, without direct physical touch, whereby we can be touched, shaken, stroked, in the mental and emotional realms of consciousness. Animals of higher order consciousness demonstrate this capacity, especially human animals. Clearly, we do not say a rock “feels” simply because we can shake it, stroke it, touch it, etc.

Additionally, feel, touch, strike, stroke, can be viewed also in terms of who has the capacity to do this. A rock cannot touch you, it cannot stroke you, it cannot strike you. Plants cannot touch, strike or stroke. Only animals, with free will mobility, as a causal agent, can touch you, can strike you, and can stroke you, and can induct into you the capacity to feel by their direct touch upon you that you did not initiate. Plants do not initiate a touch, strike, or stroke, and neither do rocks. Only animals are capable of initiating these actions, because animals are capable of actions, while plants and rocks are not.

Emotion = Thought + Meaning (Expressed as Feeling). Feelings result from conscious awareness of reality, whereby the meanings we have imparted in us, and the thoughts we have about reality and those meanings, even subconsciously, can produce emotions that are expressed as feelings in physiology.

Stimulus from reality is judged, valued and given meaning compared to previous relative worldviews (preconceptions, prejudices, etc.) that are held or attached to. These thoughts and evaluations in consciousness about something produce emotional states in consciousness, which then turn into physiological response stimulus expressed as feelings.

There are also the feelings that come from specific stimulus in the environment, such as being pricked with a pin. Feelings like this are elctro-chemical signals generated from automated processes in the brain, in a stimulus-response relationship. Emotional comprehension can come from our understanding and processing of feelings that result from these external stimulus inputs, which requires thought for it to be recognized as a particular emotion. A stimulus of danger appears, we feel it as discomfort as what we call pain, then this feeling moves us, in an automated stimulus-response for survival. This type of feeling is not the more complex emotional type that recognizes distinct variations in inner-emotional states, brought about through meaning and thought about the reality in ourselves and externally. We can arouse emotional states, and feelings that are produces thereof, through recognizing meaning in reality. This requires thought. For when there is no direct pin prick, or pain stimulus, or pleasure touch stimulus, we still experience pleasure and pain, because it is dependent on the mind and consciousness. More complex animals, such as humans, have this capacity to express emotional expressions — derived from thought and meaning about their lives and reality — as feelings in their physiological manifestations, such as tears of pain or sadness, joyful vocalizations or movements, fearful shaking, etc.

Further, to recognize feelings in greater conscious awareness, to think about them, to categorize them, to understand them more deeply, requires higher order thought functionality and abstraction. Some feelings are not recognized beyond basic physiological sensations, without the mental capacities to process them further in higher order consciousness. This deeper understanding of feeling as emotions requires mental perception. We can also feel reality, perceive reality and know reality without our organic senses, and use the 6th sense of consciousness of “mind”, in order to comprehend more aspects of reality. Despite this higher order type of emotional understanding humans can demonstrate, other higher order animal types are capable of physiologically expressing emotional states as a result of processing feelings and sensations from environmental stimulus/input. These emotional states that arise from sense and feeling stimulus are an influence in directing their actions accordingly. They feel and express joy, sadness, anger, pain, etc., and act in accordance with such internal states. They may not be able to categorize and comprehend emotions to the level we do, or even recognize different emotional states with symbols of reference, but they do express them, as can be plainly seen through observation and interaction. We, and other animals, can learn to suppress, or refrain from expressing, certain emotional and physiological reactions to sensing and feeling stimulus or input (think of learned helplessness shocking of a dog). This suppression or numbing, can be temporary or a permanent reality where the normalization of a stimulus becomes the standard of living and is simply accepted as the way it is.

Emotion
1570s, “a (social) moving, stirring, agitation,” from Middle French émotion (16c.), from Old French emouvoir “stir up” (12c.), from Latin emovere “move out, remove, agitate,” from assimilated form of ex- “out” (see ex-) + movere “to move” (see move (v.)). Sense of “strong feeling” is first recorded 1650s; extended to any feeling by 1808.

Looking at the etymology, after I wrote the above, there is more support. Emotions only occur is animals, more obviously as greater complexity and higher order consciousness can manifest and express it physiologically and physically. By “social”, this is action and behavior in a social setting, as animals are capable of doing. Emotions move outward from the inside, and they also move us, stir us, and agitate us to do things. Other animals are also moved, stirred and agitated by stimulus that reaches mental capacities of comprehension and cause them to express emotions as feelings in the outward physiology, what was moving, agitating and stirring inside, moves out to be expressed in initial physiological reactions, and minor physical reactions, to a possibility of greater physical actions moving out in the social world, from the initial moving from within. Emotions move out, and cause changes in our physiological and physical expressions. The etymology shows that the sense of a ‘strong feeling’ and ‘any feeling’ were meanings added later.

“Hive-Mind” “Collective-Consciousness” (Possible Belief) Programmed Life

I have always wondered why people poke plants with electric-prods, right? What’s up with that? They won’t move and do what we want, unless we torture them. That way we enslave and “train” plants to engage in behavior we make them do. Right? That’s how plants function as biological life, isn’t it?

Or is that a mistaken description that only applies to animals? That only works to manipulate and enslave animals? Humans are animals. Plants are not like humans, and not like nonhuman animals, because all animals are not plants. Biological life is like other biological life, in that is it biological life. Tada! Abracadabra! Mystery solved! Plants are not animals, even though they are both biological. Minerals are not plants or animals, even though they are all made of matter.

Fire is a chemical reaction that can be said to grow, and have offspring. Minerals as well. But they are not alive. Distinctions matter. Minerals live in a different reality and ability to control their environment, than plants.

Plants live in another reality from animals. Humans live in the same interactive emotional reality as other animals, as well as another reality other animals don’t interact with. Each level has greater control to manipulate the environment, with humans having the most power for good or evil.

Many animals demonstrate they are dreaming. Plants don’t.

All the things we can see with our senses, and the words to describe parts of reality, conform to how all animals are not plants. Plants have their own world and other senses we can detect with technology. They live in the common physical level 1 reality, but it’s  more of a hive-mind/”collective-consciousness” directive or program, when it comes to the secondary reality and expression capacities of the plant life forms physiology. People can think plants are fighting for their survival and competing, but then plants communicate chemically about problems, and share local resources.

Imagine a collective of any kind, the appearance of “survival of the fittest” can be grasped from the exterior by seeing how some plants survive while others die in a localized overpopulated area, where only limited resources can be allocated to the individual units that cannot get the space and light required to survive even though connected. When the communication aspect is taken into consideration it is possible that the plants operate from a “collective communication” web through the chemical transfer, which is why is it likened to a brain’s web of neurons, if such a connectivity is built up in a forest network. Signals can be sent over a root web sensory “communication” network. But this is simple survival “communication” through chemicals, and other senses, and a response comes forth from those that receive the signal, automatically.

If a local resource is shared, they intake and use it, or not, according to the programmed biological body-vehicle needs at the time, just as human body-vehicles do, in a programmed automatic way. This is what is being examined: plant processes that can be compared and analogized to animal processes. In this way, the plants form one hive-mind “collective consciousness” analogy, but not a real consciousness or mind in the higher sense that human animals have, or lower sense other animals have. It is comparative, analogous, and not a direct correspondence to be blindly applied.

It is a biological interconnection that we anthropomorphize as a “consciousness collective”, because we project aspects of understanding ourselves onto reality in order to make sense of it in relation to us. We use ourselves as a frame of reference to make sense of others things that are not really like us. We use the same words to liken a similarity despite the meaning of the words not actually applying where we believe it does in our attempt to analogize and correspond different parts of reality together. Human consciousness uses analogies as a basic form of relating aspects of reality. We seek to see connections, similarities, and we seek to see differences. These drives can confuse an accurate assessment of reality.

Free Will, Consciousness, and Evil Capacities (related to Natural Moral Law)

Animals are not free? Don’t see reality yet?

Right… that’s why horses, dogs, and other animals need to have their free will broken, in order to condition them in slavery and obedience. A free being, such as all animals, are free, and most, at least higher order ones, need to be psychologically broken in order to enslave them, just as we do to each other in trauma based programming. This has been the forefront of psychiatry and government terror, to traumatize people into accepting another’s will and not their own. Even fleas have autonomy, but of a weaker kind, which correlates with my understanding of higher order physiology being capable of hosting higher order consciousness and thereby also higher order free will expressive capabilities.

Consider that an “all one source consciousness” or point (singularity) is possible as the origin for all, then all manifestations can also be likened to being aspects of consciousness as they are created from that pure consciousness. A rock can be viewed as having this aspect of material manifestation rooted in what is viewed as the “source consciousness”, but not it’s own individuated expressive capacity of consciousness. Therefore, a rock, and other likewise similar inert matter can be said to be closest to a “pure consciousness”, with a lack of individuation, and lack of free well, hence a “collective consciousness” capacity at most, if that is possible.

The more individuation, the more free will is possible to be expressed through matter, but this requires greater complexity than inert matter. Biologic life forms have free will in the sense of being individuated bodies that sustain themselves. Organisms, are higher order biologic life forms, that have organs, and they have physiological potential to express free will in higher degrees. Humans appear to be the most complex organism, with the most expressive capacities of consciousness and free will.

The more free will that is obtained with higher order consciousness, through higher order complexity in physiological body-vehicles, then there is also a corresponding reduction in the “pure consciousness” aspect if simplified as “collective consciousness”. With an increase in individuated consciousness, comes an increase in free will, which decreases the “purity” of the simply no-free-will “collective-consciousness”, which enables greater capacity to create, both the evil as well as good. Causal Agents are granted free will. Causal agents are capable of interaction with others and creating actions of harm, even if they are ignorant and unaware of what they do, acting in amoral ways. Many humans operate this way. Causal agents of higher order, such as humans, are capable of creating greater higher order degrees of good and evil as well. More free will increases capacity for harm/evil. This is the power of individuation, either consciously or ignorantly, we are gifted with great power to actualize and realize good or evil to greater extents than any other animal causal agent. We can become Natural Moral Law Causal Agents. That is becoming more of the True Self.

This aspect of free will, as demonstrated in reality, is part of understanding Natural Moral Law properly.

Plants do not breathe like animals breathe. Animals breathe oxygen, plants do not breathe oxygen, plants intake carbon dioxide that animals output after they intake oxygen. Animals breathe together, we all require oxygen. All animals are alive, mobile, interacting throughout space and time. Plants are more in immobility, growth-only space occupation, with a non-interactivity in our space-time perception and awareness. All plants simply demonstrate growth and some chemical or other reaction to stimulus. All animals feel to some degree, with higher order animals clearly expressing feelings and emotions such as care, affection or “love”. Animals demonstrate awareness. Plants are not animals. Animals are part of moral consideration as similar organic lifeforms, for those beings that are capable of understanding morality, as humans are. Animals matter in morality, as they can be affected by our actions. Animals matter morally.