Book: Conscious by Annaka Harris

I guess I will have to add this to the list, too.   

Maybe you will have to create the book club of the month!    My wife has been doing these for years and it seems like a good excuse to drink. 

Well if drinking is involved then I just might get these books!

Stumbled across this today, speaking of consciousness. Plants, their secret lives…

https://www.salon.com/2022/09/30/can-plants-think-the-burgeoning-field-of-plant-neurobiology-has-a-lot-to-say-on-the-matter/

“ There are numerous definitions but the most simple and relevant is this: Consciousness is a feature of living systems allowing them awareness of their external and internal conditions."

Kate Gowen wrote: Stumbled across this today, speaking of consciousness. Plants, their secret lives…

https://www.salon.com/2022/09/30/can-plants-think-the-burgeoning-field-of-plant-neurobiology-has-a-lot-to-say-on-the-matter/

Interesting topic!  "When a human mows a lawn, is that the equivalent of mass torture to the grass...?"  Just as an aside, I already struggle with all the mowing I do considering small creatures that live in the grass. It looks like the snakes, mice, grasshoppers and innumerable other insects mostly do a good job of scrambling out of the way, but no doubt not all escape.  

"blades of grass aren't supposed to all have the same length. Left un-sheared, an all-natural lawn contains grasses of wildly varying heights, more akin to an unruly, uncombed head of hair right after a long night's sleep. A lawn is not a single organism, but a large community of plants that have individual heights; being mowed is not the natural state for a blade of grass."

The thoughts I'm working from include: Keeping the grass cut around the house is said to reduce exposure to ticks and the number of mice trying to get into the house. Regular mowing before the grass gets tall means fewer creatures in harm's way and easier to see any that are there.

The feelings - empathetic disturbance, it's uncomfortable. For now I'll try to keep an open mind and not cut off access to the feelings while cutting the grass. 

Not having read any of the book, which no doubt deals with this question, but that sounds like it could be subject to cultural conditioning, our "intuitions" could be openly intuitive or might be conditioned assumptions. 

This kind of research feels like it pokes at cultural assumptions:
www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/07/2...telligence-research/

There is so much of that poking that by now it seems like it's calling for intellectuals to acknowledge the need for a truer paradigm.  (But I'm not an intellectual, so what do I know).  Sorry, I haven't read the book!