Blasphemy?

[lavouivre]

I agree, it sounds blasphemous.
I live not far from a church myself, and every other week end, some volunteers come and change the message on the advertising board in front. One day, I felt completely insulted by the message. It was saying: " dusty bibles lead to dirty minds". Huh?? I must have a very dirty mind...
This one stayed for almost a month and I was seeing it every morning and every evening... great message to begin and end a day!

I read somewhere that in pagan Germany, if you hurt the bark of some trees (I think it was oaks), it was considered as murder, because they knew the tree could die form the injury by catching some disease. The punishment for that was to be attached to the area where the tree had been damaged by your own entrails as band aid (probably didn't work for the tree) - and die.

I am sure the tree suffered in its own way from the nail in its bark (the vagina around the cross is its scar). People should be more carefull of what they write, what they think, and how they act.
Aylyn is right, we should pay as much attention to one tree and to a million trees. I live in the suburbs, and because every single newly constructed house takes on the forest, I see a dozen of roadkills every single day, because animals lost their habitat. Racoons, deer, fawns, rabbits, hedgehogs.... the trees don't bleed on the road like them, and they don't talk, but they silently disappear, and it is sad.

I am not for pollarding. For me, it is another way we humans have to "make things better" our way, not nature's way. Trees lived without us, and without pollaring, for milleniums. Let them be.
They fall on our heads, well, sorry, but time to go... Like when a tsunami hits, or a tornado rages. I am sure there are more deaths by car accidents than by branches falling down anyway. And no, I don't mind if I finish blown up by a tornado or like a decal on the floor. I would prefer to go like that than to be shot by a spree killer.
Are we going to shoot all birds or cut their wings because they could drop their droppings on our heads or new suits? ok then, let's pollard birds too.

[wyeuro]

do an ovate rite of the tree around it, and ask it how it feels.
wyverne /|\

[lavouivre]

do an ovate rite of the tree around it, and ask it how it feels.
wyverne /|\

I support this
Also, watched a movie about Ninjas and there is a girl at one point who says: "the heart of the tree knows where it wants to grow" talking about the ties of bonsai trees, and cutting those ties. I thought it was a true and beautiful thing to say.

[Kima]

A tree is not a person, or even an animal.

A tree is a tree, alright, but I very much dislike these hierarchies. Also, is a person not an animal?

[lavouivre]

A tree is not a person, or even an animal.

A tree is a tree, alright, but I very much dislike these hierarchies. Also, is a person not an animal?

Good point, Kima! We are supposed to be thinking animals, but animals nonetheless.
Besides, we all are born on day, live and die, whoever we are.
There is a good book to read: Three Deaths by Tolstoy. It describes the death of a tree in the forest, the death of a peasant, and the death of a rich old woman. Very beautiful and poetic.

[Huathe]

I understand how you feel, Nico.

[Explorer]

A tree is not a person, or even an animal.

A tree is a tree, alright, but I very much dislike these hierarchies. Also, is a person not an animal?

Yes, I very much agree with you. (in fact, I was a bit surprised to read my own quote like that, and had to go back to find the context).
To me life is life, trees, animals, people are all manifestations of life. And people indeed just other animals. We share the same genes, the same biosphere, the same 'spark' of life.

But the context of that quote was something different.
I meant that trees don't feel pain, they don't have a nervous system, or a consciousness. It is okay to cut them and use their wood for building and for fire. That is also our connection to those lifeforms. We also kill animals to eat them. And I am not against that either, that is our connection to other life. Our dependency even. Our lives depend on eating dead things, plants or animals.

My point is that we should honour that dependency, respect those other life forms that we depend on so much. As fellow life. Grow and protect it with respect. Harvest and kill it with respect. Chop wood with respect, treat all life with respect. Especially when we kill it later.

And nailing a christian sign to a pruned tree isn't showing a lot of respect. Not to the tree as a fellow lifeform, and not to those who honour it that way. That was my point.

[Aylyn]

I meant that trees don't feel pain, they don't have a nervous system, or a consciousness. It is okay to cut them and use their wood for building and for fire.

If I have learned one thing about trees in my research, then that they are capable of much more than we give them ccredit for. They are just too slow-lived for us to notice, and we are too biased to accept that they are essebtially like us. Hence the quote above. Below is a quote from a scientific research article:

A fundamental property of all living organisms is the generation and conduction of electrochemical impulses throughout their different tissues and organs, resulting from abiotic and biotic changes in environmental conditions. In plants and animals, signal transmission can occur over long and short distances, and it can correspond to intra- and inter-cellular communication mechanisms that determine the physiological behaviour of the organism. Rapid plant and animal responses to environmental changes are associated with electrical excitability and signalling. The same molecules and pathways are used to drive physiological responses, which are characterized by movement (physical displacement) in animals and by continuous growth in plants. In the field of environmental plant electrophysiology, automatic and continuous measurements of electrical potential differences (ΔEP) between plant tissues can be effectively used to study information transport mechanisms and physiological responses that result from external stimuli on plants. A critical mass of data on electrical behaviour in higher plants has accumulated in the last 5 years, establishing plant neurobiology as the most recent discipline of plant science. In this work, electrical potential differences were monitored continuously using Ag/AgCl microelectrodes, which were inserted 15 mm deep into sapwood at various positions in the trunks of several fruit-bearing trees. Electrodes were referenced to an unpolarisable Ag/AgCl microelectrode, which was installed 5 cm deep in the soil. Systematic patterns of ΔEP during day–night cycles and at different conditions of soil water availability are discussed as alternative tools to assess early plant stress conditions. This research relates to the adaptive response of trees to soil water availability and light–darkness cycles.

Electric signalling in fruit trees in response to water applications and light–darkness conditions Original Research Article
Journal of Plant Physiology, Volume 166, Issue 3, 15 February 2009, Pages 290-300
Luis A. Gurovich, Paulo Hermosilla

We as humans simply don't know anything about them yet, we have just started to discover what plants are capable of. It often reminds me of the attitude 300 years ago: Black people have no souls, so it is okay to keep them as slaves. he says it so nicely: establishing plant neurobiology as the most recent discipline of plant science, a new area of research we have not even touched yet,

Trees and any other plant can feel when they die, and transmit this knowledge to their neighbours, and it stresss them out as it would stress a human seeing another human die. Whether they feel pain in our sense, I don't know, but I keep thinking they might feel something when damaged.

[Bartholomew]

[Explorer]

If I have learned one thing about trees in my research, then that they are capable of much more than we give them ccredit for. They are just too slow-lived for us to notice, and we are too biased to accept that they are essebtially like us. Hence the quote above. Below is a quote from a scientific research article:

Nice article, and I am not surpised, I would be surprised if it was any different.

We as humans simply don't know anything about them yet, we have just started to discover what plants are capable of. It often reminds me of the attitude 300 years ago: Black people have no souls, so it is okay to keep them as slaves. he says it so nicely: establishing plant neurobiology as the most recent discipline of plant science, a new area of research we have not even touched yet,

And there you turn the wrong corner.
You posted a scientific article and then say we know nothing? Then you contradict yourself.
What the article indicates is that plants use similar physiological and chemical means of transporting information as we do. So, we know something about them now. We also know that they do not have the complex organ that processes and interpretes sensory stimuli as pain in other lifeforms, this organ is called 'a brain'.

Don't let yourself be fooled by the sexy term 'plant neurobiology'. It is a nice word for this field of investigation, but it doesn't say that plants have neurons, synapses or a brain. Or intelligence and consciousness. Here at my work we have a field of investigation called 'exobiology' (yes, looking for aliens), but that doesn't mean UFO's are real either.

Plants cannot 'feel', that kind of interpretation requires a brain. They do not transmit 'knowledge' either, because information to be interpreted as 'knowledge' requires intelligence, and thus a brain. They transmit information, which is something else. Everything transmits information.

You mix up lots of words and concepts, and then project animal/human properties on lifeforms that have other properties. Which is a mistake (which is an understatement). And they were right 300 years ago, black people don't have souls, because souls don't exist. It is a concept made up by supersticious folk who couldn't deal with our mortality, just like afterlife and reincarnation.

Wow, I bet I converted you to a more realistic view of life now huh?

[Aylyn]

Not really, as I think it is you who is blindsided by an anthropomorphic POV. They cannot feel pain as they have no brains? Well, I agree with you that they do not have a central neurosensory organ such as most animals have, but then we have a second brain in our guts which is entirely decentralised, and yet has more neurons than our brain. When we call it a gut feeling, that is what we refer to, and as most people know, psychosomatic disorders often present as intestinal problems. So there is a way of thinking/ feeling without having the central brain, and anyone who ever had psychosomatic stomach cramps knows they hurt. All animals can feel pain, it does not need a highly evolved neocortex, so what is there to say that a plant can't?

And I cited this one article to state that we are just staring to discover what plants are capable of. We know so little, if you compare it to medicine, we are at the state of science 300 years ago. To state categorically that plants cannot feel is just as incorrect as saying they feel pain as we do: We simply do not know yet, all we know is they feel something, and that is scientifically provable. Whether that presents as pain or pleasure, we do not know, but we know that plants feel when they are damaged, sense the kind of damage they are exposed to, and are capable of warning other plants. Therefore, I prefer to err on the side of caution. And you cite exobiology: That is not looking for aliens, it is looking for life forms of any kind, and that can be microbes as well as little green men or ET. So the fact that they have not seen a UFO yet does not mean there is no life out there, and as far as I can remember, they have actually found trcaes microbes in meterorites and marsian rocks, so it seems they are not totally off the mark.

You are pretty biased to your own POV, seems I am a bit more open to the possibilities.... So no, you cannot convert me.

[Explorer]

Do you know Nico I can fully understand your sentiments on this matter and you do come across in your recent postings to be anti-christian, forgive me if I misread your tone and posts.
So as this is a predominantly pagan board why don't you storm The Druid/Christian subforum? Why is it allowed? In your opinion.

I'm not anti-christian at all, why would you think that?
You may be surprised to discover that I 'fought' on the 'christian side' against fundamentalist pagans in this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=37293&hilit=italian&start=20

I am against spreading ignorance and stupidity, and against narrow minded fanatism, especially of the religious kind. Which is also a form of stupidity. I find absolutely nothing wrong with living according the inspiring philosophies of guys like Jesus and Saint Francis, they are probably more or less my philosophies also. I even made a pilgrimage from Assisi to Rome once. Not bad for a heathen huh?

[Bartholomew]

I have great respect for Heathens.

[Explorer]

we have a second brain in our guts which is entirely decentralised, and yet has more neurons than our brain. When we call it a gut feeling, that is what we refer to

When you think with your guts, the outcome is crap, everybody knows that.

Trees don't have neurons, at least they haven't found any.
(see the 'critisism' section: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_neurobiology)

You are pretty biased to your own POV, seems I am a bit more open to the possibilities.... So no, you cannot convert me.

It is not the possiblities that I have a problem with, it is the impossiblities.
An open mind and attitude of 'not knowing' increases the curiosity and creates a space for new insights.
But claiming impossibilities and jumping to wrong conclusions closes that space again.
(you use a lot of interesting words, but you haven't shown a shred of evidence about trees feeling pain).

If you say that we don't know everything about plants yet, then I agree with you.
When you jump to the conclusion that they must feel pain, then I say 'bullocks'.

[DJ Droood]

(you use a lot of interesting words, but you haven't shown a shred of evidence about trees feeling pain).

If you say that we don't know everything about plants yet, then I agree with you.
When you jump to the conclusion that they must feel pain, then I say 'bullocks'.

omg, I am having flashbacks to almost every food conversation I have with my 20 year old son, who tries to make the same argument that plants feel the same stress/fear/pain as animals (thus eating a bean is equivalent to eating bacon.) He's a very smart lad, but sometimes this can just lead to even more clever rationalizations.

I think we missed our annual Yule Tree Sacrifice discussion this year, where folks post about the horrors commited against sacred druid trees from their wooden computer desks inside their wooden homes.

[Aylyn]

When did this board turn into a forum where a different opinion is belittled?

So I agree not with your view that only animals can feel pain, and since I think plants feel just as much, I eat both animals and plants. In the vegetarian thrad, you are presenting yourself as such a great guy, and me as an ignorant idiot, and now you are doing the same thing here?

Yes, I think plants feel pain just as much as animals, and if am happy to eat a plant embryo, why not an animal embryo? It is that kind of thinking that makes me an unashamed carnivore, and makes me feel sad when I see trees mutilated. I feel for the animals, and I try to keep suffering to a minimum, and I do the same for plants. If that is not to your liking, fine, but do not belittle these areguments, I do not belittle yours.

[DJ Droood]

When did this board turn into a forum where a different opinion is belittled?

I think it is the same old board where thin-skinned people get their backs up/hurt feelings/insulted if their ideas are challenged...I'll expect a PM soon from an admin telling me to leave you alone...nothing has changed here....I try to post around you as much as possible, Aylyn, as we seem to have incompatible world-views, the same as I do with numerous other people. I would suggest you put me on ignore and not engage with me if it upsets you, and I will try to do the same.

[Aylyn]

I am normally not thin-skinned, and I have no intention shirking a debate, if that debate is based on accepting that we have different world views. I have engaged in discussion with you numerous times, shame that you seem to have become incapable of accepting anything else but your POV. You usually were an interesting debating partner.

And if you challenge my POV, I can challenge yours, but I will do so with respect for your opinion and without patronizing or belitteling you. In that regard, I will not put you on ignore, but I would expect the same kind of respect to be given to my opinion as I give to yours.

If you would rather "post around me" so you do not need to interact with anything outside yourself, then you are welcome.

[DJ Droood]

And if you challenge my POV, I can challenge yours, but I will do so with respect for your opinion and without patronizing or belitteling you.

Your accusations are groundless...you have given no examples of "patronizing or belitteling". (and if you want, patronize and belittle me all you want...I think my self-esteem can take a messageboard hit.)

[Aylyn]

omg, I am having flashbacks to almost every food conversation I have with my 20 year old son, who tries to make the same argument that plants feel the same stress/fear/pain as animals (thus eating a bean is equivalent to eating bacon.) He's a very smart lad, but sometimes this can just lead to even more clever rationalizations.

I think we missed our annual Yule Tree Sacrifice discussion this year, where folks post about the horrors commited against sacred druid trees from their wooden computer desks inside their wooden homes.

I see that as pretty condscending, both against your son and me. I feel sorry for him, obviously his opinion is just as worthless as mine. Clever rationalizations? I could say the same thing for you, as you salve your conscience when you harvest a plant.

For me, everything has feelings and is worthy of respect, and I will not presume to know if or what a plant feels.