What makes a being "sentient?"

[Amomynous]

I've been reading the scientific literature on Integrated Information Theory as of late, and I think people are actually starting to get a grip on what it means to be conscious. The theory is a little complicated to understand unless you have a pretty good background in mathematics and information theory, but at it's base (at least my interpretation of the base), it answers the question of "what is conscious" simply with "everything, but it's a matter of degree."

[laughingwillow]

Thanks, amom. That makes sense to me.

lw

[laughingwillow]

Anyone else ever wonder if there might be sentient life that would need a microscope to study our universe?

lw

[AliceTepes]

seems possible to me, there is more out there that we don't know than what we do know.

[laughingwillow]

LOL I wonder how far up the "Sentient Scale" we humans really rank?

lw

[gwalchgwyn]

I appreciate what some here have said about the responsibility of the connection with what is being eaten.  In his Endgame books Derrick Jensen speaks of the ethic of just such responsibility of a being to its landbase.  eat a nut, plant a nut.  the issue of sentience seems to me loaded with an anthrocentric progress narrative in which food items that more closely resemble humans (anything with a face, can it feel hurt) is privileged over other foods.  in this formulation carnivore animals just don't know better.  the puma is ethically inferior to the guanaco, and is the guanaco therefore inferior to the grass?  and what of plants that actively adapt ways to take more food (sun) and space from other plants?  Ants scurry at a threat, cottonwoods issue an annual puff parade of seeds:  i want to live!

It is well known as well that the production of plants for human consumption isn't necessarily pretty: corn, wheat, rice, cassava, all gave their human consumers a larger population, ostensibly a weapon against other human cultures, including the pursuant demonizing of the Other's ways.  Vast areas of the "uncivilized" Amazon are being cleared for beef, corn ethanol, and soybeans,  the latter destined for distant palates nurtured on an ignorance of ethical superiority.  the reality is that they are actually eating the peoples of the Amazon to death.

[laughingwillow]

Right on, gwal. You give much to chew on, so to speak.

Welcome to spr, btw.

lw

[laughingwillow]

I vividly remember one of my first experiences with shrooms back in the early 80's. We went for a walk in the evening as the sacrament was coming on and for the first time in my life I was able to observe the conscious waves of energy emanating from the plant life around me. That experience really reinforced the bond I had always felt with the natural world. The cedar trees which watched over our childhood became friends of mine that I's sit with on visits home. For me, all things green became an integral part of this interconnected web of life we call home.

So, amrad brought up the notion of a "high culture" earlier in the thread and that has led me to do some wondering of my own....

Is an evolution of consciousness possible? (Or maybe an evolution of our perception of consciousness?) History has many examples of individuals reaching enlightenment, but what about groups of people?

lw

[JRL]

I had the same experience with the same sacrament, watching, communing with the plants until sunrise.

[Amomynous]

Is an evolution of consciousness possible? (Or maybe an evolution of our perception of consciousness?) History has many examples of individuals reaching enlightenment, but what about groups of people?

I have mixed feelings about that. On one hand you have the data (presented by the likes of Wilber) that seems to suggest that large-scale structures in consciousness are subject to the same evolutionary pressures that other things are. And you have all the "claims" made by the many spiritual traditions.

On the other hand, all to often such thought seems to lead to large-scale abnegation of personal responsibility when it comes to one's own consciousness. No where it this more apparent than in the whole 2012 thing, where some people have substituted a calendar date for a Messiah and just expect consciousness to "evolve" through external forces unrelated to themselves. Seems really silly to me.

My guess is that there are cultural and societal evolutions taking place, but it's way to early to know if those evolutions would every reach to cover something like "enlightenment."

[laughingwillow]

Well, the last posts bring me to the idea of "levels" of consciousness.

The human perception of color might be a good place to start. Its my understanding that until fairly recent times, colors weren't generally given names for various shades recognized today.  What changed?

Did the human eye rapidly evolve? I highly doubt it.

Did our perception evolve? Sounds more likely to me.

Hank Harris covers this idea in depth in his first book written about his experiences with the grateful dead. It is his claim that folks in the dead scene interact on a few distinctive levels not usually encountered in typical human group settings. (Undoubtedly fueled by active active sacrament.)

Considering all the possible levels of consciousness, it looks like there are mysteries that can be unlocked by the individual through practices including but not limited to ingestion of an active sacrament. Anyway, if an individual is allowed (induced?) to examine his/her own consciousness while under the influence of an active sacrament in a group setting, isn't it possible that the collective community could also undergo further transformation while facilitating individual growth in a psychedelic state?

The dead scene reminds me of a alembic used by an alchemist to turn lead into gold. But in this case, the alchemist allows ordinary individuals to enter the alembic and gives them the opportunity to (and facilitates the process of) converting base human drives and emotions further in the direction of "we" as opposed to "me." A heart of gold derived from lead, if you will.

I imagine some of the aya traditions in the Amazon to be similar.

lw

[JRL]

I think you mean Hank Harrison. I was pretty underwhelmed at his views of the scene, though the acetate that came with his first book of Neal Cassady at the Straight Theater changed my life. "Don't let the cyclops steal the unicorn brew"  "The son of man is ascending the podium. I know I should have worn more paisley. I just got 30 years on ya" (to the hecklers).

Hank, Phil's old friend, fell out with the Dead family, something to do with letting someone else take a fall for him if I remember right.

[laughingwillow]

Yeah, Hank Harrison......

I know he wasn't well liked in the dead scene. And I know the one person I met who had dealings with him didn't like him either.

I also believe that its possible for communities partaking of an active sacrament together and on a regular basis to discover/develop/ novel means of communication within the group.

lw

[JRL]

I agree totally. I really never had a group like that since I first started trippin (67-69) but even then it was hard to find people in the same place as you,

In the 60s, a larger crossection where taking acid different people had way different trips. Lot of the heads at my school were just bad kids, would have been delinquents anyway. AS was a trip to fun house and an area for ego domination games. Lots of mind fuck pranks, guys fleeing the bad conditions in the Haight would hang out in our scenes, and prey on our trusting minds, our refrigerators, our stash and our girls.

I was having way different trips than these people, reading Zen, the Beats, Watts, Leary, Ginsburg, Gaskin, Hindu scriptures, science fiction just had me primed for some heavy duty experiences. I ended up tripping a lone a lot, listening to music and reading stuff like Paul Reps Zen Flesh Zen Bones. Obscure hindu tomes on 100 ways to meditate, Leary's tripping handbooks, and was having powerful spiritual experiences hiding in my bedroom.

Occasionaly tripping with my tight group of mostly musician friends we would experience frank telepathy and group mind spaces. I remember clear as a bell telepathy with my friend several rooms away. When we would take acid and play it was all amplfied, music is a psychedelic in it's true meaning, and we were trying to tune into each other and had some amazing things happen.

These experiences and ones I've had at Dead shows keeps reminding that the spiritual part of this life is always there, sometimes we can see it others not. And I know and know of so many people that have the same experince I know it was not just my hallucination.

Bless Albert Hoffman- his compound shaped me so much!

[Amomynous]

The human perception of color might be a good place to start. Its my understanding that until fairly recent times, colors weren't generally given names for various shades recognized today. What changed?

Did the human eye rapidly evolve? I highly doubt it.

Did our perception evolve? Sounds more likely to me.

Many languages don't make a distinction between blue and green; they are seen as different shades of the same color, as opposed to distinct colors.

Our categories shape our perceptions, and our perceptions shape our categories. And these things do change over time.

Considering all the possible levels of consciousness, it looks like there are mysteries that can be unlocked by the individual through practices including but not limited to ingestion of an active sacrament. Anyway, if an individual is allowed (induced?) to examine his/her own consciousness while under the influence of an active sacrament in a group setting, isn't it possible that the collective community could also undergo further transformation while facilitating individual growth in a psychedelic state?

I don't know. It seems pretty clear that there are different stages of cultural development, and these stages tend to be ordered in time in fairly consistent ways. But I don't really know enough about psychology and metaphysics to have an opinion on the possibility of group-change. But it seems to me that the truth -- whatever it may be -- lies in the middle of the extremes. Aficionados of psychedelics seem to overstate their utility, whereas the opponents dismiss any value at all along these lines.