Look, here is a tree in the garden and every summer is produces apples, and we call it an apple tree because the tree “apples.” That’s what it does. Alright, now here is a solar system inside a galaxy, and one of the peculiarities of this solar system is that at least on the planet earth, the thing peoples! In just the same way that an apple tree apples! Now, maybe two million years ago somebody came from another galaxy in a flying saucer and had a look at this solar system, and they looked it over and shrugged their shoulders and said, “Just a bunch of rocks.” And they went away. Later on—maybe two million years later—they came around, and they looked at it again, and they said, “Excuse me! We thought it was a bunch of rocks but it’s peopleing,” and “It’s alive after all; it has done something intelligent.” Because, you see, we grow out of this world in exactly the same way that the apples grow on the apple tree. If evolution means anything, it means that. But, you see, we curiously twist it. We say, well, first of all—in the beginning—there was nothing but gas and rock. And then intelligence happened to arise in it—you know, like a sort of fungus or slime on top of the whole thing. But we’re thinking in a way, you see, that disconnects the intelligence from the rocks. Where there are rocks, watch out! Watch out! Because the rocks are going, eventually, to come alive. And they’re going to have people crawling over them. It’s only a matter of time. Just in the same way as the seed, the acorn, is eventually going to turn into the oak, because it has the potentiality of that within it. Rocks are not dead.

stem: alan watts
perspectief: You do not find an intelligent organism living in an unintelligent environment.
titel: myth of myself
bron: the tao of philosophy (1965)
mopw: meerstemmige encyclopedie / appel