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Awareness
Do spiders dream of webbed wool sheep?
Insects have been in the news recently. They may do math. They may have feelings. They may distinguish between self and others. Even more recently, spiders may dream. Heck, scientist are taking dead spiders and re-animating them. That’s not the only dead thing to be revived lately. Dead organs in a pig were rejuvenated recently, which means what? We can have our pig and our bacon, too? If we raising the dead- non-human, will be reviving humans soon? ‘Scientists’ are already discussing regressing people in age and extending our lives, close no than we were 30 years ago when I read a Time articles saying in 20 years we will live forever. They also had an article that said in 50 years there would be no more fish… Where are we on that timeline?
If alive things can become dead, and dead things can become alive, does that change the nature of the questions around life and death? What has consciousness and what doesn’t?
Humans can’t agree on when life begins or ends. Is it an important question? Are we quibbling over semantics? Are viruses alive? The make more, they evolve. There are some seriously, sophisticated, biological machines- and so, at what level of sophistication translate into conscious awareness? Scientist are saying bugs are aware, feel, and dream. They are…