CoG NPIO Reports: "Words and Trees"

Here are some interesting ideas coming from the this lively earth blog:

..."Meditators know the paradox. Becoming fully present in the moment means being able to interrupt the inner chatter, turn down the volume of the mental broadcast. Anyone who has sat quietly for even a few minutes knows how hard this is to do.

But the Dagara take the idea further. The amount of language a being uses, they say, shows how intelligent or foolish it is. In Dagara cosmology the beings closest to the center of meaning are plants and trees, for they do not depend on language to communicate. They are the wisest and most intelligent beings in nature. Farther away from the source are animals, who need some language to survive. And farthest away of all, the least intelligent species, are human beings, who rely almost entirely on words.

It’s the Western hierarchy of nature upside down. Instead of residing at the top of nature, close to the gods, we’re at the very bottom, far from home. In exile."