Dog blog 1 - walks

Is there something out there?

On my way into work in the mornings, I have a very nice, rambly walk along an old railway line. It's summer where I live. And at the moment, all the flowers are are out in bloom. And whatever trees are out in. Terribly very pretty. Seriously.

Looking at the trees got me to thinking about intelligence. Particularly, is there any "out there"? In the universe, that is. In space. And stuff.

If there is something out there, could that intelligence be a bit like a big tree, rather gently pootling along about its own business? And perhaps only vaguely aware of more complex consciousnesses skittling around and about it?

Pantheism?

That's probably a kind of pantheism. I'm never quite sure what "pantheism" means (I usually mix it up with "deism" and I'm not sure I'm even doing that right), but I think it's broadly the idea that an intelligence filters through everything. A bit like a tree's roots through the ground. But it doesn't really need to do terribly much in its growings. It mightn't even push the soil away much. Or even at all. And runners, joggers and dogs might quite happily step on one of the tree's roots, which was just poking out of the ground. And they mightn't even feel it through their trainers. Or their paws.

Is it like cake?

In fact, the runners and joggers probably wouldn't notice it was there. Dogs might have a sniff though, if some really interesting smell got onto the tree's root. Maybe from one of the jogger's trainers. Like a bit of cake or something that someone else dropped while trying to eat it on his way to work. And then that bit of cake got itself crushed right into the tread of the jogger's trainer when he jogged over it (although not on purpose - he didn't see it). And the bit of cake only finally got dislodged onto the root - in a one-er though - when the jogger put one of his trainers onto the log as he jogged over it.

As an aside, people shouldn't really be eating cake at that time of the morning. If you're doing that, save it for coffee time at about 11 o'clock. And you could maybe keep a bit of it for the afternoon, depending on how big a slice you were carrying in the first place.

Deism?

I think "deism" is more of a "light blue touch paper, stand well back" affair. Setting off a firework on bonfire night on a cold autumn evening. And maybe have a sit down after that and watch it. With a nice hot roll. Like a burger or something. And Heinz tomato ketchup. And/or a mug of soup. Nice.

I'm maybe thinking of a bit of both of these things - pantheism and deism. Come to think of it.

Should it affect the way we think about things?

Anyway, I also got to wondering in amongst all of that about these sorts of questions: if the universe has a tree sort of intelligence, would it make a difference to how we think morally? Does it matter at all? Would it make a difference if the universe was in fact an awful lot more intelligent than a tree? Like a bee maybe? Or maybe even an otter? I also wondered why a lot of people feel the need to justify or reason out their thinking with such an intelligence? Is it something to do with language itself - that because most of us think in a language (which presupposes a conversation between at least two people), it's kind of hardwired into our brains? Even if, maybe, there isn't an intelligence "out there" at all.

All terribly very interesting I thought.