"... On May 14, 8:46 am, Molly Brogan <[email protected]> wrote: ..."
> As sentient beings, what keeps us going with a dream of the good life > (which I think was the focus of the thread.) Sure, living things will > recoil from danger, including single cell life that may or may not > have the ability to think. But life is all around us in myriad > forms. What keeps us going in the life? What keeps the life going? > Is the dream dead? Or can we influence it? I have always leaned to believe that it is a built-in survival mechanism or drive -- perhaps even in our DNA -- that keeps us going. Life is tenacious at all levels. Living in the desert, I've seen life cling to impossible situations. Dry lake beds that have not seen water for years come suddenly alive with little fish (pupfish I think they are called) at the first rain, no matter how long their eggs have been lying dormant. I've seen tiny fragile plants growing out of lifeless rock in arid barren sands, surviving on the smallest amount of moisture in the air. I agree that lesser forms of life, such as plants and single-celled creatures may not have the ability to think -- at least what we call thinking -- but they do react to their environment in a manner most fitting to their survival. So I believe it is a congenital survival instinct that keeps life going. Of course in higher forms of life such as chimps, monkeys, porpoises, whales, elephants, dogs, wolves, cats of all sizes, there exists thought and even dreams. However, we cannot yet perceive what those thoughts contain beyond speculation and anthropomorphizing. In humans, being as how we have managed to take most thoughtful traits of the higher forms of life and raise them to the n-th degree, there is a strong likelihood that in us, dreams are very much a part of the will and drive to survive and likely give us the ability to influence them. /e --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Minds-Eye?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
