You've understood me perfectly. No counter-arguments from me; what follows are just some thoughts that your comment inspired.
> In the same way an apple tree apples, the universe peoples. It also dogs, and weathers and softwares and cows. Of it emerge these beautiful structures, including plants.
I love this framing.
> If I was capable of surviving the endeavor, cherishing and protecting every single one of those things that the universe expresses would be my ultimate ethical goal.
Whenever this thought comes to my mind, I can't help but think about the Christian idea the human beings are inherently sinful (I may not be getting this exactly right -- I'm not a Christian). As you point out: we're forced to "destroy" expressions of the universe in order to survive. Maybe this is OK, and their destruction is part of that expression -- or maybe we're inherently sinful, and the best we can do is damage control.
> The thing that re-embodies me is the Buddhist idea of bodhisattvas. They are beings who have reached enlightenment, but then rejected paradise in honor of the work still left to do on this plane of existence.
This is fascinating. I'll be doing some reading on this.
> So, if plants do experience something that increments the universe's suffering counter, which I leave as a possibility, we would have to imagine some other form of communication. Language and thought extrudes from the human body.
Fully agreed. Something I was trying to express in my first comment is that I find this conclusion perfectly acceptable (i.e. that we exclude plants from our moral framework, because of their incomprehensibility), but that it's important to recognize that it's grounded in our own ability to comprehend the experience of others (as opposed to something inherent to the "other" itself).
> In the same way an apple tree apples, the universe peoples. It also dogs, and weathers and softwares and cows. Of it emerge these beautiful structures, including plants.
I love this framing.
> If I was capable of surviving the endeavor, cherishing and protecting every single one of those things that the universe expresses would be my ultimate ethical goal.
Whenever this thought comes to my mind, I can't help but think about the Christian idea the human beings are inherently sinful (I may not be getting this exactly right -- I'm not a Christian). As you point out: we're forced to "destroy" expressions of the universe in order to survive. Maybe this is OK, and their destruction is part of that expression -- or maybe we're inherently sinful, and the best we can do is damage control.
> The thing that re-embodies me is the Buddhist idea of bodhisattvas. They are beings who have reached enlightenment, but then rejected paradise in honor of the work still left to do on this plane of existence.
This is fascinating. I'll be doing some reading on this.
> So, if plants do experience something that increments the universe's suffering counter, which I leave as a possibility, we would have to imagine some other form of communication. Language and thought extrudes from the human body.
Fully agreed. Something I was trying to express in my first comment is that I find this conclusion perfectly acceptable (i.e. that we exclude plants from our moral framework, because of their incomprehensibility), but that it's important to recognize that it's grounded in our own ability to comprehend the experience of others (as opposed to something inherent to the "other" itself).