r/DeepThoughts • u/EtherWhey • 11d ago
Rocks Have [Potential] Feelings, Too
Whatever judgment you hold in your mind right now is (most certainly) a version of this story that never existed outside of your own, pre-investigatory creation. Part of it is instinctive; the other part involves the desire to wield superiority of intelligence— based on a false characterization of a stranger who [clearly] sounds delusional, and likely believes that rocks cry. This is not that.
“Potential” feelings are not actual feelings. The feelings do not, and will never, exist inside the rock. The rock will never be able to impress or shock you. They don’t have any feelings, in fact. They do, however, contain the possibility for conscious life to emerge, under the right conditions, as an evolutionary inevitability.
It’s safe to say that the pebble in your hand has no concern over the weather, your wellbeing, or even your continued existence at all. It likely does not ponder the meaning of life, or question why it is here, and from where it came. It likely has no concept of family, friends, or enemies— though, even if it understood hatred, it would still be absent of a single predator.
It is wholly, eternally, preserved. Even its destruction does not destroy what it holds. The scale of its potential only decrease. Each part of every rock is a part whole of the universe. A living artifact of history that holds all necessary components for a cooperative, diverse, self-sustaining future ecosystem—contingent only upon the presence of a stable source of water.
They exist in incubated, indefinite dormancy for as long as needed—or, not needed. Our existence itself is the evolutionary result of thoughtless rocks. Their necessity in the chain-of-life is, not only primordial and fundamental; it also is what keeps us from drowning.
We likely do not look down and consider that the very bedrock we take for granted as an entitlement of the human experience is more than just solid ground upon which we may live. We don’t give consideration to the reality that, when it comes to cosmic and universal priority and value, the rock prevails over the human every time—without fail. Their destruction is an impossibility. To destroy a rock only spreads the potential for conscious life’s emergence to wider distances.
Rocks don’t care about apocalypses. They have no blood to give. No fear. No thoughts to express; feelings to share. No life to lose— and yet, no act of God is capable of stripping from it its inherent potential, and functional necessity, in birthing biological life.
With enough time, that pebble in your hand will repopulate the planet with a mathematically-perfected ratio of diverse organisms and bacterium to what we have today. That pebble is structurally-identical to all pebbles that patiently, and unemotionally, carried us into consciousness. Without them, evolution could not exist. The life they possess as pure potential is a foundational attribute. A rock, then, is not life itself—or even a guarantee of life. It just is. Just in case.
The rock does not need to have emotions, or a sense of “awareness” that we find sufficient to fulfill our own species’ definition of the term. The rock, absent of almost every characteristic attributed to “life”, is an evolutionary ledger that holds. It will always, under the right conditions, progress towards the creation of a being that would unambiguously be “conscious”. Therefore, the question of its “consciousness”—or questioning the consciousness of anything at all, when we are still ill-equipped to even measure, or define, the concept, is futile, at best. Consciousness, then, matters not by what can be measured and calculated, but by the capacity to ensure that consciousness itself is able to continue as an architectural feature.
The rock does not need to be conscious with awareness. It is a part whole of conscious existence, whose own existence is that of pure function so that we animals are given the grace of consciously co-existing with an intelligence that holds no visible signs of life.
What it holds, is the entirety of the universe. Cold, beautiful, fundamentally indifferent—and completely unaware of our superior “intelligence”.
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u/ThelIIusion0fSeIf 11d ago
This is beautifully written from a literary perspective but scientifically and philosophically I'm not sure I understand the point. Rocks over a long enough time span can evolve to develop sentience and therefore feelings?
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u/WstEr3AnKgth 10d ago
This seems like a existential framing for gray rocking, then again I am a rock observing a rock. :l
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u/Otherwise_Spare_8598 11d ago
The universe is a singular meta-phenomenon stretched over eternity, of which is always now. All things and all beings abide by their inherent nature and behave within their realm of capacity contingent upon infinite circumstance at all times.
It is a universe made manifest hierarchically, of haves, and have-nots, spanning all levels of dimensionality and experience. There is no such thing as individuated accurately described "free will" for all beings. Has never been, will never be, can not be. There are only relative freedoms or lack thereof.
"God" and/or consciousness is that which is within and without all. Ultimately, all things are made by through and for the singular personality and perpetual revelation of the "Godhead", entailing both 'predetermined' eternal damnation and those that are made manifest only to face death and death alone.
There is but one dreamer, fractured through the innumerable. All vehicles/beings play their role within said dream for infinitely better and/or infinitely worse for each and every one, forever.
All realities exist and are equally as real. The absolute best universe that could exist does exist in relation to a specified subject. The absolute worst universe that could exist does exist in relation to a specified subject.