Well, I wasn't implying that the laws of physics or chemistry change from place to place. More that the spectrum of physics and chemistry is incredibly broad an

Well, I wasn't implying that the laws of physics or chemistry change from place to place. More that the spectrum of physics and chemistry is incredibly broad and diverse, even just the part we can actually see. More importantly, I was challenging human-centric ideas of what constitutes "aliveness" and what doesn't, within the realm of Earth-like physics and chemistry, let alone beyond it. Is there a firm distinction between "alive" and "dead" at all? I think not so much. What we call "dead" is a body whose micro-organisms no longer organise in a common human perceptual window of space and time. With a microscope, some people have been able to see that a "dead body" is actually buzzing with life. Many of the same organisms that live symbiotically with us survive the immediate death of the eukaryote body and pass memories of our memories on to future generations of micro-organisms. They are (usually) symbiotic with, but not dependent on, as the organelles of "human cells" have become, our larger organising bodies. What happens as these wild bacteria and fungi unpack and metabolise our memories on the deepest level? Is that not somehow part of the life cycle? Isn't it possible that "we" somehow experience that in a less integrated way? Poetically, as the inside members processes the death of its larger body, so do the exterior members of the human body, other people, animals and social organisations. The locus of stable control is released, the steering wheel disintegrates. But does life somehow "disappear"? Not at all. It only shifts in, out, to scales whose feedback mechanisms elude mainstream western mythology. Eventually, over thousands of years, all membrane bound creatures deposit their bodies. What went in (the membrane) must go out(side of the membrane). Some parts are reused immediately. Others are left for deeper cycles (including by not limited to eventual metamorphosis in the high pressures of the deeper subterranean). This part of the life cycle is much more mysterious to me, as I haven't really studied it, and it really is so much more vast. The physics and chemistry of rocks and minerals, liquids, gasses is part of the life cycle. They are part of the evolutionary story as much as any being. Why are many mystics attracted to crystals and rocks? Because they are mineral deposits of ancestral beings. They carry, literally, the energies accumulated in some ancient, swirling ecosystem. They are a memory of things our bodies had forgotten. Same reason why a lot of scientists are attracted to them. As for the conversation about "intelligence". The Earth has 400 billion trees. Each is connected to the others by roots, by air, by micro-organisms, by water, by chemicals, by ecological relationships. How many neurons do we each have? Maybe 80 or 90 billion. Just because plants can't move or talk in very specific human babble noises, it doesn't mean they aren't experiencing something substantial or contributing in dynamic "intelligent" ways to their ecologies. Anyway, I need to take a break and eat lunch, because I'm "alive" in this certain kind of way where that my fire is burns for tasty food. I'm gonna stoke it with some soup.