| > Can you earn their trust, as in, become pals with them? It's a very human question. All living things are friends (except sometimes at mealtime) because we are all part of one singular organism. The separateness and individuality of multicellular organisms is a perceptual illusion. (This sound metaphysical, and perhaps it is, but it's very literal: all cells use the same chemical language, the same bio-molecular machinery of thought. Cf. Michael Levin's lab's work. Also "wood-wide web", etc. The way I sometimes put it is "We are Solaris". but that only makes sense if you've read the book or seen the movies...) Anyway, all animals already trust each other. When you can understand how that's true and share that trust then you can "talk" with animals. Like Dr. Doolittle or some fairy tale princess, they will come up and hang out with you. > It's probably mostly food based priorities to them. Yeah, but that's the same for everybody? Don't you and your friends spend a lot of time discussing food? Cooking and eating together? "Com-pan-ions" are literally those who eat bread together: "com" is community, etc. and "pan" is bread. Live long and prosper. |
Similarly, while plenty of people pan (pun intended, on multiple levels) American multiculturalism for being seemingly limited to food, it remains evident that food is a sort of universal language - a gateway to shared understanding even among those who share nothing else in common. Cuisine is a window into cultural tradition and history, and is a leading indicator of the formation of new cultures through the intersection of existing ones. To share food is to share what makes us human.
If we discover intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, I reckon this will be a key factor in whether we have any hope of ever truly understanding them and their motivations.