Clouds Are Alive.

Bear with me here...this is rather unorganized thought...so I welcome any and all reactions.

Are clouds alive?

In our current scientific understanding of LIFE, we utilize the concept of living (or the lack of nonliving) to refer only to plants and animals. Living things are complex. There is generally an input/output/response process, i.e. metabolism, some form of dependence on an energy source or nutrients, and in general, living things have a tendency to be born, grow, and die.

In his explanation of what life is, David W. Deamer concludes that:

...life can be defined as an organized system of molecules that captures energy and nutrients to grow by polymerization reactions, has the ability to reproduce at some point in its life cycle, and has the potential to evolve in response to changes in the environment

So, if we need evidence of some form of energy/nutrient dependency, the reproduction of similarly bodied cells through any given process such as polymerization, and a birth, growth, death, cycle...then it should be obvious to us that clouds are in fact alive...right?

Clouds are dependent upon the presence of moisture in our atmosphere. Saving NASA's definition, they need water and air...as do plants and animals.

Clouds are quite obviously receptive of energy, they move, grow, and when deprived of the water vapor and cooler temperatures they prefer, they die.

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It has been told that when Crazy Horse was young, he had a vision wherein he visited the Spirit World. In general, it was the hidden mirror of our physical world, only that everything was in their spirit form: people, animals, plants, trees, rocks, water...everything. As he grew older and became a warrior, Crazy Horse learned how to partially return to this Spirit World during battle, keeping a balance between his actions in the physical world while fighting and skirting danger through the hidden Spirit World. This is why he was impossible to kill in battle, and never even sustained but two minor injuries outside of battle in accidents with his own people.

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Spirit forms of plants, trees, rocks, water...everything? Why not?

Rocks are complex systems of molecules formed from nutrients and the exertions of energy, they grow when left in proper conditions for several millennia or longer, and can die when subjected to other environmental conditions not befitting the life of a rock.

Water is quite the interesting form itself, and just as clouds, plants, and animals, while simple in its molecular composition, it exhibits incredible energy and movement similar to what we commonly identify as "life".

No two people are alike. No two animals, no two plants, no two rocks, no two bodies of water, and no two clouds.

So why shouldn't clouds be alive? Or rocks, or water, or anything else that you can imagine in this physical world we occupy? For without being able to see the spirit forms of our brothers and sisters around us, must we discount the value of their life over our own?

If we rely on our understanding of life as simply being organisms with similar characteristics as ourselves, we are succumbing to the ignorance which prevents the expansion of our understanding of the Force and the Universe. It is this mentality which when reduced to interpersonal and social differences, influences the fear, anger, and hate we find rampant throughout human history, and today.

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Lay on your back in the grass of a warm summer day and watch some clouds float overhead. Can you without a doubt say that it doesn't know where it is going, or what it is doing? Is it not alive?

Jedi believe "In the Force, and in the inherent worth of all life within it."

For now, and in the absence of not knowing otherwise, I believe in clouds.

My belief is that everything is alive, even if it's not in a way we/I understand. Maybe some only as repositories of energy, but imo that's still a sort of life.

Spot on! From what I see my life is simply an intricately tangled mess of relationships that I share with everything. I am both a product of and a portion of the whole universe. Through my eyes the universe can explore and interact with itself. Sure, a cloud may not meet the biological definition of a living entity; but definitions can get really sticky if we cling to them. If anything, I'm sure some people can agree that inanimate objects bring us life with their presence.

thomaswfaulkner wrote: Spot on! From what I see my life is simply an intricately tangled mess of relationships that I share with everything. I am both a product of and a portion of the whole universe. Through my eyes the universe can explore and interact with itself. Sure, a cloud may not meet the biological definition of a living entity; but definitions can get really sticky if we cling to them. If anything, I'm sure some people can agree that inanimate objects bring us life with their presence.

To an extent...as I tried to offer...I would nearly argue that the current scientific (biological) definition of a living entity does allow the addition of the cloud to that list of life.

I do gather it does not fit our common everyday understanding of the term "life", so that was somewhat my point here.

Scientific definitions trend through time and merely present the most detailed explanation of things under present knowledge. There was quite a long span of recent recorded human history wherein our earth was described as flat, and the center of the universe. Those definitions have changed with the furtherance of information through the scientific process, much as I imagine our understanding of "what is life" will change in time (even in the scientific community) when we get new information to refute the limits of our current definition of the concept.

I for one, while not a huge physics type and no where near the level of understanding of the area necessary to argue anything strongly, would contest that Newton's Laws are only relevant and presumed to be "fact" and the utter truth to date, simply because no one has discovered one of them to be false, or proven them defeatable.

Take the speed of light as an unattainable measurement of movement for matter, or objects of mass, for example. Right now we are beholden to the notion that we cannot cause a physical object to travel at, near, or to exceed the speed of light. This is not a hard rule, it just means we have yet to discover how to do so. Measurements, after all, are simply a human construct we have developed to compare things to each other.

Thus, if we compare the speed of our fastest ship to that of light, or life-like qualities of a cloud to a human, we are quite literally only speaking of apples and oranges, and thus ignoring the existence of a banana.

Thanks for the tread on the thread!