it is theway of life: individual and collective, atomic, organic, ecologic, biospheric,cosmic.***Animals and plants in my forest home offer the sweetest response toquestions of: where and what is intelligence? They insist, yesthe whole, of course the collective, but always experienced through thepersonal, the intimate, and the embodied.Theparadox, they say, cannot be understood by exiting the personal toembrace a collective, for this makes the collective a pure abstraction,leading to a profound and dangerous disconnect, allowing for every delusionfrom nation states, to egos, to the caste system, to private property toindustrial capitalism to factory farming, to empire, to machine worlds topatriarchy, to planetary scale toxicities.Intelligence,they say, flows from the personal to the personal, it is known, experienced andlived through the personal, and enacted through the personal. It goes from thiselephant, to that tree, to that bird, to that valley, to that river, tothis land, to this sea. Itis deeply personal toeach of my white blood cells, to each of the trillions of bacteria inevery gut, to every vein in every body, every enzyme in every gut, every treein every forest, and every star in every galaxy.Intelligence, they say, in fact, requiresthe personal, the beloved, and the rooted. It requires you and me.Thelast thing we need to do, in this last hour, is prove or measure or debate itor put dollar values on it, or bottle it up for posterity. Just listen to yourbody. ***Whatthen of the machine, the greatest achievement of modern man, a globalizedartifice that now runs the show? Isthis not the part of that same intelligence? One of myriad intelligences? Doyou wonder what supports the machine? Where does its fuel and form come from?What is its body made of? Who died so this computer could come into being (andwhat abuse of language, to call this, a body, a being!)? Andwhat of the living world does this machine support? Does it support my life, oryours, my actual body, my flesh, my people, my land base; does this give riseto more intelligence? More life, more diversity? More possibilities for everymember of this universe? Whatdo you eat? Food, or reconstituted petroleum? What do you breathe? Air,or toxic waste in a gaseous sewer? Whom do you love? A human, or a product?Where do you live? In the real world, or a digital world? ***Livingbeings know that failure to support others, and failure to adapt or changeequals death, and because this machine way is now so widespread and pervasive,it, for sure, is hell bound to implode, or explode, and most likely takeeverybody down with it. Isa machine aware? Is a machine intelligent? Does a machine have will? Does amachine reproduce? Does a machine care? Does a machine attend to your life?Does your iPad love you? Doesthis petroleum guzzling non-sentient non-aware non-reproducing non-supportivetoxic product of modern industrial civilization, in its multifarious forms,qualify as intelligent? Oris it a one-way system? Lifegoes in, and death by decimation, processingand packaging comes out. Thus, is it your agent in holocaust, destruction byproxy? Oris it just stupid? Without you or me, what is this machine? Andworse than stupid, is it just utterly mechanical,