"Here is a tree in the garden. And every summer it produces apples. We call it an apple tree. Because the tree apples. That's what it does.

 

Alright, now here is a solar system inside a galaxy. And one of the peculiarities of this solar system,at least on planet earth, the thing peoples.

In just the same way that an apple tree apples." - Alan Watts

It also cats and dogs and monkeys and bears and bushes and bees as well. But us apples are the only ones that can spread our seeds off-planet.

 

If nothing eats us first. Waldorf's Law.

If there's a point to this quote, I didn't understand it.

 

Does Allan Watts want to correct our self-perception as individuals, as a species, as living things by zooming out to galaxy level and comparing us to the fruiting of one tree among countless others?

 

Well, it does make humanity, all its so-called greatness seem microscopic but what I'd like to remind you is that we live on a different space-time scale and in that slot, for better or for worse, is our dimension, so to speak. So, even if galaxies are billions of light-years across and trillions of years old, the 0.3 mm speck of dust in my eye matters to me.

 

Perhaps I misunderstood.