The people who cannot have the direct inwardly tangible experience of a tree as a being, are very similar, in a way, to those who think that organisms comprise a peculiar form of machine. Both have suffered a catastrophic narrowing of their experience of identity based on a conceptual understanding involving language and ideas.

They might say “Of course, as there is no other form of actual understanding.” To which I would reply, “How strange to hear you say so, for you employed exactly such a form to acquire these very faculties — as an infant. And you’re using that same (meta)form, right now, to assemble them into communicative intent and expression.”