Why my new friend Melon Face is sentient.

Strange as it seems, the cause of today’s existential crisis was a melon. More specifically, Melon face- a half water melon with seeds for eyes and a mouth carved in. My dad after cutting himself while carving the melon demanded revenge, but we quickly pointed out to him that the melon wasn’t sentient and therefore revenge would be pointless.

Or would it? We know melons don’t have a brain. We know they don’t think in the same way we do, their cells may not even be the same as animals. But what is to say somewhere in that fleshy mush of seeds and pink goo there isn’t a soul mixed in, one screaming in pain every time we take a bite?

Those Roald Dahl fans out there may have read a short story in one of his books ‘Skin and other stories- The sound machine’ about a guy who found out plants could be heard on certain frequencies, and that every time we cut down a tree you could hear them scream, if you just tried hard enough.

So, whilst I don’t believe we just have to find the right frequency in order to converse with carrots, I think until we can actually establish if and how souls exist we cannot rule out other sentient beings. Philosophers have been arguing about the mind body dilemma for years, but every one of them seems to have missed out on an important question- how do we know a rock can’t think?

Similarly this whole crisis reminded me of a story I once heard about a women speaking to Richard Dawkins. She told him she knew the world was balanced on top of a stack of pink elephants. Bemused he looked at her and asked her what she thought was underneath the elephants. And she replied “Why Mr Dawkins, it’s elephants all the way down”.

Long story short, we know what science tells us? But do we? Maybe we are just one melon in the great melon vines of the cosmos waiting to eating by some giant bigger than our imagination.

Louisa and Melon face xx

PS please end cruelty to carrots, follow us on facebook.