ok so sorry if this sounds like a nonsensical rambling to you, i’ve just had an enlightenment

so for a while now i’ve known about the aristotelian 4 elements worldview that says that the world is composed of consecutive layers laying on top of each other.

there’s at least two variants of it: for the living and for the dead world. i.e. when you have living beings in the world or not. when there are living beings, the four layers are (from bottom to top): rocks, plants, animals, spirits (i.e. ideas / politics). each layer needs the lower one to feed itself, i.e. animals feed off plants. meanwhile they give resources to the upper layer to get their services, i.e. plants get their fruit eaten but get their seeds carried around.

for the dead, there’s four layers: rocks, water, air, energy (i.e. fire / sunlight). for example, the water corresponds to the plants because in every pond, algae start to grow etc.

now, what has bothered me is that rocks appear in both listings, which is weird. i think that the dirt is alive kinda solves this, because rocks (dead) and rocks (living) are not the same anymore. one is settled with microorganisms, the other one is not.

eh, idk whether that makes sense to you. have a nice day.