Michael, how do you know this? I do not want to seem to be disrespectful to you, but the absence of experiential knowledge in this area is not evidence that your hypothesis is correct. The presumption of the absence of consciousness is a materialistic assertion, it is not evidentiary. It is like the profoundly deaf saying there is no sound, and insisting that hearing is a delusion.
Our senses have been dulled by a culture and habits of conduct. We assume an absence to be evidence of non-existence because nothing in our stories about who we are admits a presence. But other people, other cultures, have stories that affirm presences we no longer have the sensory acuity to confirm. What you say is the story of a culture only, and not a statement of 'reality'.
Strictly speaking, I agree I don't
know it. But nor do you
know that rivers
do have an appreciation of when they're polluted. "Knowing" is a really big word. I would instead say that the bulk of evidence points much more strongly to rivers and mountains etc.
not being conscious entities.
If they were, then there'd be more sense to deeming them to be persons, which is why I have a tad (but only a tad) less of an objection to canonising a chimpanzee than I have a river, because a chimp at least has a demonstrable degree of consciousness. Not enough so that it could take me to court for some transgression against it, mind. It'd be much more likely to beat the living shit out of me: such is the chimp version of what we humans call "justice".
Rivers (and mountains) tend to be big: bigger than any organism, and I think it's this that helps befuddle people. Surely the mighty Ganges, by virtue of its size and power could be conscious? But despite its size and power, and the large influence it has over the life of millions, it isn't very complex in relation to, say, even a single microorganism living in its waters. I see the Ganges as not being conscious, but rather an insentient, inanimate process occurring
in the consciousness of Mind At Large; as one of many phenomena, however large, including stars, that is merely impressive in relative size rather than actual complexity. As such, these phenomena can be enormously powerful, but aren't self-reflectively conscious.
It's because these phenomena are so impressive that they have long been idolised: given the ontological status of gods. It's a classic confusion between power and complexity. Yes, rivers can be powerful, but comparatively small bits of protoplasm (human beings) can, and do, harness their complex ability for introspection plus puny powers to create e.g. dams that can alter the way rivers flow whilst at the same time providing useful benefits for themselves. One might almost say that power and complexity are complementary equivalences: gargantuan amounts of the former being required to produce tiny amounts of the latter, but once produced, the complexity can in some circumstances dominate raw power.
At no time has anyone ever seen a river actvely and consciously resist the construction of a dam, or pollution, or any human activity, be it beneficial or otherwise. What kind of conscious being is it that never reacts in this way? This is just commonsense. I see the consciousness that animists want to ascribe to rivers as just a projection of human consciousness onto them. When under certain natural circumstances (e.g. a storm) a dam bursts, it's so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that this is the river finding a way to defeat those who have tried to limit its freedom. But in my book, that's pure magical thinking.
The universe is enormous; even planets are enormous; they embody humongous amounts of power, but often it's a power that comparatively small beings (and not just human ones) can help channel in directions that benefit both themselves and other organisms: witness rain forests, the even more extensive Northern Taiga, coral reefs, and so on. Non-sentient natural phenomena lend themselves, without being the least conscious of it, to all sorts of "manipulation" and don't protest against it, or indeed campaign for it. Many environmentalists don't realise that the many ecosystems they seek to defend are entirely artificial constructs of living beings carved out, in one way or another, from an underlying insentient, inanimate substructure.
Were this substructure actually sentient, then environmentalists should be campaigning for as much destruction of life as possible, as this would return the world to its pristine state of pig ignorance; they'd view us and all forms of life as detrimental. Of course, they don't do that, and thereby don't see the inconsistency of their views. I'm not so much against environmentalists as against their sometimes batshit crazy view of the world.
They rant on about man's puny output of CO2, for example, when shed loads more is produced by other organisms and various "natural" processes like volcanoes. Never mind, it's the puny bit that is the most important, because human beings are bad and everything else is good. They can't credit the possibility that their argument isn't about science, but about anti-humanity. What they're after is a world without human beings, except perhaps a few environmentally aware individuals like themselves. They'd probably incline to animism and rejoice in their doubtless short and perilous lives on account of the collapse of civilisation.