OPINION FOLLOWS, IT CAN'T POSSIBLY HURT YOU, IT'S JUST OPINION.
There is mystery and wonder in every thing that is living, or has ever lived. Think dinosaur skeletons or ammonite fossils, or, since this is ostensibly a bonsai forum, petrified trees. These are artifacts of lives in time. We can see that there are commonalities in these artifacts with beings living in this moment. Some aspects are easily recognizable, other aspects are more subtle or hidden. My point here is that lifeforms express themselves in a myriad of shapes, sizes, chemical compositions, and manifestations shaped both by their internal coding and external environments.
Whether there are similarities or differences in the manner in which humans express that mystery and wonder has the same significance as the similarities or differences in their languages. They sound differently as speech and appear differently as writing, yet are accomplishing the same thing.
These artifacts of culture (spoken word, written word, tree in a pot) are also changing through time. Think cave art and emojis-hey, new word. Wait...emojis are cave art on the wall of this glowing device, speaking of wonder and mystery! All language serves the same function, to communicate with others.
Walter Pall has some excellent thoughts on copies of copies regarding styles of bonsai on his blog. (Don't have link @ my fingertips, sorry). Either we explore the mystery of the continually unfolding moment or we don't. Yes, but what does the tree want?
Whether we do it in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, English, German,Vietnamese, (and apologies to those left out) or Pigdin matters not one whit to the little miracle in the little pot unfolding before our very eyes in this very moment.
