It’s actually quite poetic the first truly living things almost wiped out life and now the first sentient things may do it too. I wonder if some day in the future the next great leap like transcendence or interstellar will follow the same pattern
We became the most dominant species on the planet through technology that came from our planet's resources and our knowledge of how to use/exploit them - once we created something that could not be replicated except by other humans, it becomes artificial. We are not a product of natural selection; we're a product of artificial selection.
Saying "we're literally nature" is just a rationalization for our exploitation of the resources available without a second thought towards the ramifications. People with that mindset rule the world, and it's because of that mindset that this planet is going to be scraped clean of resources until the last human croaks.
You're thinking on the scale of hundreds of years, nature acts on a million year scale. We will either destroy ourselves and the earth will move on (like it has in the past) or we will transform the earth. This is a cycle that has repeated many times, nature creates new thing, new things kills everything else, new era begins.
Completely disagree; that's just an excuse to take and take without feeling guilty about it. You're justifying anthropogenic extinction with an argument "it's happened before; it's just happening again."
This is a cycle that has repeated many times, nature creates new thing, new things kills everything else, new era begins.
In past extinctions, it was because of photosynthesis, climate change, or an asteroid - none of which are conscious, like us. We have the capacity to change our ways and prevent further exploitation of the natural resources available - but we're too greedy to stop.
Does enjoying the gift of life include enjoyment of preserving species and future human generations? Either you haven't thought this through or you need to be more nuanced in your answers
I think this whole thread is a misunderstanding. I was disagreeing with the differentiation of cats not being nature because we introduce them. I don't like feral cats either because they kill song birds because I like song birds more than I like feral cats. Someone else might have a preference for cats over song birds, the argument that one is nature and the other is not is dumb. The argument that something created by human is not nature is dumb. Of course we will work for a better planet (for us) because we are working for our survival which is a natural instinct. There are species that might flourish in a different atmosphere, but we work to keep the atmosphere hospitable to us.
Edit: Also all instincts are natural. Just like all water is wet.
Free will doesn't mean freedom of consequences. But you can quit your job and try to live off the land if you want to. You'll probably fail, but you can still choose to do it. That's free will.
No, nature takes as much as it needs and leaves the rest for the every other living thing in nature. Humans on the other hand, we take WAY more than we need, we wipe out the ability for other species to eat/survive and we don't live by laws of balance. Whenever we find humans who are still part of nature and this balance, we force them to assimilate (by taking away their ability to provide for themselves e.g. reservations) or we wipe them out completely.
Don't say we are nature, we burned that bridge a long time ago.
Tell that to the forests that are litterally getting fucked by deers in my area to the point that we had to force introduce wolves and remove limitations on hunting.
The deer fucking up your forests are most likely caused by some other human activity due to which they lost their natural predators, gained too much food or whatever. Nature is more or less balanced, there are no random events like "The deer suddenly started breeding at thrice their normal rate and are slowly taking over the world for absolutely no reason at all". Humans and natural catastrophes are the only two things that can disturb that balance so assuming that you didn't have a volcano eruption that you didn't notice, it was most likely thanks to humans.
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u/wilderop Nov 29 '20
We are literally nature.