As the title implies, this is a question I have been grappling with since I could form a coherent thought. The current election results of the USA seems to reinforce this idea to me, do we do anything for this planet that is beneficial beyond trying to dampen the mistakes we have already made to the environment? I hate our species because our progress is damnation for everything else and I know any child I could have would just be contributing to the problem…
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We are absolutely parasites. Our well-being is predicated on the demise or cost of everything around us. Trees and plants, animals, each other we’ll consume everything around us in order to thrive. We are so inwardly focused that we will never collectively care enough to change that behavior. We empirically make other species lives worse. Minus like dogs and cats. They seem to get a pass.
personally I’m a symbiote, usually with other humans. They provide me their pain and drama, I provide them my calm and ease. We both need the other, it seems.
However the human heart is an unending hole, anyone owning one must know that to some extent. You can moderate it, or you can become as craven as the world around you. Enough seems to be incredibly hard for people to understand, or achieve.
Adaptive pressure is what I’m saying, is what is ill here. Adaptive pressure pushed for never ending growth from markets, and gave it few places to relieve that stress. Our modern economy requires endless growth, not by design but by level of corruption.
It’s as maladaptive as it comes, the way humans in the US appear to have voted. I’m one of them, but obviously I was voting the other way. This entire modern take on economy in that it says educating people creates educated jobs. It is nothing more than wish fulfillment.
Instead by over pricing and undervaluing education they assure there will be less of it in the future. Education is required to understand such things as long term consequences, and what just happened is the most massive failure in education I’ve ever heard of.
We are, as a species, hard to kill survivors. That looks like being a parasite sometimes, or a pest. Our determination to survive gives rise to many of our worst behaviors.
I guess I thought the rest of the species and I were on the same page of thinking that we needed to discourage those behaviors.
It’s okay to be wrong, it happens all the time to anyone to make a declaritory statement, and I think that humility is something really missing from our leadership.
This planet isn’t an organism. It’s just the setting for an endless struggle over resources. Humans are just more effective at it than some other species. There’s nothing noble or pure about nature. It’s just as bloodthirsty and vicious as we are, because we’re part of it. You’re trying to measure humanity by idealised standards that wouldn’t exist without humanity. No other species would even pause to question its impact on those around it.
“This planet isn’t an organism. It’s just the setting for an endless struggle over resources. Humans are just more effective at it than some other species. There’s nothing noble or pure about nature. It’s just as bloodthirsty and vicious as we are, because we’re part of it.”
You summarized it so well- this planet is set up for a dog eat dog world- bc nature IS the one forcing that. Yes, humans are ruthless- but so is every other animal or organism, if they were allowed to dominate and take over.
We were screwed since day1- being on Earth MEANS we have to do our worst to survive. And if not by humans, it would be some other animal or organism.
The Earth sets up the stage for ruthlessness- and that’s exactly what we get in life- be it animal or human or plant or bacteria or anything else.
I used to watch nature documentaries since I was a kid- and was fascinated by it. Now, I am terrified of “nature.” Watch any nature documentary and it is kill or be killed, and eventually all killers become prey themselves. The “circle of life” is vicious and cruel- not pretty or a lovely song.
Yeah, when you think about the amount of suffering that takes place in nature, it’s kind of hard to stomach. I guess some people have a much higher tolerance for pain, so to them it all just seems worth it.
Personally, I hope for a time when it’s all replaced by some variety of cyborg being who have the ability to turn off pain, and don’t need to eat each other to survive. Or possibly just wiped out by an all-consuming AI that has no capacity to suffer at all. But those sound like the plans of a sci-fi villain, so…
“I guess some people have a much higher tolerance for pain,”
-No, they don’t. Trust me, as someone who has chronic pain and chronic health issues, most normal healthy ppl do NOT have a high tolerance for pain. What these ppl have are decent lives where they’ve NEVER had to suffer. If you give these ppl just a TINY bit of pain, like just a bad cold, they act like babies and think they have it SO bad.
But when it is someone else who has major chronic issues, they tell you to “just suck it up” or “don’t think about it” or “it’s no big deal.” Trust me, as someone who’s seen this kind of shit from 98% of humans for decades- most healthy ppl do NOT have a high tolerance for pain when it comes to themselves, but has the audacity to tell others “to just suck it up” and to “stop complaining” about pain.
Also, you’re under the misconception that most ppl think about suffering. No, they don’t. Most ppl prefer to stick their heads in the sand and think about food, the popular celebrities, cool outfits, etc. Most humans don’t think that deep, and most ppl definitely do not think about all the suffering on this planet.
We, the depressed sacks of potatoes, are the ones who do. And hence, why we are on sites like SP. Those who simply do not think deep, do not suffer issues of existential crises or all the other ills of society.
To be fair, I said “some”, not “most”. Some people will break a limb and just shrug it off, and as soon as it’s fixed go right back to whatever dangerous activity caused it. Some even seem to enjoy the experience of war, including the blood and the terror. But I suppose there are different kinds of pain. If you talked to such people after they were permanently paralyzed by their exploits, perhaps they wouldn’t be so bullish.
I don’t know if one can say that it would be objectively better if this world didn’t exist. I sometimes lean towards that conclusion, but then I’m hypersensitive & depressive, so I’m not sure I’m capable of evaluating it in a balanced way.
As far as I can tell very few philosophers throughout history have come to the conclusion that it would be better if the world didn’t exist. Even most pessimists don’t seem to advocate for suicide or antinatalism. So of those who have thought about it deeply, most seem to have come to the conclusion that it is all somehow worth it. Though I suppose those who did decide that they were better off dead were probably less likely to stick around and try to convince others of their ideas.
oh soon enough, we will have AI take over, and AI will decide that humans are too unstable and too bad for this Earth, and we will be eliminated.