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I think I can speak from experience, you mostly describe may way of looking at life. It's not without respect though. Even if life is nothing special in the gra
by CuriousSkeptic 11y ago
I think I can speak from experience, you mostly describe may way of looking at life. It's not without respect though. Even if life is nothing special in the grand scheme of things, it can still be very special from a subjective perspective.
For me the respect, and awe, for life comes from how each individual is the proverbial snowflake, as an instance of life, and an incredibly complex, emergent and dynamic one at that.
Take something completely lifeless like a stalactite as a reference. Tehy can take millenniums to form, but the process really isn't very special, just water dripping from the ceiling. Which most people realize, yet most people still feel a certain amount of awe when presented with one, and would be appalled if someone just decided to take it down for no reason. That would be disrespectful.
It's the same thing when we talk about species going extinct. Most of us has no particular connection to most species, and shouldn't be bothered. But still, every species has its own unique character and beauty, which will leave an emptiness behind of possibilities lost, so is a sad thing to loose for that reason alone.
So I think discovering more instance of living things would not make life less valued, on the contrary, more uniqeness would only bring more things to be in awe of.
- etangent 11y agoYes, we agree that living processes are special, but part of what makes them so special is because we believe them to be unique and rare. My whole point was, what if we discover, at some point in the future, that life in the universe is not rare, but rather an inevitable process of geology, like the stalactite you're describing? (that was a great analogy, btw.) We will still think of species' as unique (identical biochemistry is exceedingly unlikely), yet life will become somewhat "commodified" in a sense, if you understand that comparison. Obviously, I took some liberty in describing a nightmarish "moral crisis" scenario; I am just surprised that my comment garnered so many responses, all of them misunderstanding my main argument in one way or another.