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I have always felt that the "what humans do is natural too!" argument is a massive cop out and totally understates the massive destruction that humans are a par

by bmitc 5y ago

I have always felt that the "what humans do is natural too!" argument is a massive cop out and totally understates the massive destruction that humans are a part of. Your analogy misses the mark by a long shot, and I would say that it's totally irrelevant except that it actually supports the opposite of what I think your point is. Beaver dams, like almost everything we find in nature, sit within a carefully evolved and evolving balance. Beaver damns actually generate and create thriving ecosystems, including benefits for other species, when viewed from a perspective other than a human one. It's only humans that find beavers a nuisance. What humans build does not add to a balance but rather provides an imbalance. There is no reason to believe, that I know of, that highways and city building, for example, support or diversify or catalyze or <whatever> the ecosystems that they replace and neighbor in any sort of holistic manner. There may be small wins for a very small subset of animal species, but other than that it is destruction and displacement of habitats. Just imagine the next time you're on a highway, even out in the country. Monitor the road kill that you see or the bug splashes on your windshield. They're killed by technology they don't understand while trying to cross a habitat they once crossed freely that is now separated by large swaths of concrete and impassable barriers. Think about all the animals that literally have huge lines drawn in between areas they once roamed. Then notice all the fences, cut grass, buildings, and more that are there and increase in density as you get back closer to the city. All the birds, insects, mammals, and other animals that once inhabited those areas have to go somewhere, or they die off. Now they get condensed and dispersed into areas of tighter competition for resources, all the while still being pushed out by humans in more and more creative ways. There is nothing about this that increases the diversity of ecosystems that once were. It decimates them, literally. I encourage you to go to a remote place and just notice the area absolutely teeming with varieties of flora and fauna. Then imagine a road there, a house there, etc. and realize what would happen to all that there is there. Then multiply that destruction, degradation, and displacement by the size of human habitats. Do you know why bat houses are so effective and encouraged by state governments and conversation groups? It's because humans have destroyed and taken over habitat areas for bats, and they struggle to natural find places to call home. https://www.mass.gov/guides/bat-houses#-why-are-bat-houses-important?- https://www.mass.gov/guides/bat-houses#-why-are-bat-houses-i... https://www.nps.gov/subjects/bats/habitat-loss.htm https://www.nps.gov/subjects/bats/habitat-loss.htm So again, your example supports the opposite of what you think. The fact that bats show up so readily is that they are struggling to find other suitable areas that used to be there. I would encourage you to think about things from a different perspective when you are out in the "nature" that humans have built. Would you like if another species or even a human bulldozed your house and then built you a little tent to live on a corner of your former plot? Would you call that a "win"? Would you like it if there was, for all intents and purposes, an impenetrable wall or walls built between you and grocery stores and separates you from your family and friends? What humans have done may be "natural" in a very general sense, but it is almost entirely self-serving. There are clear reasons why extinction rates have gone up and there are countless stories of species struggling more and more in the past 100-200 years.

ChuckMcM 5y ago
"I have always felt that the "what humans do is natural too!" argument is a massive cop out and totally understates the massive destruction that humans are a part of." Fair enough. I agree that if we start from the position that humans are not a part of nature then their impact on their environment is "unnatural." I just find it really hard to support that argument in any meaningful way. I would ask "Are volcanoes part of the natural environment?" When they erupted and created a mass extinction event was that "unnatural"? It is very biblical to put humans "above" nature but that seems to require that the presence of humans on Earth itself is an unnatural state of affairs. If one subscribes to the theory that Homo Sapiens evolved it feels problematic to me that at one point they were "natural" and at another time they were not. We are quite likely an evolutionary "dead end" if we are successful at pulling off another mass extinction event. But I don't consider us "unnatural", just imperfect. I would completely agree that our ability to reason has given individuals the capability of choosing how they impact the environment (unlike the beaver that just does what beavers do), but at the same time we are not a 'hive mind' type species where such reasoning was somehow "injected" into every individual. What the article has advocated are strategies that individuals or small groups of individuals might do to have a different effect on the environment than they currently do. And I think that is an excellent thing. What I disagree with is that change to an ecosystem is "destruction." It changes what flora and fauna that ecosystem supports, and we may very well change the ecosystem we live in such that it no longer supports human beings. However, if we do that, the world will continue on without us and the ecosystem will continue to change as new flora and fauna evolve to fill the gaps that humans created. I don't consider it a "cop out" to consider humans to be part of nature, I think of it as a way of looking at human impact in a more dispassionate way. Humans change their ecosystem to support themselves and their offspring. They may do that poorly or in a way that has long term negative effects on their ability to survive, but struggle to define that as unnatural.
- bmitc 5y ago
  Part of my point is that the argument really isn't about what is natural or not. It isn't important, and that's why it's a cop out. Humans are clearly part of nature, evolving via the same processes as everything else. What is clear is that humans have continually, and at increasing rates, broken out of the precedence set by everything before in terms of fitting into the existing balance and that this reverberates throughout the world in a way that is on the whole not good for nearly any ecosystem. This is what is argued by people bringing attention to these matters. What doesn't matter is whether this is "natural" or not. What matters is that this is bad for basically everything else, and we've already experienced and we're seeing more signs that it's bad for us as well. Our propensity for violence and technological development has allowed us to flourish and break out of evolutionary development and "cheat" on regarding what resources are available to us. Other animals are usually checked by nature when resource use becomes problematic. Humans are checked but then adapt new ways to consume resources due to technology and our physical adaptability. I actually didn't make the point that our ability to reason is the key. Other animals potentially match or even exceed (it is unknown) our ability to reason. Such animals are whales, particularly orcas. So I think our reasoning ability is not actually unique. What is unique is our reasoning mixed with physical attributes that make technology development possible and a selfishness and propensity for violence. This leads to technological development that vastly outpaces social and emotional development, which has led to our ad-hoc world and the mess we're in. > What I disagree with is that change to an ecosystem is "destruction." It changes what flora and fauna that ecosystem supports, and we may very well change the ecosystem we live in such that it no longer supports human beings. However, if we do that, the world will continue on without us and the ecosystem will continue to change as new flora and fauna evolve to fill the gaps that humans created. When it comes to human induced change, that change is indeed almost always destructive in that existing flora and fauna are reduced in bother numbers and diversity. I highly, highly doubt humans are ever eradicated save for Earth-level events (asteroid or something like that). I also think "Earth will continue without us" is another cop out. Yes, it would, but not with out destruction and suffering.

by bmitc 5y ago

ChuckMcM 5y ago

"I have always felt that the "what humans do is natural too!" argument is a massive cop out and totally understates the massive destruction that humans are a part of." Fair enough. I agree that if we start from the position that humans are not a part of nature then their impact on their environment is "unnatural." I just find it really hard to support that argument in any meaningful way. I would ask "Are volcanoes part of the natural environment?" When they erupted and created a mass extinction event was that "unnatural"? It is very biblical to put humans "above" nature but that seems to require that the presence of humans on Earth itself is an unnatural state of affairs. If one subscribes to the theory that Homo Sapiens evolved it feels problematic to me that at one point they were "natural" and at another time they were not. We are quite likely an evolutionary "dead end" if we are successful at pulling off another mass extinction event. But I don't consider us "unnatural", just imperfect. I would completely agree that our ability to reason has given individuals the capability of choosing how they impact the environment (unlike the beaver that just does what beavers do), but at the same time we are not a 'hive mind' type species where such reasoning was somehow "injected" into every individual. What the article has advocated are strategies that individuals or small groups of individuals might do to have a different effect on the environment than they currently do. And I think that is an excellent thing. What I disagree with is that change to an ecosystem is "destruction." It changes what flora and fauna that ecosystem supports, and we may very well change the ecosystem we live in such that it no longer supports human beings. However, if we do that, the world will continue on without us and the ecosystem will continue to change as new flora and fauna evolve to fill the gaps that humans created. I don't consider it a "cop out" to consider humans to be part of nature, I think of it as a way of looking at human impact in a more dispassionate way. Humans change their ecosystem to support themselves and their offspring. They may do that poorly or in a way that has long term negative effects on their ability to survive, but struggle to define that as unnatural.

bmitc 5y ago
Part of my point is that the argument really isn't about what is natural or not. It isn't important, and that's why it's a cop out. Humans are clearly part of nature, evolving via the same processes as everything else. What is clear is that humans have continually, and at increasing rates, broken out of the precedence set by everything before in terms of fitting into the existing balance and that this reverberates throughout the world in a way that is on the whole not good for nearly any ecosystem. This is what is argued by people bringing attention to these matters. What doesn't matter is whether this is "natural" or not. What matters is that this is bad for basically everything else, and we've already experienced and we're seeing more signs that it's bad for us as well. Our propensity for violence and technological development has allowed us to flourish and break out of evolutionary development and "cheat" on regarding what resources are available to us. Other animals are usually checked by nature when resource use becomes problematic. Humans are checked but then adapt new ways to consume resources due to technology and our physical adaptability. I actually didn't make the point that our ability to reason is the key. Other animals potentially match or even exceed (it is unknown) our ability to reason. Such animals are whales, particularly orcas. So I think our reasoning ability is not actually unique. What is unique is our reasoning mixed with physical attributes that make technology development possible and a selfishness and propensity for violence. This leads to technological development that vastly outpaces social and emotional development, which has led to our ad-hoc world and the mess we're in. > What I disagree with is that change to an ecosystem is "destruction." It changes what flora and fauna that ecosystem supports, and we may very well change the ecosystem we live in such that it no longer supports human beings. However, if we do that, the world will continue on without us and the ecosystem will continue to change as new flora and fauna evolve to fill the gaps that humans created. When it comes to human induced change, that change is indeed almost always destructive in that existing flora and fauna are reduced in bother numbers and diversity. I highly, highly doubt humans are ever eradicated save for Earth-level events (asteroid or something like that). I also think "Earth will continue without us" is another cop out. Yes, it would, but not with out destruction and suffering.