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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 pa

"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.
- curtainsforus 5y ago
  >Not without destruction or suffering Imagine a world without humans. Every day, millions of animals that are able to feel pain die in horrible agony as they're eaten alive; die of hunger or disease; are afflicted by horrific parasitism, or birth defects, or any of a hundred different horrors. Earth is a giant ball of suffering, and has been since the first animal with a nervous system sufficient to feel pain evolved. It seems pretty hubristic to lay that at the feet of humanity. Yeah, if we don't coordinate we might wipe out some species, collapse some ecosystems. So? Those ecosystems have beautiful parts in them, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder; and in any case, their beauty is built on the ongoing torture of (presumably) sentient animals. In that case, bring on the mass extinctions, I say; in fact, we should probably speed them up. Shoot or nuke animals instead of letting them starve to death or be eaten alive. Maybe we can re-introduce animals once we've made them immortal and immune to pain. (I don't actually want this, I like nature and forests. But I like them because I find them beautiful, and I perceive their value as originating from humans (and to a lesser extent sentient animals) finding them beautiful. I don't care about them for some other metaphysical reason, and nature is beautiful <=> humanity is evil isn't a viewpoint I've ended up with. )
  - bmitc 5y ago
    Another cop out: there's already suffering in the world, so why do anything about it? There are two points. One is that animals and plants suffer in order for others to survive. For the most part, a balance is achieved. Animals and plants take what they need in order to survive, and there's no other way for them to survive. Humans are different. We don't need all the destruction we cause to survive. We simply choose to. The second point is that humans dramatically increase and multiply the amount of suffering in the world. The argument isn't to rid the world of suffering, because how could that even be accomplished? The argument is to reduce humanity's contributions to the suffering.
    - curtainsforus 5y ago
      >Humans dramatically increase and multiply the amount of suffering in the world I don't believe that. All the animals that are alive today would die in pain in anyway, no matter what humans do. Every deer that's shot is one not eaten alive by wolves, or starving to death. Does it matter whether a bird drowns in an oil slick or thrashes in the mouth of a crocodile? Animal life is nasty, brutish, and short. Even if we killed a large fraction of the animals on the planet in a painful way, that would be a blip in the colossal historical tapestry of pain, and as there'd be fewer animals in the next generation, it would probably be morally neutral from a consequentialist perspective: the overall, average amount of suffering would be constant. >there's already suffering in the world, so why do anything about it? No, that's not what I'm saying. If I care about suffering, I only care slightly (instrumentally) whether it's caused by humans or nature. You seem to care a lot, but I don't. If I 'm going to decide to care about the suffering of animals generally, then that's going to lead me to certain conclusions. If humans are going to take responsibility for animal suffering, we should take responsibility for all animal suffering, meaning we should reorganize/destroy the ecosphere, replacing it with something more moral. We should also become able to be wise stewards of the new world, of course. But if I put myself into the mindset of "I care about the suffering of animals", then going from that to "humans should be hippies and let nature be, man" seems pretty evil. If the suffering of animals is bad, then nature is bad and should be stopped. >For the most part, a balance is achieved. Animals and plants take what they need in order to survive, and there's no other way for them to survive No, animals and plants take as much as they can get, and most of them don't get enough. The ones that don't get what they need in order to survive die, by starvation or by being got by a predator. The balance here is on a see-saw greased with the blood of living things: if I built a system like that, where little furry animals reproduced until there was no food left and then competed increasingly frantically, with some of them eating the others, and then turned around to you and said "look, they've reached a balance! As many of them die horribly as are pumped out! :)", you'd call me a psycho. You're only excusing it because it's natural. It's mathematically beautiful, of course! >The argument isn't to rid the world of suffering, because how could that even be accomplished? Wipe out the natural world: Evacuate humans and scans/genomes of all the animals we're interested in somewhere else and build a paradise there; then wreck the surface of the earth so that nothing bigger than a bacterium can survive. Maybe we could engineer runaway global warming, to turn earth into something resembling Venus? Deliberately irradiate the whole surface to the point that nothing survives? Build lots of orbital mirrors to increase the solar irradiance and boil the oceans? Grey goo? Dream big! If this sounds horrible to you, then I guess you have an aesthetic preference for forests. That's fine, but remember that forests and jungles are hell-pits of torture.

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.

curtainsforus 5y ago
>Not without destruction or suffering Imagine a world without humans. Every day, millions of animals that are able to feel pain die in horrible agony as they're eaten alive; die of hunger or disease; are afflicted by horrific parasitism, or birth defects, or any of a hundred different horrors. Earth is a giant ball of suffering, and has been since the first animal with a nervous system sufficient to feel pain evolved. It seems pretty hubristic to lay that at the feet of humanity. Yeah, if we don't coordinate we might wipe out some species, collapse some ecosystems. So? Those ecosystems have beautiful parts in them, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder; and in any case, their beauty is built on the ongoing torture of (presumably) sentient animals. In that case, bring on the mass extinctions, I say; in fact, we should probably speed them up. Shoot or nuke animals instead of letting them starve to death or be eaten alive. Maybe we can re-introduce animals once we've made them immortal and immune to pain. (I don't actually want this, I like nature and forests. But I like them because I find them beautiful, and I perceive their value as originating from humans (and to a lesser extent sentient animals) finding them beautiful. I don't care about them for some other metaphysical reason, and nature is beautiful <=> humanity is evil isn't a viewpoint I've ended up with. )
- bmitc 5y ago
  Another cop out: there's already suffering in the world, so why do anything about it? There are two points. One is that animals and plants suffer in order for others to survive. For the most part, a balance is achieved. Animals and plants take what they need in order to survive, and there's no other way for them to survive. Humans are different. We don't need all the destruction we cause to survive. We simply choose to. The second point is that humans dramatically increase and multiply the amount of suffering in the world. The argument isn't to rid the world of suffering, because how could that even be accomplished? The argument is to reduce humanity's contributions to the suffering.
  - curtainsforus 5y ago
    >Humans dramatically increase and multiply the amount of suffering in the world I don't believe that. All the animals that are alive today would die in pain in anyway, no matter what humans do. Every deer that's shot is one not eaten alive by wolves, or starving to death. Does it matter whether a bird drowns in an oil slick or thrashes in the mouth of a crocodile? Animal life is nasty, brutish, and short. Even if we killed a large fraction of the animals on the planet in a painful way, that would be a blip in the colossal historical tapestry of pain, and as there'd be fewer animals in the next generation, it would probably be morally neutral from a consequentialist perspective: the overall, average amount of suffering would be constant. >there's already suffering in the world, so why do anything about it? No, that's not what I'm saying. If I care about suffering, I only care slightly (instrumentally) whether it's caused by humans or nature. You seem to care a lot, but I don't. If I 'm going to decide to care about the suffering of animals generally, then that's going to lead me to certain conclusions. If humans are going to take responsibility for animal suffering, we should take responsibility for all animal suffering, meaning we should reorganize/destroy the ecosphere, replacing it with something more moral. We should also become able to be wise stewards of the new world, of course. But if I put myself into the mindset of "I care about the suffering of animals", then going from that to "humans should be hippies and let nature be, man" seems pretty evil. If the suffering of animals is bad, then nature is bad and should be stopped. >For the most part, a balance is achieved. Animals and plants take what they need in order to survive, and there's no other way for them to survive No, animals and plants take as much as they can get, and most of them don't get enough. The ones that don't get what they need in order to survive die, by starvation or by being got by a predator. The balance here is on a see-saw greased with the blood of living things: if I built a system like that, where little furry animals reproduced until there was no food left and then competed increasingly frantically, with some of them eating the others, and then turned around to you and said "look, they've reached a balance! As many of them die horribly as are pumped out! :)", you'd call me a psycho. You're only excusing it because it's natural. It's mathematically beautiful, of course! >The argument isn't to rid the world of suffering, because how could that even be accomplished? Wipe out the natural world: Evacuate humans and scans/genomes of all the animals we're interested in somewhere else and build a paradise there; then wreck the surface of the earth so that nothing bigger than a bacterium can survive. Maybe we could engineer runaway global warming, to turn earth into something resembling Venus? Deliberately irradiate the whole surface to the point that nothing survives? Build lots of orbital mirrors to increase the solar irradiance and boil the oceans? Grey goo? Dream big! If this sounds horrible to you, then I guess you have an aesthetic preference for forests. That's fine, but remember that forests and jungles are hell-pits of torture.