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Hmmm, I don't know how to express this without sounding threatening, and I really don't want that or to imagine that bad things were to happen to you. Your sta

Hmmm, I don't know how to express this without sounding threatening, and I really don't want that or to imagine that bad things were to happen to you. Your statement (which is a rather incomplete picture of you, granted), suggests that you don't see much of a connection between yourself and the rest of the living world. Easy enough trap to fall into, the connection is usually not conscious and few people pay attention to it. But when one does realize that one is in fact part of the world, the loss of a species is as tragic as a personal loss. Because it is. So, by analogy, say you had lost 2/3rds of your possessions due to some human-mediated act, and someone were to say to you "They are gone, leave them be, no need to restore them"... or, since possessions usually can be restored, say 1/4 of your closest friends and relatives were, oh, let's just say 'put into prison', to imply that they could be brought back, would the answer be "They are gone, leave them be. No need to have my friends and family back"? Or if that is still too removed, we could start talking about body parts. again, my apologies, I wish only good things for you and your loved ones. The thought of bad things happening to them is abhorrent. And so is the mass extinction that we are all participating in, myself included.

betwixthewires 5y ago
Well, I'm very connected to the living world, I go out of my way to be. To draw that conclusion from a simple question is a bit of a stretch. It couldn't be farther from the truth. It would be one thing to try to restore a species that went extinct recently, something that maybe played a crucial role in a dying ecosystem. But something that's been extinct for so long that it's only documentation is in ancient text, something which has living descendants right now by the billions, and in a place where the landscape has long since adapted to the current biodiversity and is already largely a human influenced landscape, it doesn't make sense to me. Bringing back extinct rhino species, or bird species, or reptile species in places where they flourished recently enough that their presence is missed by the biome, that makes a lot of sense. To me this is like bringing back the wooly mammoth, it's rationalized with practicality but in reality it's just a novelty.

betwixthewires 5y ago

Well, I'm very connected to the living world, I go out of my way to be. To draw that conclusion from a simple question is a bit of a stretch. It couldn't be farther from the truth. It would be one thing to try to restore a species that went extinct recently, something that maybe played a crucial role in a dying ecosystem. But something that's been extinct for so long that it's only documentation is in ancient text, something which has living descendants right now by the billions, and in a place where the landscape has long since adapted to the current biodiversity and is already largely a human influenced landscape, it doesn't make sense to me. Bringing back extinct rhino species, or bird species, or reptile species in places where they flourished recently enough that their presence is missed by the biome, that makes a lot of sense. To me this is like bringing back the wooly mammoth, it's rationalized with practicality but in reality it's just a novelty.