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One counfounding factor is that we tend to normalize. There are environmental conservation groups in Wales working to keep the sheep because that's "how it's al
by meristohm 5y ago
One counfounding factor is that we tend to normalize. There are environmental conservation groups in Wales working to keep the sheep because that's "how it's always been", when better would be to allow more beaver to grow up and shape the land so that it might be reforested again. Same with Ireland, which used to be a rainforest and home to much-larger and more numerous fish than are seen today. [0]
I can imagine having a nice, safe home, with enough food and ways to maintain good health, without all the trappings I am currently entangled with and which have a cost far beyond what I feel this planet can reasonably bear as we push to the next billion people. That life would be easy enough (I'm not saying without effort, mind) because I'd have been born into it, learned the necessary skills, learned about the tens of thousands of other life-forms I live with.
To transition now? I might be scared. I might miss my computer. I might think too highly of myself and less about the collective, nevermind seven or eleven or sixteen thousand generations hence. I'm at the "raise a child" stage of life and even now I (think I) accept my own death if were to happen today. The stories I care about involve humans existing alongside so much other life for thousands of years hence, with an unbroken history (oral or otherwise) so those at the end of life on earth have a really interesting story to look back on. Measuring humans in the billions and cheetahs in the thousands is not a healthy sign (for example).
[0] Feral : Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life, by George Monbiot
See also : The Old Way : a story of the first people, by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas (lived with the Zhu/wasi (the slash is a click), or Ju/wasi as her mother spelled it, for about five years in the 50s and noted the changes over the decades from hunter-gatherer to pastoralist, with efforts to maintain culture along the way)