do you think humanity is worth saving?

[magma]

true, like in not being positive when the world is in pain and it doesn't head anywhere, wasting a tremendous potential we have to achieve enlightenment and peace

How can a planet be in pain? I understand how organisms can experience pain, but not a completely non-sentient lump of rock whizzing around a star.

Is Mercury also in pain? Venus? Io? The Moon?

Also : How can the Earth be better without us when there will be nothing intelligent enough left to compare the before and after? I doubt even Dolphins or any of the other Great Apes have a concept of the Earth as a giant ecosystem in the way that Man does. For something to have a value (how good it is) there must be an intelligence to judge that value - us.

We don't owe any other species anything for the sake of it. We should save other animals because we want to... it's nice living in a good and pretty world... but we define what's pretty, we define what's good... it will be neither once we've left until an other organism evolves the ability to think about planets.

[alien pimp]

How can a planet be in pain? I understand how organisms can experience pain, but not a completely non-sentient lump of rock whizzing around a star.

Is Mercury also in pain? Venus? Io? The Moon?

are you back?

[magma]

So you mean something different by "The world is in pain"?

Do you mean the human world or the world as a single entity that can experience pain?

And how could it be judged as "better without us" with nobody to judge? Was the Earth "better" before us? In who's eyes/thoughts?

You see "better" is a value judgement. You can't make a value judgement about the Earth without knowing what the Earth is. Even humans have only known what the Earth is for a couple of centuries (i.e. a planet orbiting a star inhabited with naturally evolved life) . We're babies in the scheme of things... we have a lot to learn and even more to achieve, but we're only just beginning.

[sonar]

Also : How can the Earth be better without us when there will be nothing intelligent enough left to compare the before and after? I doubt even Dolphins or any of the other Great Apes have a concept of the Earth as a giant ecosystem in the way that Man does. For something to have a value (how good it is) there must be an intelligence to judge that value - us.

I find it really strange to think of our planet/solar system/UNIVERSE without organisms of adaquate intelligence to appreciate it.

[magma]

Also : How can the Earth be better without us when there will be nothing intelligent enough left to compare the before and after? I doubt even Dolphins or any of the other Great Apes have a concept of the Earth as a giant ecosystem in the way that Man does. For something to have a value (how good it is) there must be an intelligence to judge that value - us.

I find it really strange to think of our planet/solar system/UNIVERSE without organisms of adaquate intelligence to appreciate it.

Same... but up until a few hundred years ago, even we didn't know how the planet fitted together. Most animals don't know anything apart from their own immediate habitat, migratory animals know more, but I doubt a salmon knows much about why the currents it follows work.

We're very possibly the only animal on this planet with the ability to judge the Earth as a whole, therefore keeping it good as a whole is a purely Human pursuit. After we're gone, all the animals will only worry about their little patch again... and even then only from a position of "there is food here, I'll stay... there's not food here, I'll leave/die."

Our brains are awesome. The most complicated structure we've ever discovered in the Universe is inside every single one of our heads. Of course we should preserve that!

[hackman]

true, like in not being positive when the world is in pain and it doesn't head anywhere, wasting a tremendous potential we have to achieve enlightenment and peace

How can a planet be in pain? I understand how organisms can experience pain, but not a completely non-sentient lump of rock whizzing around a star.

Is Mercury also in pain? Venus? Io? The Moon?

Also : How can the Earth be better without us when there will be nothing intelligent enough left to compare the before and after? I doubt even Dolphins or any of the other Great Apes have a concept of the Earth as a giant ecosystem in the way that Man does. For something to have a value (how good it is) there must be an intelligence to judge that value - us.

We don't owe any other species anything for the sake of it. We should save other animals because we want to... it's nice living in a good and pretty world... but we define what's pretty, we define what's good... it will be neither once we've left until an other organism evolves the ability to think about planets.

of course the planets alive, as is every planet
everything has a life force
your seriously out of touch with nature if you think this is a lifeless bit of rock
gaia hypothesis, james lovelock?

[kay]

humanity is not worth saving in its current state.

You're a right bundle of laughs, you lot. Christ.

Humans are fucking great. Stonehenge, symphonies, smallpox vaccine, cider, reggae, the Sistine Chapel...CURRY!

Brilliant.

I care far more for humanity than I do for the planet and I believe we'll still be going strong when its been burned to a crisp.

BRING ON OUTER SPACE.

My point had nothing to do with the environment or the rare pink-spotted fluffy turtle. It was probably unclear (though i tried to clarify in a later post) that it was simply to do with what we do to ourselves. As a species, we are (probably) guilty of more intraspecies violence/depradation/shit than pretty much any other species out there. "Being saved" implies (to me anyway) that either an outside agency takes charge and does the saving, or that a subset of humanity takes on the role to save the rest of humanity based on whatever principles it deems humanity should aspire to. In other words, some agency, whether external or internal, has to actively take a course of action to do the saving.

That's what I'm objecting to. Humanity does not and should not need saving. What it needs is to wake up. If we are as intelligent, perceptive and sentient as some of us claim to be, then we should never be in the position where we require saving as a species. The question should never even come up. Even now, most people know deep down what needs to be done to fix our various problems. We just don't. If we aren't bothered enough to fix problems that we caused for ourselves in the first place, why should we be saved?

However, since we find ourselves in a situation where the question can even be posed (implying that humanity has done something wrong enough that its existence could be threatened and therefore might require saving), something's not quite right. In which case I think we deserve to have events play out naturally. Either we will work through the various crises, or we won't. Just like any other species out there. We don't need to be saved.

Caveat to this argument would be a disaster of epic proportions such as a massive meteor/comet strike, the sun giving out a massive flare, a massive gamma ray burst in our vicinity, a black hole that wanders too close to the solar system, we discover our current situation was the social engineering project of some external or internal agency, etc. It would be an external event that interrupts the playing out of events as they should have occured. In this case because humanity would (probably) be terminated suddenly and without full natural resolution of its own doings, I would advocate for the saving of humanity in order that humanity's story would still be able to develop and unfold to its eventual natural conclusion for better or worse.

[parson]

genevieve seems to be missing out entirely on the big picture.

[parson]

a clever cancer is still cancer. no other species on earth is cancer. every other species is a vital organ.

[uncle bill]

are you kissing your mum with this mouth?

you sound like a shit documentary on tv, do you talk like that in real life too?
i've seen a lot of americans lately act all the time like they're on big brother or some soap opera, for sure there's gotta be plenty of documentary-guys too in this world

What offended you this time - the positivity or the ability to string a sentence together?

What does "are you kissing your mum with this mouth" mean? It's a random collection of words.

Are you exhaling a tomorrow of custard?

[parson]

people thinking they don't need the planet and they can exist just fine in outer space is very much like a liver (or a liver tumor) deciding it doesn't need the host and can live fine without the rest of the body.

[uncle bill]

people thinking they don't need the planet and they can exist just fine in outer space is very much like a liver (or a liver tumor) deciding it doesn't need the host and can live fine without the rest of the body.

A liver (or a liver tumour) isn't capable of making that decision in the first place, let alone inventing the necessary tools and strategies to make it happen.

There are people, right now, living productive existences on a space station in Earth orbit - just 200 years after we invented the steam locomotive. As a species we are capable of amazing progress in a tiny space of time.

[parson]

fascinating way to miss the point entirely.

[parson]

people on remote islands like hawaii get enough anxiety from just being that isolated from the rest of the population. if people really tried to distance themselves from the rest of the collective consciousness, not to mention the whole of the gaian mind, i reckon they'd become insane and suicidal rather quickly.

[alien pimp]

What offended you this time - the positivity or the ability to string a sentence together?

What does "are you kissing your mum with this mouth" mean? It's a random collection of words.

gold!

anyone else is clueless about what does "are you kissing your mum with this mouth" mean? need to know you better!

[fuagofire]

a clever cancer is still cancer. no other species on earth is cancer. every other species is a vital organ.

even donkeys?

[parson]

yes. even donkeys.

[neon-dubz]

EDIT: This is an article from New Scientist....Just to excite the debate.

How interfering humans helped Amazon diversity

* 08:00 13 April 2010 by Anil Ananthaswamy

Don't tell Sting, but human activity may not be all bad news for the Amazon. A study of South American savannahs suggests that even before Europeans arrived, farmers were changing ecosystems with a landscaping method previously unrecognised in the region. What's more, the pre-Columbian alterations may have increased biodiversity.

"Human actions cannot always be characterised as bad for biodiversity," says Doyle McKey of the University of Montpellier 2, France. "Some might be good."

McKey and his colleagues came to their conclusion after studying some strange features of the savannahs of French Guiana. These plains are flooded during the rainy season, dry and parched in the summer, and often burned by fires. It was while walking through this landscape that McKey started wondering about undulations in the terrain.

It turned out that they are mounds, mostly about 1.5 metres across and 30 centimetres high. McKey thinks that pre-Columbian farmers made them as beds for crops that drained well in the rainy season. Sure enough, when the team tested the mounds' drainage capacity, they found it was nine times as high as the seasonally flooded savannah.
New tenants

Once these fields were abandoned between 800 and 400 years ago, plants and animals colonised the mounds, creating a new ecosystem. Specifically, McKey's team found that the leaf-cutter ant Acromyrmex octospinosus, the predatory ant Ectatomma brunneum and the Nasutitermitinae subfamily of termites preferred to build their nests on the raised beds.

The Acromyrmex, which are fungus-growing ants, even transported large quantities of organic matter to their nest. This in turn has caused the plants on the mounds to grow bigger and their roots deeper. The consequent structural integrity of the mounds and their excellent permeability to water has protected them from erosion by flood waters.

McKey expects that the alterations have been beneficial for the biodiversity of the area. "It's clear that a savannah with this heterogeneity will have a higher biodiversity than just a flat savannah," he says.

Besides French Guiana, such mounds can be found in Surinam, Belize, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Mexico. The new study is bound to further fuel the debate over whether most of the Amazon rainforest and the associated savannahs are pristine ecosystems. "To my mind, the debate has been too black-and-white," says McKey. "Nature and culture are interacting to produce interesting things, and maybe that is the way this debate should go."

[parson]

it is now important to make a clear distinction about "human" actions.

some humans are the indigenous earth people.

some humans are babylon.

[neon-dubz]

it is now important to make a clear distinction about "human" actions.

some humans are the indigenous earth people.

some humans are babylon.

TRUEDAT.