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if you could press a button and have all humans disappear from the planet would you press it?
just "poof" gone. (and that means you too.)
do you believe humans have lost their privilege to share the earth with other forms of life?
I know that anthropocentrism isn't all too popular these days (understandably so - we are drunk with illusory power), but whenever someone asks me what animal I would want to be, I say "human". Not to be clever, not to be different, but because I truly think that humans have the most interesting experience of all life of earth.
Through our eyes, the universe peers at itself. We contemplate what it means to contemplate. We develop abstract representations. We consider what it means that a mass of particles has assembled to form sentience - the same particles that form pond water and distant stars. We imagine our futures; we imagine what lies beyond the sky. Each of our individual narratives constitute a rich and deeply unique understanding of life and the universe. We search. We find.
We build and destroy. We make colossal mistakes, and we kill for stupid reasons. But something about me cannot keep from being innately curious about the human condition, the beautifully imperfect creatures that we are. For that reason alone, I would let humanity live.
as much as I agree with this, the single extinction of a unique population is not worth it. We are in the middle of the seventh mass extinction. entire species wiped off the planet because we need minerals to build ipods. i just cant wrap my brain around how one species can do so much damage. as uncle ben said "with great power comes great responsibility". if you give a king power and he abuses it beyond belief should he be kept in charge or have that power stripped from him and given back to those below? our colossal mistakes are too colossal. Human beings are the greatest species for everything you mentioned but the cost is too great. i would press that button in a heart beat.
The first time I read your response, I tentatively agreed with you. To use an analogy on a smaller scale - if faced with the decision of executing a serial killer or letting him live free, I would undoubtedly choose to execute him.
But then I re-read my own comment, and we're left with a much more complicated analogy. What if this killer was also the most intelligent, productive, inventive, and accomplished being on the planet? Not that he's an evil mastermind - he has made countless advancements in technology, medicine, art, mathematics, philosophy, science, and more... but he has also killed six or seven people in order to achieve these things.
Would you still execute him?
i feel like its impossible to come up with a proper analogy for this. there are so many factors that go into determining the continuation of all of mankind. when it comes down to it i feel like art math science and philosophy are worthless when compared to the biodiversity on the only planet we know that can sustain life. i appreciate nature over anthropology.
and with your analogy if that man had the option to use his knowledge to start to help people then he deserves the chance to prove himself. if given this opportunity and he continues to kill person after person then in order to protect the innocent i would execute him. so when the analogy is moved over to us humans, the human race has the potential to save the planet and even bring it to a remarkable state but thats not happening. it gets drastically worse every year. biodiversity and the overall health of the earth is going down the drain. entire ecosystems are being wiped out to make macys parking lots. weve created great things that no other species can make but what does that even mean in the grand scheme of things? i believe mankind's achievements are shadowed by his ignorance and apathy. we have been given the chance to make things right and speaking for the human race as a whole, we have done nothing.
i would execute him to save the innocent (regardless of how interesting his life experience may be compare to theirs)
Well if we're getting into the "grand scheme of things", then it could be argued that neither the accomplishments of mankind NOR the existence of animal species really means anything. So basically we're both making different value judgments here, and both of them are more or less arbitrary.
Humanity has found itself with an incredibly powerful gift that is difficult to wield. Can nothing be said for the fact that we are just now becoming aware of our own shortcomings? That's something that can be said of no other beings that we know - the species you speak of would devour their prey if given the chance, with no regards to the morality of the situation. The only reason life subsists is because all things are equally good at killing each other - humans have simply stumbled upon a particularly good method of murder and survival.
And from that odd quirk of evolution, we've found ourselves exploring worlds beyond ours, manipulating the laws of nature, and creating blueprints for the universe. But we are slowly moving past the era of ignoring the consequences of immediate satisfaction. We are trying to make amends. No other species would shed a tear for the endangered, but we do, because we are blessed/cursed with morality and intelligence.
So I think you need to take into account that we are currently in a transitional point in human history. Up until now, we hardly understood the detrimental effects of our expansion upon nature. Now that we know, we are struggling with the delicate balance between progression and stability. Give humanity the chance to make the right decision, because the jury's still out.
I don't get what you mean by how we "lost our privilage" to share the earth. It was never a privilage to begin with. When our species came to be, nothing said that it was a privilage. Nature doesn't give privilages to certain species, nature doesn't care. Our "privilage to live here" is nonexistant. We simply came to be, were inteligent enough to take advantage of what we had, and wound up being the dominant race of the planet.
On topic, no. We have power. No other species on the planet can do anything close to what we do. We are able to think, get outside of instinct, and grasp at the universe itself. How we're simply made of atoms, how our own bodies work, how we're really just living on a speck of sand. We constantly innovate, think and create, the things we do, are things no other species living on this rock can do. I wouldn't squander everything we have, have made, and are simply because we have flaws and mistakes.
Some people are extremely smart and use their intellect to help humanity continue. Like Henry Ford for example, he gave us the car and to an extent built the future. As misanthropic as I may be, not everyone in the world is bad. Society needs to progress, but I have no idea when it will end.
Actually, there's an even more relevant episode. A businessman is tired of the unbearable people surrounding him, and comes across a book about focusing one's concentration to achieve all desires. He puts it to use and finds that he can eliminate people from existence, and eventually makes all of humanity disappear. He soon becomes incredibly bored, and decides to recreate humanity in his own image, but finds this to be even more insufferable. He returns the earth to the way it was.
Ture. Why not just end it all and let earth return back to its vegetative state? We offer nothing good, I am pretty ashamed to be a human because of our inability to care about anything other than material objects and ourselves. Of course there are going to be people who contradict the above statement, but I want them to. That means they actually give a shit about the earth and how it actually gave us the means of reproduction and the means of living, breathing, etc. The least we could do is not be stuck up assholes.