Is Humanity a Plague ?
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Every animal reshapes the world around it. Humans are just better than most.
Now, you could say that humans are a plague in the same way a horde of locusts are, but what's wrong with that? Except for them eating our crops and all, do not the locusts have just as much "right" to exist as everything else? Plagues are just (at least temporarily) very successful creatures, seems odd to condemn them for that.
Now, you could say that humans are a plague in the same way a horde of locusts are, but what's wrong with that? Except for them eating our crops and all, do not the locusts have just as much "right" to exist as everything else? Plagues are just (at least temporarily) very successful creatures, seems odd to condemn them for that.
I'm assuming you're either a troll, or a 14 year old girl. In either case, I would advise you educate yourself a little about the topic you're trying to talk about. The internet has plenty of good resources on ocean acidification, genetic diversity, evolutionary anthropology, etc. All these fields relate very well to the topic you're trying to talk about and you could really learn a lot by just googling some of those terms and browsing a bit.slypizza said:
Until then, however, please refrain from posting on the forums, especially if your post is riddled with illogical arguments, baseless evidence, horrific grammar, and above all a blatant arrogance of knowledgability that is completely undeserved. You believe you have the authority to pass judgement on the entirety of the human species; yet it's painfully obvious through your post that you don't know shit about the world. There are men out there who have slaved away their entire lives studying and trying to understand even the most minute detail of our natural world.These are Brilliant men-- men who's understanding of our place in the universe overshadows both yours and mine a hunderfold over; and yet they know perfectly well that they cant even begin to scratch the surface of what humanity's place in the universe is. So show some god damn humility when you talk.
Maybe.
Are you talking about a how we classify humans using the current scientific terminology? Or are you talking about a general, more philosophical kind of plague?
We aren?t a plague as defined by our current scientific paradigm and without an actual objective standard words like ?good? and ?evil? just become a political tool.
Who knows, maybe humans are ?mother? nature?s way of killing off all those pesky things that live on her, you don?t see any other planets covered with weird growths, do you?
The problem is: so what. Morality cannot function unless it is in a realm where pesky things like Truth, Holy and Evil exist. If not all we have is good and bad and thus war, both in an armed and unarmed sense, is evitable because good and bad are subjective.
Are you talking about a how we classify humans using the current scientific terminology? Or are you talking about a general, more philosophical kind of plague?
We aren?t a plague as defined by our current scientific paradigm and without an actual objective standard words like ?good? and ?evil? just become a political tool.
Who knows, maybe humans are ?mother? nature?s way of killing off all those pesky things that live on her, you don?t see any other planets covered with weird growths, do you?
The problem is: so what. Morality cannot function unless it is in a realm where pesky things like Truth, Holy and Evil exist. If not all we have is good and bad and thus war, both in an armed and unarmed sense, is evitable because good and bad are subjective.
No.
Seriously there is so much sadness, depression, and general negativeness here on this forum it has made me become a sad, depressed, and negative person myself.
But mostly it just makes me fucking angry.
This forum loses its faith in humanity every other day. Actually wait, more than that. It's a vicious cycle of someone does something stupid then everyone gets depressed about it. Then it just repeats every single day of the week.
To answer your question dear OP'er no we are not a thing we have done great things and will continue to do great things. That's that. We are better than we were than the dark ages, and the Roman Empire, and all that.
Also we are technically mammals. (Sorry, I had too.)
If you still don't believe me, consider this: You and apparently everyone else on the Escapist apparently share similar beliefs. Therefore, a large number of people are apparently fine by your standards.
Seriously there is so much sadness, depression, and general negativeness here on this forum it has made me become a sad, depressed, and negative person myself.
But mostly it just makes me fucking angry.
This forum loses its faith in humanity every other day. Actually wait, more than that. It's a vicious cycle of someone does something stupid then everyone gets depressed about it. Then it just repeats every single day of the week.
To answer your question dear OP'er no we are not a thing we have done great things and will continue to do great things. That's that. We are better than we were than the dark ages, and the Roman Empire, and all that.
Also we are technically mammals. (Sorry, I had too.)
If you still don't believe me, consider this: You and apparently everyone else on the Escapist apparently share similar beliefs. Therefore, a large number of people are apparently fine by your standards.
A little harsh maybe, but I wholeheartedly agree.Scipio1770 said:
Scientists have dedicated their entire lives unraveling the mysteries of our universe and have barely scratched the surface.
So when somebody who isn't them comes along and spouts nonsense rhetoric, it slightly bugs me.
No. We are not. At the risk of sounding like a Nazi, we are the pinnacle of the evolutonary achievement.
We cry for our lost loved ones.
We have created grand stories with our imaginations.
We love.
Yeah, I know it's sappy. Sue me. But, its my answer. Yes, we have problems. Yes, we need to fucking fix the amount of damage we are doing to our planet.
But to say that we are a plague?
To say that we must die?
No.
Not while I love my friends and family.
Not while I can shed a tear.
Not while I can create vast worlds with my imagination.
If ANYONE tries to take these things away from me, plague or not, I will FIGHT to keep them.
Because we are humanity.
That's what we do.
We cry for our lost loved ones.
We have created grand stories with our imaginations.
We love.
Yeah, I know it's sappy. Sue me. But, its my answer. Yes, we have problems. Yes, we need to fucking fix the amount of damage we are doing to our planet.
But to say that we are a plague?
To say that we must die?
No.
Not while I love my friends and family.
Not while I can shed a tear.
Not while I can create vast worlds with my imagination.
If ANYONE tries to take these things away from me, plague or not, I will FIGHT to keep them.
Because we are humanity.
That's what we do.
Finally, a claim that is simple to disprove, I present for evidence, myself.slypizza said:
25 year old heterosexual agnostic male who finds the religious reasoning for being chaste extremely foolish, been to a strip club only once (for the sake of my soon to be brother-in-law's bachelor party), never been drunk in spite of enjoying a glass of wine every once in a while, and have never had sex outside of a serious relationship (currently going on a year's celibacy since the last one ended, not at present looking for a female companion) And you know what? few of my friends and acquaintances are any "worse" in that respect than I am.
If you want to declare humanity evil for the sins we commit, at least attempt to acknowledge the fact that not all are as you describe. In fact, I would argue that only a tiny portion of men and women act as you claim they do.
As for the remainder of your post, like so many others, you choose to only look at the negative aspects of modern society, and utterly ignore the great things we have accomplished. If you cannot think of at least a few things immediately upon reading this, I doubt I can open your eyes enough to see.
Captcha says that this thread is a "lame duck" by the way
No. Humanity is not a plague. It is an inventful species that has come to dominate the planet.
You seem to think that we have killed such a large amount of people that satan wouldn't want use and humanities crimes are massive.
In reality murder is just a blip in human mortality. Humans don't kill humans that often when compared to other causes of death. In the entierty of human history around 00.3% of all human death has been caused by war. Cardiovascular diseases a lone caused around 29.3%! Yeah, thats right, in the grand scheme of things we don't kill each other all that much.
I am a man. I do not have sex every other hour, i do not need to head to a strip club every weekend and I would probably not buy booze at a strip club as apparently the prices are astronomical. Your theory has been disproven. I win.
This planet would be boring without self aware life forms to spice things up. I think humanity is awesome. Long may we quirky buggers reign!
Animals torture other animals. We are not the only species to do this. It is widespread. We are the only species who feel guilty about doing so. Being similar to many animals yet able to see our inadequecies makes use superior to them. Not inferior.slypizza said:
So many facepalms, so little time. I would guess that the reason we haven't heard from alien life is because the universe is bloody huge and cross galaxy travel is incredibly hard to achieve. It would also take millenia to reach us. Other methods of contact also take millenia. We haven't around long enough. It takes light from our solar system 4 years to reach the next. 4 years! How long would it takes to reach an alien in a different galaxy? We haven't been around anywhere near long enough to be noticed yet. Its that simple. If an alien had noticed use already, I would be flabbergasted.slypizza said:
How have you measured this? By what standard?slypizza said:
Learn to make your thoughts readable.slypizza said:
You seem to think that we have killed such a large amount of people that satan wouldn't want use and humanities crimes are massive.
In reality murder is just a blip in human mortality. Humans don't kill humans that often when compared to other causes of death. In the entierty of human history around 00.3% of all human death has been caused by war. Cardiovascular diseases a lone caused around 29.3%! Yeah, thats right, in the grand scheme of things we don't kill each other all that much.
Yes. It is extremely easy.slypizza said:
I am a man. I do not have sex every other hour, i do not need to head to a strip club every weekend and I would probably not buy booze at a strip club as apparently the prices are astronomical. Your theory has been disproven. I win.
Improvements how? By what bloody standard?slypizza said:
This planet would be boring without self aware life forms to spice things up. I think humanity is awesome. Long may we quirky buggers reign!
Quoted for truth.NathLines said:
Now is humanity a plague? Absolutely and without question. However we are only a plague in consideration of the fact that we refuse to manage our species responsibly. We have the intellect, we have the capacity, we just choose to allow our population to grow unchecked. (well China is trying to fix the damage they have done, but it is still not enough)
Our population should have never been allowed to exceed one billion people. Almost every major problem we face as a civilization today can be traced back to there being entirely too many people on the planet fucking things up for everyone.
I hate hearing people saying things like were making progress because they look at our history about 500-1000 years ago when warlords traveled the lands terrorizing the countryside. When death was a fear around every corner from inadequate medicine to the whims of governmental oppression. As if we are some sort of enlightened and benevolent species now or that were even headed that direction. Over 500 years ago, disease ravaged our global population and in a span of half a decade our population was reduced by 100 million people thanks in part to our ignorance and lack of medical knowledge. Roughly 400 years later we did roughly the same number of deaths over a roughly equivalent period of time through purposeful intentional destruction of others. We are more damaging and destructive now as a species than we ever have been in our history. Again this is another instance that can be traced back to there being entirely too many people. The more "civilized" we grow, the more destructive we become. We think because we have medical science, luxury technology, and have in effect subdued the general population to force morality on the widest berth of people so as people do not randomly kill each other with the same level of frequency any longer somehow makes us better people now.
We are a plague. A plague of our own creation, but certainly a plague none the less.
We won. YAY!Shawn MacDonald said:
See also: Verneshots, supervolcanoes, hypercanes, megatsunamis and meteor strikes. Our irreversible damage is a small section of a thin layer of the onion that is irreversably damaged Earth.
http://www.mailce.com/wp-content/uploads/2_62201012658_17425.jpg
http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g64/PoorOldSpike/abyss.jpg
Above: Atmosphere-burning ocean-boiling life-wiping impacts from space that make hydrogen bombs feel impotent.
You seem to imply that humanity has done more damage than the world has done to itself. How bizarrely arrogant.
No, we're just intelligent enough to know how to run this world.
The idea that we're a "Virus" just sounds silly and angsty.
We're just very good at what we do.
The idea that we're a "Virus" just sounds silly and angsty.
We're just very good at what we do.
I hate it when people start referencing humanity as the destroyer of Earth and essentially a virus and shit. They always blow it waaaay out of proportion. Like when the Russians supposedly made a bomb that could destroy the Earth in one fell swoop. Bullshit, that shit was barely visible from space. Destroying the Amazon rainforest? Well, yes initially, but we replanted that shit. What kind of a business ethic is 'destroy forest, left with no more forests, ????, profit.' Of course you're going to replant them. And as a result of human replanting instead of it happening naturally, there is 15% more tree's in the Amazon than there was in the freaking first place. And how we're pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere, so CO2 levels in the air have gone from 0.04% to.... oh, 0.039%. Well it turns out that shits going down, but since one film made while this was still a new idea told us we were idiots saying that the greenhouse effect is more deadly than godzilla in Tokyo, we all took his word for it. Al Gore said CO2 would skyrocket these past few years, creating a absolute melting point in 2020. It just fucking hasn't... And I know that 2020 hasn't come yet, but it reaaaaallly doesn't look like all the words ice reserves are going to melt by then.
Yes we're one destructive race. We've shifted more Earth than any organism to ever roam the face of the planet, we constantly blow shit up, we pollute, we farm. But that's coming to an end now, we have caused all of those problems, yes, but what people overlook, is that we are also pretty good at solving the problems we create. People (Western countries at least) Are starting to progress to a more advance, cleaner, safer future.
We've gone through our relatively short period of absolute destructibility (200 - 300 years give or take) and are starting to claw ourselves out into a sort of race that understands how the Earth works, and how to make it not blow up in our faces. The period of destruction is coming to an end, have faith in science guys.
For our 2 million year evolution cycle, 200 - 300 years of being dicks to our home isn't really too bad all things considered.
But I'm still all in favour of leaving Earth for greener pastures. Or maybe bluer pastures. Our minds and imaginations were made to live among stars.
Yes we're one destructive race. We've shifted more Earth than any organism to ever roam the face of the planet, we constantly blow shit up, we pollute, we farm. But that's coming to an end now, we have caused all of those problems, yes, but what people overlook, is that we are also pretty good at solving the problems we create. People (Western countries at least) Are starting to progress to a more advance, cleaner, safer future.
We've gone through our relatively short period of absolute destructibility (200 - 300 years give or take) and are starting to claw ourselves out into a sort of race that understands how the Earth works, and how to make it not blow up in our faces. The period of destruction is coming to an end, have faith in science guys.
For our 2 million year evolution cycle, 200 - 300 years of being dicks to our home isn't really too bad all things considered.
But I'm still all in favour of leaving Earth for greener pastures. Or maybe bluer pastures. Our minds and imaginations were made to live among stars.
Yes because rabbits,rats and other mammals do not breed until they run out resources.We are the perfect example of a succesful mammal species.Mammals breed in an area until they run out of resources then they move.Shawn MacDonald said:
We just breed too well so Agent Smith does not know what a mammal is.
You missed an important part of it.Shawn MacDonald said:
We've done damage, yes.
But it doesn't matter.
How will we EVER do as much damage as a well-aimed meteor? And notice how the Earth has survived dozens of those. If figuring out that 0.05% isn't very much makes me sound like a little kid, you don't want to know what attacking humanity as a whole makes YOU sound like.
Humans are not alone in driving species to extension, but undoubtedly have the highest score. The problem is we are just too efficient at hunting, and there is 7 billions mouths to feed. And we can't even feed all of them as it is. We (debatably) expand because we need to. If we never take from other species, then other species will take from us. And as predators, that's what were good at.Shawn MacDonald said:
As for the damage we have done, it's not irreversible. Not even large asteroids cause permanent damage.
About 600 million years ago, the Earth was flooded with a toxic gas created by bacteria. Most of the life on Earth at the time (which was almost all bacteria) suffocated because it had nothing to breath. Do you know what we call that toxic gas? Oxygen.