A Deviator
The whole random references thing in the titles is starting to tire me. I haven't even seen The Day the Earth Stood Still. Moving on.
Today's post will be a bit of a stretch beyond my normal level of discussion. While I generally like to keep things as factual as I can in these writings, so I can back them up with sources and sound reasoning, the little whim I'm about to expound upon doesn't really have any such support. I can't think of anything else to write about in a more related fashion at the moment, so I'm stuck with this. Not to say I don't think this topic interesting and worthwhile, but as I've mentioned, I don't really want to go into my opinions, or else much of the purity is lost. However, I think I can get away with this because on this matter, I honestly haven't been able to form an opinion of my own.
Anyway, the topics up to this point have been largely concerned with sociobiology, behavior, natural selection, etc. Natural selection is key at this immediate moment. As I mentioned in the last discourse, if we were the victims of a population bottleneck, imagine how successful we might be had we avoided the bottleneck. In either case, the modern world situation seems to imply that our genes are pretty good, otherwise we would not be so dominant across the entire planet.
I'm just going to cut the chase. Is it possible that the "unfortunate" state of affairs that we humans have created in the world - pollution, extinctions, natural resource depletion, etc. - is a natural extension of evolutionary mechanisms?
Let's look at it this way: who is getting hurt by our "excesses" in the world? Well, its not our own species. Despite what people may say about third world conditions, they're still better than simple hunter-gatherer lifestyles (although this is probably a point that could be furiously debated). However, that doesn't actually matter. Your genes don't care about how shitty your living conditions are, they only care if they get passed on to a new generation. We can't exactly argue against the occurrence of THAT given the massive population growth we're seeing worldwide. Sure, other species may be dying out, but maybe that is simply due to their genes not being strong enough. Survival of the fittest to the last - they just aren't fit enough to make the cut.
A great many researchers are concerned about how our civilization could crash and burn when resources begin to disappear and we've raped the Earth of its flora and fauna. There are basically two outcomes to this situation as I see it.
1. We gradually (or rapidly perhaps) blaze through the natural resources of this planet and once that is done, our societies collapse, our population plummets, and we're left with thousands of years of planet wide recovery. In this case, all those environmentalists would probably be correct in saying that we're going "against nature."
2. We expend many natural resources but at the same time develop new technologies and methods for providing for ourselves. Technology isn't exactly going nowhere. Say we were to expend the oil reserves of the planet, but used them up developing fusion power of some kind. Say we use up a large quantity of the forests, but at the same time develop powerful synthetic fabrication techniques (buzzwords hee hee) that relieve us of our dependence on trees. the skeptic naturally asks about oxygen production. Yeah okay that one is a little difficult to pass by, unless we develop high density algae farms or something that work through lots of CO2 (besides, you call it pollution, we call it life). Actually, if we're going to totally destabilize the ecosystem of the oceans, by that point we probably wouldn't give a shit, and then we could just engineer a saltwater algae to fill the oceans and that would have us taken care of.
Basically, if we can fuck shit up for everyone else and still increase our genetic fitness, then we're not doing anything that violates the principles of the biological sciences.
The real question is, do we want to take this risk?
Well, no large group will likely ever take these sorts of arguments seriously. Sure it might work, but its not worth the risk, honestly. The growth of environmental awareness seems to be largely improving the state of affairs worldwide. Plus, the approach I've just mentioned naturally has HUGE ethical issues which most people would find difficult to entirely ignore. However, whichever way is the "better" way to go, this argument does highlight one thing fairly conclusively: what a large part of society wants you to think of as "natural" is bullshit.
blah blah blah think for yourself blah blah assume nothing blah blah blah blah blah
I play devil's advocate for such things because I think its an issue worth discussing and thinking about. I don't condone such actions based on the reasons above, and more importantly because of severe violations of The Struggle. Anyway, there are no references here because this is just stuff I thought up. Haven't even checked google to see if there are wackos with websites advocating this sort of thing (I'm not sure what I would search for to find these sites anyway). But, you guys could always try discussing it here. There's lots of food for thought that just about anyone can ingest (more so than my other posts anyway). Could be fun.
Today's post will be a bit of a stretch beyond my normal level of discussion. While I generally like to keep things as factual as I can in these writings, so I can back them up with sources and sound reasoning, the little whim I'm about to expound upon doesn't really have any such support. I can't think of anything else to write about in a more related fashion at the moment, so I'm stuck with this. Not to say I don't think this topic interesting and worthwhile, but as I've mentioned, I don't really want to go into my opinions, or else much of the purity is lost. However, I think I can get away with this because on this matter, I honestly haven't been able to form an opinion of my own.
Anyway, the topics up to this point have been largely concerned with sociobiology, behavior, natural selection, etc. Natural selection is key at this immediate moment. As I mentioned in the last discourse, if we were the victims of a population bottleneck, imagine how successful we might be had we avoided the bottleneck. In either case, the modern world situation seems to imply that our genes are pretty good, otherwise we would not be so dominant across the entire planet.
I'm just going to cut the chase. Is it possible that the "unfortunate" state of affairs that we humans have created in the world - pollution, extinctions, natural resource depletion, etc. - is a natural extension of evolutionary mechanisms?
Let's look at it this way: who is getting hurt by our "excesses" in the world? Well, its not our own species. Despite what people may say about third world conditions, they're still better than simple hunter-gatherer lifestyles (although this is probably a point that could be furiously debated). However, that doesn't actually matter. Your genes don't care about how shitty your living conditions are, they only care if they get passed on to a new generation. We can't exactly argue against the occurrence of THAT given the massive population growth we're seeing worldwide. Sure, other species may be dying out, but maybe that is simply due to their genes not being strong enough. Survival of the fittest to the last - they just aren't fit enough to make the cut.
A great many researchers are concerned about how our civilization could crash and burn when resources begin to disappear and we've raped the Earth of its flora and fauna. There are basically two outcomes to this situation as I see it.
1. We gradually (or rapidly perhaps) blaze through the natural resources of this planet and once that is done, our societies collapse, our population plummets, and we're left with thousands of years of planet wide recovery. In this case, all those environmentalists would probably be correct in saying that we're going "against nature."
2. We expend many natural resources but at the same time develop new technologies and methods for providing for ourselves. Technology isn't exactly going nowhere. Say we were to expend the oil reserves of the planet, but used them up developing fusion power of some kind. Say we use up a large quantity of the forests, but at the same time develop powerful synthetic fabrication techniques (buzzwords hee hee) that relieve us of our dependence on trees. the skeptic naturally asks about oxygen production. Yeah okay that one is a little difficult to pass by, unless we develop high density algae farms or something that work through lots of CO2 (besides, you call it pollution, we call it life). Actually, if we're going to totally destabilize the ecosystem of the oceans, by that point we probably wouldn't give a shit, and then we could just engineer a saltwater algae to fill the oceans and that would have us taken care of.
Basically, if we can fuck shit up for everyone else and still increase our genetic fitness, then we're not doing anything that violates the principles of the biological sciences.
The real question is, do we want to take this risk?
Well, no large group will likely ever take these sorts of arguments seriously. Sure it might work, but its not worth the risk, honestly. The growth of environmental awareness seems to be largely improving the state of affairs worldwide. Plus, the approach I've just mentioned naturally has HUGE ethical issues which most people would find difficult to entirely ignore. However, whichever way is the "better" way to go, this argument does highlight one thing fairly conclusively: what a large part of society wants you to think of as "natural" is bullshit.
blah blah blah think for yourself blah blah assume nothing blah blah blah blah blah
I play devil's advocate for such things because I think its an issue worth discussing and thinking about. I don't condone such actions based on the reasons above, and more importantly because of severe violations of The Struggle. Anyway, there are no references here because this is just stuff I thought up. Haven't even checked google to see if there are wackos with websites advocating this sort of thing (I'm not sure what I would search for to find these sites anyway). But, you guys could always try discussing it here. There's lots of food for thought that just about anyone can ingest (more so than my other posts anyway). Could be fun.