desire for infinite growth in a finite system - results are obvious. the finite system will crash and burn. we are fucked, nature will recover when we make it not suitable for humans
Strictly speaking, its unknown if we live in a finite system or an infinite one - but it's certain that the local topology isn't infinitely dense.
(We speculate one can technically go infinitely far in any direction of space or indefinitely backward and forward through time; but there's not any infinite amounts of stuff here which is the problem.)
Well yeah, the earth is a fixed size. I think that is their point. Of course the universe could be infinite, but the amount of livable resources we have access to is currently finite.
That’s exactly my point, yep.
My apologies, I'll concede I knew what you meant, but my poor brain tripped on the word 'system'. Your comment was apt on a human-scale system of our planet - we are fucked. But it's way fun and often useful to remember that's not the only lens available.
We are still a product of nature in many ways and all our society could be viewed as nature featuring yet another bloom and collapse - and our blip as a species isn't even special - check out the great oxidation (extinction) event whereby anaerobic organisms created so much waste oxygen that they killed of almost all life on the planet (organisms that live on oxygen and the air cycle we know today were 'born' from this event).
None of that changes the fact that I did deliberately misconstrue your statement; please excuse any offense I may have caused. I meant no harm.
No worries. I’ll read up on that too, thanks for the additional reading material :)
I'm just needlessly waxing poetic, as is my wont. They said 'system' which is an ambiguous term.
I also considered noting that my local baskin-robbins gets delivered more ice cream than I'd ever want to eat.
But since I'm called out I'll add that any person can only imagine so much, and as such a finite group of peoples' collective imagination can only be arbitrarily large, not infinite.
But don't mind me, I'm just a dog on the internet.
“Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.”
Some cultures managed to last for tens of thousands of years without destroying the planet. Not all cultures and social structures are the same or have the same impact on their environments.
in a shocking twist, cultures who believe themselves to be a part of nature tend to be much better at preserving it then cultures who see themselves as the owners of nature
Nah. This is some eco-fascist/primitivist type shit. Fuck that.
What?
This invokes the overpopulation myth, the reductive belief that the planet would somehow be “better off” without humans (importantly: how would you make that happen?), and perhaps, projecting the environmental sins of one’s own culture onto all of humanity.
I don’t know if these count as actual eco-fascism when the target is the entire human population, but it’s certainly adjacent.
I get your stance, I do, but you don't think humans are seriously fucking the planet?
I put a lot of thought into your comment today and I'd honestly love to respectfully debate you on this subject. I think immediately labelling people who are worried about over population as "eco-fascists" is really quite odd and makes me a bit worried.
Yes, the main problem is corporations and greed but doesn't it all still come down to our species? What would aliens say? Oh sorry, you're good, it's those other ones in your species that are the bad ones.. ?
I don't specifically have an anti-overpopulation stance myself for the record, I just find your terminology rather .. jaded.
By the tone of your comment you're clearly quite hostile so I'm not sure I should even be engaging, but I felt that I had to. I'd really be happy to debate though, maybe I would learn something.
What would aliens say? Oh sorry, you’re good, it’s those other ones in your species that are the bad ones… ?
If the aliens were as advanced in systemic analysis as humans are, they wouldn't say bs like that but "Your species is not the problem, but you seem to have a societal virus that forces most of you to destroy your planet for the benefit of a tiny elite class. This seems to be the problem".
Btw dblsaiko@discuss.tchncs.de's tone does not seem hostile to me at all. They're just brutally honest.
Fair enough - a societal virus that's been a part of our species since as far back as the stone age. Hoard the resources and kill the other tribes that pose a potential threat to you and yours. Our species has probably had wars for resources for hundreds of thousands of years.
We haven't had the ability or capacity to start majorly affecting the planet's ecosystems and atmosphere until, what, the last couple hundred years?
If only we could pick these alien's brains on how we might go about solving the basic curse of human greed.. Reminds me of this comic:
a societal virus that’s ~~been a~~ befallen parts of our species as far back as the stone age
There have been a lot of examples of large, advanced civilizations living in a way that didn't harm their environment (i.e. Amazonian cultures). Pretending Capitalism (or police) is a force of nature or part of human nature plays into the ruling class' cards.
Thank you. The problem is the rich, the problem is capitalism/colonialism, but it's not too many people. Genocide wont solve any problems, overthrowing the billionaire class will.
Yeap.
I'd make it happen by doing nothing.
I used to think so as well, but as other posters have pointed out, we actually did manage to live in harmony with nature for tens of thousands of years. Humans aren't the problem per sé, but our systems definitely are.
It's not the systems alone. It's the multiplication of systems per number of humans.
Too many humans even with paleolithic lifestyle will fuck up the environment anyway.
We need to find a balance, what systems we do we want to live in and how many humans can that system accommodate.
Smells like ecofash.
Edit:
That's the current state though, where wildlive evaded into the woods and is generally in decline.
Hell is other people
Yeah, only 10% of all mammalian biomass being human would still be too much. But we are 500% (and our livestock 1000%).
About the too much: all animals of similiar mass per individual range in the low 100'000s globally (the larger the less). That's the sustainable amount.
working on it, just give it some time.
Agree
I’m not saying humans aren’t responsible for the Anthropocene. I’m not saying we don’t have to save out planet. But we shouldn’t idealize nature.
Check out that thread. It’s filled with gems:
The first comment alone misrepresents beavers and elephants as poorly as that one dumbass sunfish comment from the old site that everyone reposted all the time. The widespread eradication of massive beaver populations across North America has caused untold ecological damage that we’ll never fully understand.
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A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment