this_portrait
Well-known member
Boys are annoying.
Post your random thoughts/feelings etc
- Thread starter Remus
- Start date
Odo
Banned
World Clock - Stats
According to this world clock, almost 25,000 species have gone extinct this year. We're literally in the middle of an enormous extinction event, and people are responsible. Yet all we can do is think about ourselves. I'm pretty sure that's the very definition of evil.
According to this world clock, almost 25,000 species have gone extinct this year. We're literally in the middle of an enormous extinction event, and people are responsible. Yet all we can do is think about ourselves. I'm pretty sure that's the very definition of evil.
This is the consequence of a developing intelligent lifeform.
First we were bound by the same rules as all other living species, then we developed tools and knowledge to go around it. But with the power through ability gaining, and comprehension of its magnitude trailing behind, we may very well find ourselves challenged and possibly destroyed by it.
While we've become pros at avoiding the brasher side of nature, we're not above it, we're still very much part of it. And everything we do, develop and create, is also ''natural'', because we ourselves are natural. We're not above natural selection is what I mean. While we may have excluded natural consequences, we're in turn creating our own natural consequences.
We're not evil. We just have influence beyond our capability to fully comprehend. That is being combined with emotions that stem from a natural adaptation we've so actively shunned over the centuries, creating a situation where we live as a species out of sync with.. well.. pretty much everything. The results of it are clearly visible throughout the planet.
Our natural selection test will lie in our ability to realign ourselves to a single lifestyle, instead of two contrasting ones. Either we will be torn apart by the turbulence of this realignment, or we'll rise above being 'intelligent' and become enlightened as a species. Meaning living in harmony with ourselves and surroundings in understanding and practice. Not be mistaken with 'perfection', which is an impossibility.
There's no such thing as good and evil, just turbulence and patterns. I suspect every developing lifeform out there has had to deal with similar issues, and had to overcome destructive and self destructive flaws of their own.
If any of our wrong doing is to mean anything, or redeemed in any way, we must be allowed to try get over this evolutionary bump. Otherwise all of it will have been in vain - and the cycle will just repeat itself somewhere else.
Whatever we did- and do, is a integrate part of nature itself. A person can think - an entire species cannot. It follows flow like everything else.
Last edited:
SilentBird
Well-known member
Correct me if I am wrong, but I think homo sapiens are the only species the global ecosystem doesn't need.
Doesn't need homo sapience in our current state. We're out of sync with the ecosystem, there was a time where we served a active purpose in it. But existence is bigger than just our Earth's ecosystem, though. Outgrowing Earth doesn't necessarily make our development useless by definition.
If we were to realign our existence to one that is realistic sustainable, and prosperous to our surroundings, whatever knowledge/intelligence we gain will only serve to help out-of-sync species we may meet in the (very) distant future. Learning/developing is easier when taught, after all. It may even prevent future suffering.
If we get that far, of course. And that's a big 'if'.
Last edited:
coyote
Well-known member
there a number of parasitic species that require the human body to survive and thrive
bedbugs would be lost without us
SilentBird
Well-known member
Odo
Banned
What are some examples of other out-of-sync species? How will we be able to communicate with them? Why would they listen? The Native Americans lived in harmony with nature and we killed them.
It's obvious that our way of life is destructive and I really don't think that you can ever realistically say that a destructive way of life is eventually going to evolve into something positive, or that even if it does, it will make up for all of the death and destruction it will wreak on the world before it gets to that point.
And I would also say that even if we haven't escaped natural selection, we've definitely cheated. At this point, millions... even billions of people are benefitting from the knowledge/achievements of a tiny minority. If 50 people are capable of making a discovery that leads to millions of people who would have otherwise not been able to survive, then that means we're actually creating our own ecosystem, separate from the 'natural' one... with completely different rules and completely different priorities, and we're evolving according to its demands as opposed to the demands of nature.
I don't know how you can argue that this is 'natural'... maybe in the grand cosmic sense of everything being a part of the universe it is, but it isn't playing by the rules to invest all your power into protecting people who don't even have a purpose in your own separate ecosystem. So many people are totally redundant and they couldn't even live in harmony with nature if they wanted to... besides, the trend has been towards fewer environmental regulations, not more.
We will know all of this if and when we ever meet them.
We're a lot better versed on spread of deceases and the like, and if our intention is to help, it would have to take a rather odd jump for it to turn into genocide. While it was awful, what happened to the native American doesn't apply here. The conditions are literally worlds apart, and therefore their outcomes as well. It needn't be a repeat of what happened.
When the planet itself was still cooling down, it was less than a welcoming place, and look at it now. Nature isn't beyond smoothing out rough edges. It merely takes conditions, development and time. This pattern may very well apply to developing life as well.
Crude as it may sound, even if we kill the planet, twice, it will have mattered little compared to what we could do if we evolved past this inefficient and disconnected way of life and used our ability in a constructive way. We're a young species, barely out of life kindergarten. The potential of our existence is currently barely a spec of what it could be. I feel self hatred towards the species clouds peoples judgement and perspective on possible future potential sometimes. Well, a lot actually, if I'm honest.
What you suggest is that intelligent life is an unnatural thing to happen, I don't think I quite agree with that. It's not possible to cheat nature when you are nature, we're not separate from it. Our brain being able to develop to a point where we could bend resources into tools to avoid natural consequence have all been perfectly natural. The whole process has been. Nothing operates outside nature.
You're right about us creating our own ecosystem, though. But that doesn't separate us from natural processes and patterns. We are a product of nature and carry these patterns within us, and are subjected to them whether we like it or not. And that's exactly where (I think) our current conflict and test lies. We operate in one ecosystem, while our body and emotions are adjusted for another. This is the out-of-sync thing I mentioned earlier.
It's this ecosystem, our own, with it's own natural selection (possible misuse of weapons of mass destruction to name an example) that'll test us whether we're capable of surviving this juvenile stage of intelligence. It'll either destroy us, or through adaptation allow us to develop beyond our current short comings.
Like a cooling planet, it probably won't be a graceful - or possible, considering how fundamentally fragile we are.
Opaline
1
This Thanksgiving could be much, much better, but I'll try to make the best of it I can, anyway. Two of my sisters aren't here, we aren't having any special family over, and my mom isn't even making the traditional dinner because our original plans were canceled on us by the host and we would have had to scramble to get stuff at the last minute and my mother isn't into it this year.
So we'll be ordering takeout and watching a movie. I'm okay with that, I just wish I had people to socialize with besides my immediate family. My mother's just going to get drunk, and my sisters aren't here. My brother... well, I don't really talk to him, he spends all his time in his room on the computer and we don't click very much...
So yeah :/ boo hoo me haha. Meh. I'm just going to spend the day cleaning, working out, and reading I think. Feel a little bummed but at least there's Christmas in a few weeks, when my other sister will be here and there will be a tree and presents and cookies and all that warm cozy stuff. Thanksgiving is mainly about eating a giant meal and socializing, and we're doing neither, so it isn't happening at my house today.
So we'll be ordering takeout and watching a movie. I'm okay with that, I just wish I had people to socialize with besides my immediate family. My mother's just going to get drunk, and my sisters aren't here. My brother... well, I don't really talk to him, he spends all his time in his room on the computer and we don't click very much...
So yeah :/ boo hoo me haha. Meh. I'm just going to spend the day cleaning, working out, and reading I think. Feel a little bummed but at least there's Christmas in a few weeks, when my other sister will be here and there will be a tree and presents and cookies and all that warm cozy stuff. Thanksgiving is mainly about eating a giant meal and socializing, and we're doing neither, so it isn't happening at my house today.
Graeme1988
Hie yer hence from me heath!
If Scotland becomes independent, we'll keep the pound as currency and the Queen as head of state.
Keep the Queen as head of state...? Sod that fur a f**kin' picnic! Let's replace the ol' biddy wi' Helen f**kin' Mirren! At least, she'd be a proper MILF - Monarch I'd Like to... Well, ye get the idea. Ah would articulate further on that idea, but it's too f**kin' dirrrty! Like Freud shaggin' his muther.
Let's just say - withoot gettin' too pornographic. Were that the case (Helen Mirren as head of state for Scotland), men would tuggin' themselves with a right hand motion that's like an f**kin' gamblin' addict wi' Parkinson's disease tryin' to roll the dice! :bigsmile:
Keep the Queen as head of state...? Sod that fur a f**kin' picnic! Let's replace the ol' biddy wi' Helen f**kin' Mirren! At least, she'd be a proper MILF - Monarch I'd Like to... Well, ye get the idea. Ah would articulate further on that idea, but it's too f**kin' dirrrty! Like Freud shaggin' his muther.
Let's just say - withoot gettin' too pornographic. Were that the case (Helen Mirren as head of state for Scotland), men would tuggin' themselves with a right hand motion that's like an f**kin' gamblin' addict wi' Parkinson's disease tryin' to roll the dice! :bigsmile:
I don't know what to do
Hi Feathers, it's nice to see you. How have you been?
MikeyC
Well-known member
What went wrong, Marie?
I haven't seen this thing in a long time. It's undergone a visual revamping since then, too. Very interesting clock.
It's funny, because I went straight to the "smile, it's not all bad" section. First kisses, Coke consumed, and those smaller statistics are nice to read.
Crime, on the other hand....
That's thinking existentially! :bigsmile: Location: WA. Another Aussie?
Odo
Banned
I did the life expectancy thing on this and I will live to 79 (average male life expectancy in Australia is 82). So I have about 52 years left. Unlikely.
I just noticed that... I actually got an 86.
I can't imagine living that long.