Philosophy Discussion Forums

Please read this article from The Guardian at https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... tists-warn

I am merely indicating what has been understood and accepted by current science. I am not seeking any pleasure at winning what might be considered an argument since this open dire warning only indicates an oncoming total horror. But I cannot ignore it as you seem to be trying to do. General statements about the underlying beneficence of nature, as anyone who is being chewed up by a lion will enthusiastically confirm, that the universe cares not at all about the fate of an insignificant planet. Whole galaxies crash into each other at regular intervals and the rest of creation goes on as before.

Jan Sand wrote: ↑May 1st, 2018, 9:44 pm Please read this article from The Guardian at https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... tists-warn

I am merely indicating what has been understood and accepted by current science. I am not seeking any pleasure at winning what might be considered an argument since this open dire warning only indicates an oncoming total horror. But I cannot ignore it as you seem to be trying to do.

Gosh Jan, are you really saying that an Holcene extinction is under way? Gosh. I never knew that! I thought we were still in the Garden of Eden.

Not only do you patronise me but your claim that I am ignoring the issues is simply rubbish, especially since you recently accused me of being a doomsayer. This is just the old game of "Ain't It Awful?" (Berne 1964) and the usual result of declining to play the game with an aggrieved on is anger - as you have displayed.

I have long fully acknowledge the issues - probably before you did. I cut my super payments in the 1980s, convinced that the edifice would all fall down by now. I cost myself a million dollars or so with that. Further, have said NUMEROUS times that I strongly support wildlife preservation, sustainable energy and women's education in developing countries - and I expect may well have donated plenty more to those causes than you (sans the bellyaching).

I used to complain about humanity just like you. I was furious about it for decades - that this terrible cancerous parasite was destroying beautiful balanced nature with sheer wickedness. All of your cliches - and then some. You are mild compared with my youthful anger about it all.

However, the more I learned about the situation, especially the fact that the biosphere is approaching death whether humans existed or not, along with the incredible speed of technological advancement, I realised that this was a small-minded, short-sighted solipsist notion that ignored the biosphere's history.

Jan Sand wrote: General statements about the underlying beneficence of nature, as anyone who is being chewed up by a lion will enthusiastically confirm, that the universe cares not at all about the fate of an insignificant planet. Whole galaxies crash into each other at regular intervals and the rest of creation goes on as before.

That is exactly my point. Extinctions are rapid periods of change. You expect the Earth to undergo change in a convenient, non-destructive, pain-free manner but that is not how nature works - our comfort, safety and convenience is not the Earth's problem, it's ours - the little people. hatred of humanity will only breed more hatred, and we know where that leads - and I expect that's the point. As populations grow, humans come to love their allies and hate outsiders ever more.

I expect that with all the anger and hostility towards other humans going around your concerns about population control should soon help to bring about some "corrective measures" in the next decade or so. They won't be pleasant or convenient either.

I appreciate that you are seeking a right-winger, anti-environment climate change denialist with which to castigate, but choosing someone like me who is at least as pro-environmentalism as yourself makes no sense.

Thanks for your detailed reply. Your comment about the inevitability of change does make me a bit curious since you seem to feel that it is perfectly natural and therefore acceptable that the obliteration of life on the planet out of human destruction of the basis of life is useful. Supporting wildlife without a firm program of protection for their habitats is a rather useless exercise and the commonly accepted human population growth in the next decade or so to around ten billion does not strike me as encouraging. Of course the rapid buildup of intentions to start a nuclear war will be a rather forceful change in many aspects of life here. Since you find change of any kind somehow acceptable perhaps this should not bother you at all. I simply do not possess your stainless steel resolve to remain optimistic under the circumstances.

I never presumed that you were immersed in the delights of the vociferous destructions of the Androcene with any approval and would never have attempted any sensible conversation if you were obviously a denier of the total monstrous human excitement for the ripping apart of the planet's matrix of life integration to stash away a monument of currency. But I am most disturbed of your quiet acceptance of humanity's idiotic and useless behavior out of a most peculiar respect for the strange fact that all change, good or bad, must be acquiesced to, whatever the outcome ,merely because history demonstrates it occurs. There ia no doubt that human behavior i a prime element in this mess and human behavior has the very small possibility to attempt to stop it. My condemnation of current society is its lack of real energy to confront the obvious.

I started writing a long post to again try to clarify my persistently misrepresented position and decided better of it.

We are both impassioned with the avalanche of miseries set to encompass what we prize in realities, The demons range across the planet and our magics may coruscate in fireworks momentarily but end only in a dusty atmosphere.

Requiescat

There will come a day long years from now
When the sandy desert wind will whistle to itself.
No footprints dotting lines across the dunes.
All memories of Man put on the shelf.

contr00001_400No more the candy wrappers dance along the road
Nor empty beer cans glisten in the night
To softly clink and hoot in gusty breezes.
Cardboard boxes banished from all sight.

Brick will fracture, crumble back to clay,
Their trellises of steel will rust away.
No more apartments stacked like packages
In some mad marketing array.

Concrete roads will crack, becoming rocks.
Funguses and moss will fill the gaps.
Mice and birds scurry past the pole
Where an ancient traffic sign still slaps.

Tall trees erect their magic structure,
Sink sucking mouths to kiss the earth deep down.
Spread green eyes to meet the morning sun.
Seas of dandelions flood downtown.

Small reservoirs of elephants, big cats,
Re-infect the forests with their grace,
Forage in and out through columned aisles
While branches make cathedrals out of lace.

Ocean-wise the seagulls dip and rise
Like soaring eyebrows off in search of eyes.
The seas are full of carnivals of whales.
No hooks nor nets nor harpoons terrorize.

No oil that blackens seabirds’ wings
To bury pleading eyes in gummy straw.
Blue water glints and flaps against the sun.
Gone, hulls that dive and slide and yaw.

Here and there an old reactor core,
Silent, lightless, tasteless, without smell
Inflames the skin of Earth with sterile death
Like splinters risen straight from central Hell.

The canisters that roll beneath the sea
Crack and split to spill their glowing gifts.
Dead blotches on soft muds and sands
Which slowly kills. Relentlessly it drifts.

These are the monuments to Man,
The zenith that he’s left behind.
When Stonehenge and the pyramids are dust,
Small creatures will they maim and kill and blind.

The ship of Earth has heeled and slowly rights.
The disaster that was Man has passed away.
The tapestry of life reweaves itself.
Celestial Spring has come and it is May.

Predators still make their deadly hunts.
It’s one on one by tooth and claw and wing.
Each creature kills by inborn skills.
Murder has become a home made thing.

No more millions die at one man’s stroke
To make cosmetics, or, perhaps, a joke.
Forests do not fall for gossip’s sake.
Life is blessed by human Ragnarok.

The strangest thing is that Man’s demise
Was done by Man with no assist.
As if he knew the blight he was.
It’s certain that he won’t be missed.

I posted the poem with the line "No more the candy wrappers dance across the road" without the strange notation preceding the line and unfortunately presumed it would post as intended. Unfortunately this site does not provide the opportunity to edit a post and I apologize for my neglect.

Tis a shame when one does not listen
But is intent to impose their soliloquy on other minds.
When one only notices frisson
One fumbles through life half blind.

When one looks ahead a decade
And posits a thousand years,
You know they have built a brocade
Constructed of only their fears.

Meanwhile the planet continues
To accumulate and generate its spores,
To send off to other worlds
Beyond the crowds and the wars.

However, some want return to the noble savage
Regretting our descent from the trees to the plains
Airily dismissing ancestors' work through ravage
To protect their ungrateful brats from the wild and its pains.

Alas, some seek to dismantle the legislature
To suffer and die in the wild, leaving the cities
To claim a false harmony with disinterested nature,
To end the story with an expanding Sun - that would be the pity.

Erosions or explosions
Are equal to exhibit
Mankind’s inhibitions
Lead it to commit
Finalities of realities
With its monkey wit
That demonstrate
A final fate
To prognosticate
The end of it.

The final fate pronounced again
The end of life on Earth - beware the bae!
Humanity has, of course, met its doom
Thousands of times throughout history
By purveyors of endless gloom
Who won't accept mystery.

Dismissal of an incoming missile
As an irrelevant triviality
Or a pinprick from a thistle
Is a profound neglect of reality.
Radioactivity has the proclivity
To eliminate a locality
And when that is an entire planet,
Along with every Joe and Janet,
And all living on,
The result is oblivion.
,

What matters is to
Repeat yourself
Repeat yourself
What matters is to repeat yourself
And we all go around again.

We are all going to die quite soon
Die quite soon
Die quite soon
We are all going to die quite soon
And won't that be a thing?

Ecosystems are being destroyed
Being destroyed
Being destroyed
Ecosystems are being destroyed
But if we whine it all gets better.

Engendering guilt, it really works
Really works
Really works
Engendering guilt, it really works
To turn people the other way.

So what F* are we supposed to do?
Supposed to do?
Supposed to do?
So what F* are we supposed to do?
Put your money where your mouth is and don't forget to vote.

So repeating old news is very dull
Very dull
So very dull
Repeating old news is very dull
And I'll be on my way now.

You cannot solve a problem that you refuse to accept that it exists.