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Naturalism vs Post-naturalism
Topic Started: Apr 11 2016, 11:13 AM (4,217 Views)
HangingThief
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Kamineigh
Apr 14 2016, 08:28 PM
Look, if you truly believe that system is better, sell all of your belongings, including your clothes, and move to Ethiopia. We'll see which one of us dies in the middle of nowhere from starvation/exposure/thirst/dysentery.
Don't you get it? That's not an option anymore. Farming literally ruined the chances of anyone living happily and independently.

Also, cave men definitely did not die of exposure and dysentery. Unlike us pale, sickly farmers that have bred for ages and ages with little to no natural selection, they were tough. They could survive and thrive like wild animals, which they were. We basically domesticated ourselves into the disgraceful, shriveled shells of humanity we are today.
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LittleLazyLass
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We basically domesticated ourselves into the disgraceful, shriveled shells of humanity we are today.
Wow, that's a downer sentence if I've ever seen one.
totally not British, b-baka!
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I don't even really like this song that much but the title is pretty relatable sometimes, I guess.
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HangingThief
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Kamineigh
Apr 14 2016, 08:42 PM
No it isn't.
Yes it is. If there was no farming there'd be hardly such a thing as politics, let alone corporations, let alone politics and corporations that control and exploit millions of people.
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HangingThief
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Jurassic Zebra
Apr 14 2016, 08:51 PM
Quote:
 
We basically domesticated ourselves into the disgraceful, shriveled shells of humanity we are today.
Wow, that's a downer sentence if I've ever seen one.
But it's truu-hoo...
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Scrublord
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We didn't "degenerate". We evolved. There have been scientific studies showing that (for example) the modern human digestive system is subtly different than that of a human 50,000 years ago. That is natural selection.
Edited by Scrublord, Apr 14 2016, 08:59 PM.
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LittleLazyLass
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Scrublord
Apr 14 2016, 08:59 PM
We didn't "degenerate". We evolved. There have been scientific studies showing that (for example) the modern human digestive system is subtly different than that of a human 50,000 years ago. That is natural selection.
Whether we're still evolving or not, it's no longer natural selection.
totally not British, b-baka!
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I don't even really like this song that much but the title is pretty relatable sometimes, I guess.
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Scrublord
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All right, all right. Can I just get a brief summary of what all the other big participants in this thread actually think?

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In the end, the best advice I could give you would be to do your project in a way that feels natural to you, rather than trying to imitate some geek with a laptop in Colorado.
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Kamidio
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HangingThief
Apr 14 2016, 08:49 PM
Kamineigh
Apr 14 2016, 08:28 PM
Look, if you truly believe that system is better, sell all of your belongings, including your clothes, and move to Ethiopia. We'll see which one of us dies in the middle of nowhere from starvation/exposure/thirst/dysentery.
Don't you get it? That's not an option anymore. Farming literally ruined the chances of anyone living happily and independently.

Also, cave men definitely did not die of exposure and dysentery. Unlike us pale, sickly farmers that have bred for ages and ages with little to no natural selection, they were tough. They could survive and thrive like wild animals, which they were. We basically domesticated ourselves into the disgraceful, shriveled shells of humanity we are today.
Mmhmm. And vaccines cause autism, GMOs are poisoning our food, yada yada yada.

I swear to god, I've never come face-to-face with someone using actual strawman arguments, but here it is.
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HangingThief
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Kamineigh
Apr 14 2016, 09:12 PM
HangingThief
Apr 14 2016, 08:49 PM
Kamineigh
Apr 14 2016, 08:28 PM
Look, if you truly believe that system is better, sell all of your belongings, including your clothes, and move to Ethiopia. We'll see which one of us dies in the middle of nowhere from starvation/exposure/thirst/dysentery.
Don't you get it? That's not an option anymore. Farming literally ruined the chances of anyone living happily and independently.

Also, cave men definitely did not die of exposure and dysentery. Unlike us pale, sickly farmers that have bred for ages and ages with little to no natural selection, they were tough. They could survive and thrive like wild animals, which they were. We basically domesticated ourselves into the disgraceful, shriveled shells of humanity we are today.
Mmhmm. And vaccines cause autism, GMOs are poisoning our food, yada yada yada.

I swear to god, I've never come face-to-face with someone using actual strawman arguments, but here it is.
How is it a strawman argument?
You're saying it's not true that humans have weaker genes and are less hardy than our ancestors? We're like those guppies that get bred in pristine, filtered aquariums for too long until the slightest bit of nitrogen in the water makes them drop dead.

I don't see how that's similar to anti- vaxxers and GMO freaks at all. It's just an obvious fact that humans have become accustomed to our protected, luxurious (if not easy or happy) lives in more ways than one.
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LittleLazyLass
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If we are, it's because we don't need it anymore.
totally not British, b-baka!
Posted Image You like me (Unlike)
I don't even really like this song that much but the title is pretty relatable sometimes, I guess.
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Sheather
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HangingThief isn't wrong, but nothing is quite so black and white.
As a whole people before the modern era would have been hardier than us... because all of the people who weren't just died. Modern humans are less healthy, but we don't all die from an infected splinter anymore. Hunter gatherers probably did have a lot more time than many working people - spend a few hours hunting one animal, be good for most of the week... but again, compromises. Sometimes there might be a drought and no buffalo and all of your children die of starvation before the rains return. That doesn't happen when you can go to the store and buy a sandwich for $1.

I don't think human beings have an absolute obligation to preserve their planet's natural environment, but I would - as someone who finds it interesting and aesthetically pleasing - hope we would try to keep at least a bit of it around, if only because once it's gone, it's gone, and we might miss it one day.

Ecosystems change constantly, as I've said before I think it's totally futile to try and even think it's possible to keep the planet as it was 20,000 years ago. Whether we evolved or not, climate changes would eventually occur and charismatic big animals would die out for some reason or another, it's just the natural process; they're the first to go in any extinction event, be it a meteor or man. Climate change is a big issue today, but it won't kill humans or even most animals, statistically. The planet's current cold climate is the abnormal situation in the planet's history and life will adapt again to a warmer world, humans will gradually move their cities inland, and more severe weather will become the new normal.

I personally think we should make an effort to lessen our negative impact on the environment, but my opinion is arbitrary. We don't need most animal species or very much forest to do well as a species, but as someone fond of nature, it is a little sad that our success has to come at the expense of so much of the planet's natural splendor. Even though the elephants and the panda and the tiger are probably all evolutionary dead-ends sooner or later anyway, I think we should make a little effort to keep them around, if only because we find them interesting. Though they could be replaced in an instant by natural evolutionary processes, none of us will live long enough to see that happen if we kill them all of now. It's a selfish ideology for sure, but I think we should preserve as much of the natural world as we can just because it's pretty. It's amazing that it all exists and it would be a shame to see it all go away.

~~~

My views on invasives depend on the situation. If they don't cause significant harm to anything, like German rheas and British wallabies, don't worry over them. They're novel, fun to see, and more or less harmless. They don't kill endemic animals or outcompete them, that we can discern. They just sort of slip into the ecology. Not every introduced animal is problematic, if it comes from a similar type of environment in nature than it usually finds its old niche easily even a world apart.

If they're destructive to some native animal which is not as common however, like goats and tortoises, and their population is still small enough to potentially be able to kill off - as that of the Galapagos goats theoretically is - by all means make an effort to kill them off. Make one big, orchestrated effort one time and kill every single one of them. But if there are literal millions of that invasives over an area that is too large to ever cleanse of them, like the starlings and the house sparrow, you really need to accept it as a loss. Killing a few here and there does nothing but prolong the inevitable. Accept that we've changed the environment and move on. It's happened before more times than we could ever keep track of, we've just sped up the process.


~~~

In the end, I don't abide by either ideology, Squibbonator. They're both inherently flawed. The situation is much more complicated than either "humans are morally obligated to preserve their world" or "humans are nature; ergo their alteration of the environment is always acceptable." Humans shouldn't be obligated to save the guinea worm but it's also really shitty of us as a species if we truly don't have a problem poisoning all the elephants to cut off their teeth for novelty trinkets just because we can.



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HangingThief
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Jurassic Zebra
Apr 14 2016, 09:05 PM
Scrublord
Apr 14 2016, 08:59 PM
We didn't "degenerate". We evolved. There have been scientific studies showing that (for example) the modern human digestive system is subtly different than that of a human 50,000 years ago. That is natural selection.
Whether we're still evolving or not, it's no longer natural selection.
And we're definitely not becoming more resistant to dysentery.
Hey.


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Scrublord
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Sheather
Apr 14 2016, 09:33 PM
HangingThief isn't wrong, but nothing is quite so black and white.
As a whole people before the modern era would have been hardier than us... because all of the people who weren't just died. Modern humans are less healthy, but we don't all die from an infected splinter anymore. Hunter gatherers probably did have a lot more time than many working people - spend a few hours hunting one animal, be good for most of the week... but again, compromises. Sometimes there might be a drought and no buffalo and all of your children die of starvation before the rains return. That doesn't happen when you can go to the store and buy a sandwich for $1.

I don't think human beings have an absolute obligation to preserve their planet's natural environment, but I would - as someone who finds it interesting and aesthetically pleasing - hope we would try to keep at least a bit of it around, if only because once it's gone, it's gone, and we might miss it one day.

Ecosystems change constantly, as I've said before I think it's totally futile to try and even think it's possible to keep the planet as it was 20,000 years ago. Whether we evolved or not, climate changes would eventually occur and charismatic big animals would die out for some reason or another, it's just the natural process; they're the first to go in any extinction event, be it a meteor or man. Climate change is a big issue today, but it won't kill humans or even most animals, statistically. The planet's current cold climate is the abnormal situation in the planet's history and life will adapt again to a warmer world, humans will gradually move their cities inland, and more severe weather will become the new normal.

I personally think we should make an effort to lessen our negative impact on the environment, but my opinion is arbitrary. We don't need most animal species or very much forest to do well as a species, but as someone fond of nature, it is a little sad that our success has to come at the expense of so much of the planet's natural splendor. Even though the elephants and the panda and the tiger are probably all evolutionary dead-ends sooner or later anyway, I think we should make a little effort to keep them around, if only because we find them interesting. Though they could be replaced in an instant by natural evolutionary processes, none of us will live long enough to see that happen if we kill them all of now. It's a selfish ideology for sure, but I think we should preserve as much of the natural world as we can just because it's pretty. It's amazing that it all exists and it would be a shame to see it all go away.

~~~

My views on invasives depend on the situation. If they don't cause significant harm to anything, like German rheas and British wallabies, don't worry over them. They're novel, fun to see, and more or less harmless. They don't kill endemic animals or outcompete them, that we can discern. They just sort of slip into the ecology. Not every introduced animal is problematic, if it comes from a similar type of environment in nature than it usually finds its old niche easily even a world apart.

If they're destructive to some native animal which is not as common however, like goats and tortoises, and their population is still small enough to potentially be able to kill off - as that of the Galapagos goats theoretically is - by all means make an effort to kill them off. Make one big, orchestrated effort one time and kill every single one of them. But if there are literal millions of that invasives over an area that is too large to ever cleanse of them, like the starlings and the house sparrow, you really need to accept it as a loss. Killing a few here and there does nothing but prolong the inevitable. Accept that we've changed the environment and move on. It's happened before more times than we could ever keep track of, we've just sped up the process.


~~~

In the end, I don't abide by either ideology, Squibbonator. They're both inherently flawed. The situation is much more complicated than either "humans are morally obligated to preserve their world" or "humans are nature; ergo their alteration of the environment is always acceptable." Humans shouldn't be obligated to save the guinea worm but it's also really shitty of us as a species if we truly don't have a problem poisoning all the elephants to cut off their teeth for novelty trinkets just because we can.





That's probably the most well-balanced and nuanced reply to the original question that I've seen yet in this entire thread.
Edited by Scrublord, Apr 14 2016, 09:55 PM.
My Projects:
The Neozoic Redux
Valhalla--Take Three!
The Big One



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In the end, the best advice I could give you would be to do your project in a way that feels natural to you, rather than trying to imitate some geek with a laptop in Colorado.
--Heteromorph
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HangingThief
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Sheather
Apr 14 2016, 09:33 PM
HangingThief isn't wrong, but nothing is quite so black and white.
As a whole people before the modern era would have been hardier than us... because all of the people who weren't just died. Modern humans are less healthy, but we don't all die from an infected splinter anymore. Hunter gatherers probably did have a lot more time than many working people - spend a few hours hunting one animal, be good for most of the week... but again, compromises. Sometimes there might be a drought and no buffalo and all of your children die of starvation before the rains return. That doesn't happen when you can go to the store and buy a sandwich for $1.

I don't think human beings have an absolute obligation to preserve their planet's natural environment, but I would - as someone who finds it interesting and aesthetically pleasing - hope we would try to keep at least a bit of it around, if only because once it's gone, it's gone, and we might miss it one day.

Ecosystems change constantly, as I've said before I think it's totally futile to try and even think it's possible to keep the planet as it was 20,000 years ago. Whether we evolved or not, climate changes would eventually occur and charismatic big animals would die out for some reason or another, it's just the natural process; they're the first to go in any extinction event, be it a meteor or man. Climate change is a big issue today, but it won't kill humans or even most animals, statistically. The planet's current cold climate is the abnormal situation in the planet's history and life will adapt again to a warmer world, humans will gradually move their cities inland, and more severe weather will become the new normal.

I personally think we should make an effort to lessen our negative impact on the environment, but my opinion is arbitrary. We don't need most animal species or very much forest to do well as a species, but as someone fond of nature, it is a little sad that our success has to come at the expense of so much of the planet's natural splendor. Even though the elephants and the panda and the tiger are probably all evolutionary dead-ends sooner or later anyway, I think we should make a little effort to keep them around, if only because we find them interesting. Though they could be replaced in an instant by natural evolutionary processes, none of us will live long enough to see that happen if we kill them all of now. It's a selfish ideology for sure, but I think we should preserve as much of the natural world as we can just because it's pretty. It's amazing that it all exists and it would be a shame to see it all go away.

~~~

My views on invasives depend on the situation. If they don't cause significant harm to anything, like German rheas and British wallabies, don't worry over them. They're novel, fun to see, and more or less harmless. They don't kill endemic animals or outcompete them, that we can discern. They just sort of slip into the ecology. Not every introduced animal is problematic, if it comes from a similar type of environment in nature than it usually finds its old niche easily even a world apart.

If they're destructive to some native animal which is not as common however, like goats and tortoises, and their population is still small enough to potentially be able to kill off - as that of the Galapagos goats theoretically is - by all means make an effort to kill them off. Make one big, orchestrated effort one time and kill every single one of them. But if there are literal millions of that invasives over an area that is too large to ever cleanse of them, like the starlings and the house sparrow, you really need to accept it as a loss. Killing a few here and there does nothing but prolong the inevitable. Accept that we've changed the environment and move on. It's happened before more times than we could ever keep track of, we've just sped up the process.


~~~

In the end, I don't abide by either ideology, Squibbonator. They're both inherently flawed. The situation is much more complicated than either "humans are morally obligated to preserve their world" or "humans are nature; ergo their alteration of the environment is always acceptable." Humans shouldn't be obligated to save the guinea worm but it's also really shitty of us as a species if we truly don't have a problem poisoning all the elephants to cut off their teeth for novelty trinkets just because we can.



I believe the most important part of this is that opinions are arbitrary. It's not like we can turn back and change things now. We're stuck with a post-natural society of suicidal super- farmers.
Hey.


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Scrublord
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I never denied that.
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The Big One



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In the end, the best advice I could give you would be to do your project in a way that feels natural to you, rather than trying to imitate some geek with a laptop in Colorado.
--Heteromorph
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