But, of course, she wasn't a wild animal, nor have any humans been for thousands of years. (Come on: eating cooked meat is "unnatural.")

And yes, I do deny our "connection to the rest of the planet." I've never been fond of commune-with-nature bullshit. Nature is random and impotent; it's there for humans to use, not obey.

I live in a state that gets regular tornadoes, massive lightning storms, floods, five-year-long droughts, and all sorts of nasty things on a pretty much daily basis. The main resevoir of water for this area is nearly bone-dry. But human mastery over nature has advanced to an extent that nobody here notices anymore. Our agriculture industry isn't fazed by either floods or droughts; we still manage to feed most of the country without trouble, and, as a whole, we're doing quite well.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people in Bangladesh, who live much more in-tune with nature, died when their country was struck by big waves. Thousands of more will starve to death because their agriculture is shot to hell, and thousands more will die from diseases that, in the West, are considered nothing serious at all.

Conclusion: until nature magically sprouts a pizza tree in my dorm room (the fruit contains natural vaccinations against flu, by the way), raises an umbrella of fig leaves over my head whenever it rains, and generally makes my life better, to hell with it.

This stuff here ^ is so preposterous, I don't know what to say. It's a discussion for a whole other thread, really, if this is how you actually feel, Asurai. You're an intelligent guy, although I know you're supposed to be this reactionary capitalist - be that as it may - but there are limits to technocratic arrogance. Nature can fuck shit up for humans, sure, but you can't call an ecosystem that advanced "random and impotent".

Hey Asuri,umm I got some news for you buddy... whether you want to believe it or not the Earth is our mother! She feeds, clothes, and shelters us. Where the fuck do you think all the materials for your "advanced technology" come from? Mars? If she wanted to, could destroy us all. It is very arrogant not to appreciate what gives you life. Your food either comes from a plant or something that eats plants. Even is the food you eat is way over-processed it still comes comes from nature and is only tampered with by man.

And as for the tsumani victums... They are poor and can't afford the warnings we can recieve. You are lucky to live where you live and have the things you have. But are you thankful for your random place on this planet? No.

Have you ever even thought about how random life is? It took alot for us to make it to the point we are at. And guess what? Nature made it happen! :shock:

I also find it amazing that you think we are above everything else. Yeah we humans are fucking spectacular!!! We poison our own food and water with our lovely man made chemicals. Not to mention it is not just our water and food...the animals also have to drink the chemicals we dump in the water. And live with our pesticides.

Our great technology will also lead to some really terrific viruses too. You want to know why? We chop down the redwoods and the rainforrests, They hold up our ozone layer. With a depleted ozone layer comes sperratic weather patterns. Sperratic weather patterns allow viruses mutate quicker. Man are we wonderful!!! Not only that the ice caps are going to melt quicker too, When they melt to a certain point, the Earth will shift on her axis and we will be dumped into a new ice age. Though it might not happen tommorow, it will happen alot faster thanks to mankind.

So, you wanna hate nature? Go ahead!!! Be an arrogant human and don't respect what nutures you.

"Humanity is a plague that will eat itself alive" ----Christian Death

Alright, I'll go through this point-by-point.

No, the earth does not feed us. Feeding us would mean that the ground automatically raises up enough food for humans to consume without human intervention. As any farmer will tell you, humans have to work our asses off to get the ground to produce enough food to keep humanity alive.

No, the earth does not clothe us, for the same reasons. I've never seen a t-shirt tree. Even the most basic savages had to put forth their own efforts to produce clothing for themselves. There's a reason that you don't see animals wearing fig-leaf clothing.

No, the earth does not shelter us, again for the same reasons. Even bloody ANTS, who are infinitely below humans on the scale of intelligence, don't get automatic benefits from "mother earth" -- they have to use what organizational talents they possess to maniuplate nature to their needs. Holes don't just open up in the ground spontaneously to serve as homes for them.

That's the point. They have less technology than we, ergo they are more at the mercy of random occurences. And yes, I'm quite thankful for my 'random' place on this planet, but thank you for putting words into my mouth.

Wrong. Whether life arose from entirely natural causes or was designed, I neither know nor care, but you and I both know that "nature" did NOT bring us to the point where we are now. From the cave to the Empire State Building, humans are where we are because we refused to bow to random tragedies as "the will of nature." From the invention of fire to the present day, humans have been manipulating nature to our ends, to our great benefit.

We poison our own food and water. I would advise you to look at population graphs and note that as science increases (including pesticides and chemicals, GASP), the human race grows -- ie, less of us drop dead at young ages. If you're above thirty years old -- the pre-industrial life expectancy ;-- go drop to your knees in thanks to the nearest sooty smokestack or chemical plant that you can find.

Debatable, but because of modern medicine, less people are dying because of those viruses. Hell, we're basically immune to the Black Death. So, even if there are more viruses, they're less dangerous to us by far.

Shouldn't you be GLAD that there are more viruses, by the way? They're natural, after all, and I would think that you would thank humans for increasing natural life.

Hey, the earth is going to blow up eventually, no matter what we do. (In a few billions of years, the earth will stop rotating, and various lunar-solar forces will tear the moon and earth into cosmic dust.) By the way, the earth is CONSTANTLY shifting on its axis and has been since long before man came onto the scene.

But the fact that there will be an eventual ice age doesn't justify abandoning technology and condemning thousands of generations of humans to barest subsistence and savagery until then, particularly when it will happen, eventually, whether or not we live as savages. Besides, by the time that there's another ice age, we'll have advanced to the point that we'll be able to save both ourselves and the rest of the ecosystems without much trouble.

I don't hate nature, I simply don't care about it one way or another.

Nature doesn't nurture me, by the way. My father works to put food on
the table; fruit doesn't spring out of the ground whenever I'm hungry.

"Arrogant human." That's a really cute insult, since "arrogant" would imply an undeserved pride. I'll make a deal with you: when nature creates a Victorian mansion, complete with modern air-conditioning and a heating system, I'll stop being an arrogant human. When an animal can solve an algebraic equation or write a book, I'll stop being an arrogant human.

Nature, by its definition, is without a guiding intelligence. It is therefore random. Advanced ecosystems are caused simply by the random chance that animals suited to live in certain enviornments live, while all of the others without the necessary ability die off in that area, causing the appearance of a fine-tuned, organized system.

But touche -- I withdraw my calling it "impotent," and apply the term instead only to those humans who bow to nature. As history has shown, civilizations that manipulate nature to their ends have been far better off than those that simply accept occurences as the mystical "will of nature" or "will of the spirits" -- if the latter could even be called civilizations.

Define better off. Some of the most peaceful and seemingly happy cultures are the most primitive, to me that would indicate that the exact opposite of what you said is true. In my opinion longer lives and more stuff does not equal better quality of life and it is that quality of life that makes someone better off.

Very true. But compared to the mortality rates during the pre-industrial period, both in exposure and in fatality, that's lower by a very significant amount.

Allow me to quote from The Enemies of Columbus by Thomas Bowden:

Underlying every achievement of Western civilization has been a restless intellectual ambition, a striving for depth and breadth of knowledge, all aimed at understanding the world and how best to live in it, all made possible by a scientific view of the universe . . . .

Contrast this breadth of intellectual endeavor with the constricted mental outlook of the savage, whose world view is dominated by animism, the primitive notion that everything in the universe is inhabited by powerful spirits, that Nature remains mysterious. The anxiety that necessarily results from such superstition induces cognitive paralysis . . . . It is the savage's lot to see one of his tribe's crude boats vanishing over the horizon and feel dread that the water spirits might prevent its return -- to take that dread and turn it into a frenzied dance of supplication -- to take that dance and make it into a ritual, to be repeated generation after generation -- to invent a new ritual for every danger, for every wild animal, flood, famine, drought, or illness that threatens his existence -- and finally, to have nothing to pass on to the next generation but a pile of arrowheads and a vision of the future that differs not from the past. Immobilized by superstition, the savage society is helpless before the forces of nature, and consequently its members cannot control the course of their own lives.

The point in this is simple: it is better to be rich, healthy, and safe than to be poor, sick, and afraid . . . The importance of being at one end rather than the other [end of this spectrum] is not a matter of subjective preference; it is the difference between life and squalid death. People who fail to civilize themselves are doomed to live in filth, hunger, and fear -- and to die before their time....[They do not realize] that laser surgery is preferable to a shaman's spells.

. . . Now, consider pre-Columbian Indian life [the best example of savage society]. Not having developed an Aristotle of their own, these Indians had neither discovered the laws of logic nor formed a concept of natural law. Instead, they believed the universe to be ruled by fickle, inscrutable spirits that required unflinching obedience to mind-numbing rituals and taboos . . . . Virtually all of these Indians were either hunters, gatherers, fishers, or planters, still mired in the stone age. They were miserably poor, not only by today's standards but by those of 15th century Europe. All Indians, chiefs as well as warriors, were subject to a variety of economic and physical catastrophies (such as floods, famines, pestilence, and epidemic disease) that modern societies have tamed or forgotten.

...The spiritual lifestyle of the Indians was anything but relaxed and simple. Indians lived "in a world of anciety, frustration, inadequacy, and vulnerability, in which the spirits control everything," writes anthropologist Peter Farb. Because they did not understand natural law, Indians lived in constant fear that fickle gods and spirits might take away the things they depended on for life: plants, animals, rain, even the sun. The Aztecs, for example, believed that they were chosen by the gods to feed the sun, which required human blood to fuel its daily race through the sky. So they waged war on neighboring tribes, capturing thousands of prisoners and marching them one by one up to altars...

By contrast, modern Americans live in relative serenity due to their understanding and acceptance of natura law. They have no need to trouble themselves about supernatural beings that interfere with their mastery of the enviornment; they can confront the natural world with confidence that their efforts to investigate and control nature will meet with success over the long run. The resultant feeling of being "at home" in the universe is an achievement of Western civilization, not Indian or savage culture.

...Indians who lived for centuried atop massive reserves of petroleum needed the European immigrants to show them how oil could be used to light a lamp or run an engine. Likewise, although the Aztencs had applies the principle of the wheel to children's toya, Indians continued to carry their meager possessions on their backs or drag them across the ground on long poles. Indians toiled long hours to produce enough food to keep themselves alive; there was usually not enough surplus to permic much division of labor. If Indians produces less garbage, it was only because they produced less wealth. On the other hand, they would think nothing of stampeding a herd of bison over a cliff, taking what they needed, and leaving the rest of the dead animals to rot.

The enviornment that the Indians were unable to master, mastered them, as famine, disease, drought, floods, and malnutrition regularly left the survivors helpless and afraid. Describing certain pre-Columbian tribes, Jake Page writes, "It was, over the centuries, a hard life. We know from burials that a man of forty-five would be worn down, old; and the average life expectancy was less than that. We know that childbearing women suffered more severely from malnutrition than their men, and children more than their mothers. Not infrequently, people died from diseases arising from what we now know to be poor sanitation."

...Modern industrial nations, on the other hand, have truly built paradise by controlling nature to serve human ends . . . .The vibrant economies of the nations adhering to Western values -- including, increasingly, the nations of the Pacific Rim -- have banished famine within their borders, attained ever improving standards of living, and created the wealth and leisure necessary for intellectual ferment and the emergence of great art. Natural disasters, though they still occur, are far less deadly and costly due to the protection made possibly by modern technology.

Thank you, my dear, although I really don't know why you should be glad to have me back. But thank you for the welcome.

And get on MSN sometime, curse your lazy hide. :evil: :wink:

monkeys cn do simple math, I think. . .and they've been doing fabulous work wiht gorillas teaching them sign language.

They say Dolphins are incredibly intelligent as well. My backup for this one will be that they have sex for pleasure, but that ust indicates a well thought out reproductive system.

Not that I'm negating your comments, or anyone else's. Just thought I'd point it out.

Sorry Asurai, but I'm gonna take a hatchet to your lengthy quote. This guy sees things so black-and-white, it's almost funny, albeit in a profoundly tragic way. He'd probably make a good holocaust-dissenter too.

Yeah, but what's cooler? The latter, of course. :wink: But, hey, being a cynical Randian capitalist is also pretty cool, right?

Go on, say it - "Genocide, schmenocide... they were all gonna die anyway. Those pox-infested blankets only sped up the inevitable! Nowadays we don't worry about that kinda stuff, we have medicine now. I'm so glad I'm not a poor person. I barely even notice my pesky humanity anymore! Hooray!" That's pretty fucking cold, man.

No, really. Please go on believing that the "tame and forget" tactic is gonna work out for the best. After all, those who forget history is in no way doomed to repeat it.

Of course not, they've got TV now...

You can laud the industrial revolution all you want for making our modern lives so comfortable, but don't ignore the fact that the way to Western Civilisation is paved with blood and guts. It ain't no paradise by a long shot. Maybe it looks like that from the office in the Ayn Rand institute, but people are still being crushed under the wheels of "progress" every day. All Thomas Bowden can say is: "Tough luck. Take comfort in the thought that your blood is OIL for the MACHINERY OF FREEDOM!"

I'm not gonna glamorize the Indian life, which was surely hard and full of danger, but surely even one as un-PC as you would have to agree that the shit really hit the fan when the greedy and dishonest white man came around. Basically this Thomas Bowden is defending a tragic and shameful genocide and condescending the culture of a people that was, philosophically and morally, superior to the one of the men that came to usurp it.

Oh, and sorry for hijacking the Schiavo-thread. Maybe this could be split?

Asurai, that quote fills me with disgust and revulsion on so many levels........

Who do you think? :roll:

Clichés are clichés for a reason...

And please allow me to go through your argument the same way.

Yes, and no. You're using black and white arguments, and they don't work here. The earth -does- feed us. And before humans learned how to cultivate plants for food, it essentially -did- automatically rise from the ground.

Yes, alot of people starved to death before they figured out how to cultivate, but the environment supported what it could support. If resources were stipped, everyone suffered, people died, and the ecology of the area snapped back into place.

All we did was make it work more efficiently to support a larger number of people. It still comes from the earth.

Again, black and white arguments. all the fibers we wear started on, or in the earth. Cotton from plants, the chemicals for synthetics even started from an earth-based source. Leather, suede, come from the skins of animals. No, animals don't wear clothes. They have fur, or scales, or whatever nature intended them to have to protect them in the environment they live in.

Again, black and white. Those ants would not be able to burrow, if there was nothing to burrow in. Your house would not be built without the trees for the wood, the clay for the bricks, or the ore for the steel and copper.


Yes, that makes you more -fortunate-. It does not make you "better".

But nature -did- enable us to develope consciousness, reasoning, and opposable digits. Without any of those things, we would not exist as we do today.

And that is a double-edged sword.

We have succeeded in prolonging life, but not in slowing down reproduction to compensate. We've succeeded in forcing the earth to produce more "efficiently", to the point we are begining to reach a negative return. We have suceeded in developing industry to enable first-world countries to live easier, at the expense of the water, air and plant-life. And it -does- effect the rest of the world.

Yes. And again, we have a double-edged sword. With people not dying from disease, they're living longer, but they are still reproducing at the same rate. This puts a stress of the ecosystem. And when any ecosystem is stressed, and can no longer support the life in it, several things begin to happen. Violence, disease, famine, and death...it's the natural prograssion to keep the balance. But, in the human part, disease is being fought, so people aren't dying from disease. The system is becoming unbalanced. Famine exists, even within the richest countries. Violence is obvious all around us.

Hell, there's a reason that hunting is necessary, now. We killed off most of the natural predators 200 years ago, and there aren't enough wolves to keep the deer population under control. It has become our responsibility to thin the herd. Kudzu in the southern US is encroaching at an alarming rate, destroying the indiginous plant life there, because it has no natural enemies. It's not native to this part of the world. The rabbit population in Australia exploded because the natural pradators for that animal didn't exist at the time. When you fuck with nature, she fucks back. Humans are just too damn arrogant to see that.

And the White colonists were practically immune to smallpox when we came over here. It damn near wiped out the natives, though.

We will not be immune to new virii. It's a living organism, and evolves, and mutates. The virii become immune to -us-. And as we systematically destroy our environment, the natural protections we enjoyed from certain virii will also be destroyed.

This is true. But there is no reason we should hasten the Earth's demise.

I agree with you there. But at the same time, I think we need to take better care of the environment in which we live in now, so that we won't be foreced to live that way, when it does happen.

At the rate we're going, no we won't. And I'm not talking more advanments at the cost of the environment, but advancements that -work- with the environment.

Perhaps you should.

Neither does it appear out of nothing to sit on the grocer's shelves.

You're right.

And it is undeserved.

Think about it. It already has.

Sorry Asurai, but I feel that your pride has you cornered right now.

Even if Dragon Liver's (that's what it means, right? :D ) arguements can be debatable, her last sentence "owned" you right there and then (in my opinion).

Lemme explain. I thought for a long time and couldn't make up my mind on a number of people (some Rosicrucians, to be precise) who are oposed to the use of vaccines as they believe them to cause unbalnce to the natural ecosystem. As humans, we are part of a natural ecosystem and everything we do is therefore natural.
Earth balances itself. Like the rabbitt vs fox population keeps itself in check.

But think of lost civilizations, fallen empires, slaughtered nations, whole cultures erradicated forever.
Armies of specific human ethnicities, cultures, creeds and ways of life have already disappeared forever (like those huge white english hounds that Bull Terriers descend from).

Yes, there are 4 original latin nations (Italy, France, Spain and Portugal) and a whole lot of derivates (the whole of South & Central America, Guinea, Prince Islands, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique [where I was born], Goa, Indonesia, Macau, Philipines, East Timor, etc) but still, the roman empire is no more.

The Dodo bird is no more, the tasmanian tiger is no more, the lusitanian Linx is no more, the Iberian Linx is almost gone, the North african Lion and Iberian Bears are no more.

You can feel nothing at all by that and argue its a natural process, even if done by humans, as we are animals who are part of this environment.
Hang on.
Are we?

Because the rabbits sure as hell ain't part of the Australian natural environment. Maybe some other animals endanger local ecosystems when wrongfully introduced into them (this one is really an unsubtle way to talk about your bloody past, but fuck it).

What I mean is, if we don't switch to solar real soon, we're never gonna get on those spaceships and get the fuck out of here to other places we can dirty up and destroy.

Don't like the idea of a female nurturing mother nature?

Good, 'cause neither do I and the whole thing stinks of new-age hippies and wiccans to me (even if they are COMPLETELY right), not to mention I grew out of the Edipian phase a long time ago, so I don't like the idea that everyday I'm contributing to fucking my mother.

Try these ones on for size then:

We're all on the same boat. If it sinks, you die before you can make a raft out of the pieces. And why would you wreck a boat for a raft?

Don't shit where you eat. If you don't clean up after yourself, you'll end up eating where you shit, cuase even if you conquer, exploit and kill all other people (I'm being subtle again), you'll still run out of space sooner or later. Again, why would you do that when modern science enables you to clean up after yourself and feed yourself better now than at anytime in history.

Smart evolution means that I can buy butter at a supermarket, eat it and recycle the plastic. What's the use of having science make me a mechanical butter churner? None. It's misuse of brains and equipment. But some idiot wants it because he thinks it's his god given right.

I had a dream, but I traded it in for a way of life I can't afford but hold on to desperatly out of sheer arrogance and pride who won't let me admit I'm just plain wrong, like Bush on drilling in Alaska-

Think about shiting on your food, 'cause thats what Europe did (why do you think you came to be?).
In Portugal, I don't eat where I shit, but it's so close I can smell it all the time. We were able to slow down to a near stop before I ran out of space (subtle). But we look around and a lot is wasted, barren an desolate.
And it's really sad if you guys do that in the US, because you have some of the largest and most beautiful dinner plates. Sad to see you want to shit on those.

I know I'm pushing it a bit and know that what I wrote can be interpreted as provocative.
Yes, I'm provoking you, and you know I'm doing it to melodramatically emphazise a point.
For those who don't know, Asurai does believe in all he wrote (to an extent) but wrote it in a way to shake things up a bit. There's no lamer discussion than one where everyone agrees, and no more pointless one than one where everyone refuses to listen to eachother.

Asurai, am I wrong? If I am, I'm gonna spend the rest of my life brainwashing you into being one of the pussy hippies (because there is a kind of hippy who's not a pussy at all [me]).

Hey Sternn, see? That's how you argue with americans.
I basically said evrything you did and implied all the things you did, but no one is gonna flame my arse for it.
They'll argue for their "way of life" untill they'reblue in the face and living on igloos made out of McDonald's styrofoam, but it won't get bloody.

You too are provocative, and a whole lot more than Asurai.
I know you were pushed. I know you only got personal when your arguements were just dismissed and ridiculed instead of debated.
But no one can be as one-sided as you are.
There are things you just love about the US, but because you never show your appretiation, people almost assume you just hate everything about them, when it's not true.

You got on the nerves of your opponents and are right on the money on many issues, I'll give you that, otherwise you'd simply be ignored instead of flamed.

But the way you make your points these days have lost you a lot of credibility.
Dude, even I get annoyed. I start to read one of your posts, and even I, who agree with you on most things (although your opinions are rather more extreme than mine) can't help but think you won't post about anything you dislike unless it involves the US or Bush (I also hated Clinton, although I thought he was funny [Bush is funnier, but tragically funnier]).

To the other members of this borad, sorry for derailing this last bit.

I would hardly call a culture that had not yet invented the wheel "grandiose."

And receiving inspiration from some source is not the same as learning from that source. Franklin may have received inspiration from American Indian sources, but without his thorough education in European science...

And no, the source was not saying that they were stupid.

Touche and true. Americans are well-noted as being arrogant people who respond only to like arrogance.

I must go, but I'll be back shortly for a longer response.

By the way -- I've heard it said that the most difficult thing for a person to do, is realize what it is about himself that is obvious anyone who's spoken with him for more than five minutes. If you could tell me what it is about the way in which I make my arguments that loses me credibility, I'll certainly try to rectify it.

Last question, to everyone else -- what's wrong with black-and-white? It's simple and clean: there's a right answer that we need to try to find, then there's everything else that we need to disregard.

It’s all of that wonderful, tragic, painful, beautiful gray area that makes life so interesting. Sometimes I wish I could see things only in terms of black and white, that would certainly make things easier and a lot less painful, but most of the time I’m glad I don’t. It is that gray that gives me compassion, that allows me to coexist with others whose views differ from my own, and that truly gives life meaning. If everything were in black and white we would be incapable of truly deep thoughts, there would be no philosophy, no wisdom, only cold hard facts and logic.

What? Besides having no clue what you just said, I have no idea how you got it from that quotation.

Basically, the point is: it's better to be healthy and safe than sick and afraid. If you disagree, then by all means say so.

Philosophy is hard facts and logic.

Who is still crushed under the wheels of progress every day?

The only people that I can imagine you to say, would be the poor (I don't use the term insultingly; I was and still am dirt-poor) who are laid off by industry. But they're people getting screwed by regression, not progress.

(Just to note: Ayn Rand's a bit to extreme for even my tastes; the entire "anything done for yourself is good; for others, evil" thing never appealed to me. But she did know a lot.)

I would be interested to hear, though, how the culture of the Aztecs was "philosophically and morally" superior to that of the British. The one cut out the beating hearts of captives to please the Sun; the other invented the theory of individual rights and Social Contract.

Neither I nor Bowden support genocide. In the book, he strongly condemns, say, the actions of the Spaniards, as I do now.

Of course. The latter is totally ubergothic. 8)

You've always been nothing but kind to me, so I regret any offense done to you. If you can refute any of the statements, I would be glad to retract them.

Xnguela:

Don't worry about it. I'll talk to you once you get it working again -- if you still wish to speak with a cynical, Randian capitalist, of course.

I'll be back shortly, again, then I'll get to the longer quote. Goody goody gumdrops and rainbows.

Tstone:

The Aztecs knew of the wheel and used it for children's toys. There is absolutely no archaeological evidence that they knew of any other use for it, to the best of my knowledge. Saying that "they must have had the wheel, because they built stone temples" is a non sequitur; we know very little about the methods used to build those temples.

The image is a round stone without any way to connect it to something else. A wheel, to be functional technologically, must be able to be connected to an axis of some sort. A round stone does not equal a wheel; it could be any number of other things. Perhaps they used it to offer still-beating human hearts to their gods. </ad hominem>

Still, even if they did, it doesn't particularly matter much. To say that even the most advanced American Indian culture was "grandiose" in terms of science and technology, compared to even the least advanced Western European civilization, is an absurd comparison.