[drgnlvr]

Originally Posted by Asurai

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Debatable, but because of modern medicine, less people are dying because of those viruses.

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.

Hell, we're basically immune to the Black Death. So, even if there are more viruses, they're less dangerous to us by far.

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.

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.

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

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,

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.

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.

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.

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

Perhaps you should.

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.

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

"Arrogant human." That's a really cute insult, since "arrogant" would imply an undeserved pride.

You're right.

And it is undeserved.

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.

Think about it. It already has.