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If yes, please say what (And no, I'm not talking about contributions to our own species. I'm referring to what we've done strictly for the planet and its' other inhabitants).
| Yes, I Do (Please Comment) | 21 | |
| No, I Don't (Please Comment) | 31 |
What is "good to Earth"? The Earth's ecosystem is merely a system. A system cannot be an active subject but a passive object, and therefore there is no condition for it to be in that is objectively better than any of the other infinite number of conditions it could possibly be in. There is no inherent evil or good to anything humans, or anything else, does to the ecosystem. The ecosystem is a neutral, balanced system and a system doesn't have the capacity to give a shit what members of it do.
Let me use an example of why the ecosystem is balanced and neutral. You kill a gazelle and that gazelle's condition will decrease. But the condition of the vultures eating the carcass will increase, as will the condition of all the living things the gazelle was damaging, as will the condition of all the living things competing with the gazelle for resources. A lot of animals are made happier because of what you did. So who's to say whether you've added a net plus or a net minus to the condition of the whole ecosystem by the action of killing the gazelle? For every winner there are a losers, for every loser there are a winners. See? The balance is level.
The ecosystem we have now is merely the current iteration of the Earth's ecosystem. The ecosystem changed almost 65 million years ago, when most of the dinosaur species became extinct. It changed again when the last Ice Age began to end. We would not have the ecosystem we do now if these past changes had not happened. So was it such a bad thing that millions upon million of species before us became extinct? It allowed millions upon millions of new species to be brought into existence in the many years since. That's neutral balance in my book. If all the mammals die now, new and equally valuable species will emerge in the future that would not have done otherwise. That's neutral balance too. So why is it such a bad thing if a lot of the current ecosystem becomes extinct? If you stick with the opinion that it is a bad thing, you have to accept that you have an irrational bias toward our current ecosystem over the future, and equally valuable, ecosystems yet to be born.
Good answer, dom.
So sick of people applying human constructs of morality to a universe that doesn't adhere to them.
It's not such a hard thing to understand. We evolved a shared concept of right and wrong for our mutual benefit, for our species' survival. We have a vested interest in the Earth's current ecosystem remaining stable, since it's the same one that enabled us to climb to the top of the food chain and thrive. That's the basis for our desire not to destroy or create things that would threaten the balance.
However, the planet doesn't care. The planet is not a being with survival instinct. There is no 'good' or 'bad' when it comes to Earth.
If we blew the shit out of everything, if we somehow set the world spinning in a tangent towards the sun, it wouldn't be inherently, universally wrong.
If we created a self-sufficient, sustainable and stable society in perfect harmony with nature, treating every living thing on the planet with the utmost care, it also wouldn't be inherently, universally right.
Earth doesn't give a fuck.
It spins until it doesn't, we live until we don't, the ground we walk upon couldn't care less.
People gotta accept the socially constructed nature of their own morals, yo.
I've been trying to put all that comment into words for some time, because it's the sort of attitude which frustrates me when I see it in other people but it's quite hard to take the ideas against that attitude and put them into language which makes sense and isn't insensitive or alienating. So I sat down for at least an hour and honed that comment to distract me from a mildly painful girl-who-I-was-dating-for-a-few-weeks-and-really-quite-liked-has-a-new-boyfriend-who-isn't-me sort of problem. And it took a lot of honing; the first time I wrote it, the example was twice as long and about dying frogs and lizards and God only knows what else was going on.
I suppose I've avoided answering the OP's question with "no", because even though "no" is the logical conclusion of what I'm saying it's the same answer that's representative of the attitude neither of us like.
But yeah, thank you. And welcome back to IIN :)
We basically made everything. iPhones, iPads, computers, xboxes, things that people live on. We made tv, light bulbs, books, couches, lotion, just everything.
humanity itself is miraculous so in a way evolution itself is our contribution
Well lets see here. Most of mankind is too stupid to help mankind. They will die before adulthood in some freak accident. In fact some adults kill themselves doing stupid things they thought were a good idea but was reckless, dangerous and possibly very illegal.
Humans basically use everything around us to aid either themselves or mankind. We experiment on innocent animals, we kill and use planets to aid us not because we actually care about the plants or animals either.
Many people believe that being human means you are more entitled to fair treatment and life than other creatures like dogs. Thanks to this mentality would happily abuse animals. Since they believe abusing a weaker creature is your RIGHT as a human.
Another thing that comes with this mentality is that if an animal does something wrong they should always be murdered, yet if a human does wrong they should be excused.
Yet they don't understand the correlation between this and saying "I think a black man is less entitled to life for being born black than a white man since white men are superior" which is the same fucked up mentality.
They also fail to see the issues with this logic but will use it as a blanket and say it applys to everything. So if say there was a scenario where a dog attacked a pedo trying to rape a child they would still agree we must kill the dog but NOT kill the child molester. Even if the dog protected that child.
Yes lets not save a hero dog but leave the child molester to live on to molest more children. I really hate how people believe that someone is superior since they were BORN different.
Not realizing we are all living creatures PERIOD. Not to mention people use this mentality against other humans in fact. I don't like him since hes gay, white, black, yellow, or has another religion which is not my own.
Than people all try to act like they are so evolved when they are not even mature enough to see past insignificant differences like religion and skin-tone.
So while someone is killing that dog for biting a pedo they can tell me how advanced we are after harassing that Buddhist for being religious.
So no mankind is full of a bunch of hypocritical dicks that do nothing but destroy. Mankind is incredibly narcissistic if you think about it. We are the worlds biggest parasite and I am sure that nature would prosper fine without us around.
Humans have created plastic. There is microbial life eating plastic in the ocean right now. It's like we helped an organism adapt to its environment or something. From a perspective that can be a good thing. Or the earth is conscious and we were used us as a tool to help earth take a step up in creating life, and these microbes eating plastic will actually evolve into something far more complex than we can imagine.
As far as the earth itself, I can't imagine what "good" means to a chunk of rock. But regarding the other inhabitants, I suspect human beings will, in time, bring earth-life (and not just ourselves) to other planets so so it can keep existing after the earth ends. We're also the only species on the planet with even a chance of saving it from life-obliterating asteroid.
But we haven't actually done either of those things yet, so no.
obviously you have not lived in an area where people share advances in discovery in the universe. Look at the advances we have made in communications. Take a look at "Exascale" programing where we will advance up to 1000 times faster in analysis by computers of the human diseases. We can not capture causes of most of the human diseases and in the future will be able to cure for the betterment of life.