I chose examples (and words) that I feel most people would intuitively agree with. I know that killing animals for food is morally problematic in a modern society which could probably easily survive without doing it. I confess that I've never given it much thought (even though I know Singer's book and I have some friends who are vegetarian for ethical reasons).

You let nature solve your problems. But where do you place humans and civilization in the big picture, as a part of nature and not as its contradiction?

I have expounded my opinion in earlier threads but here it is. The 'civilised' human is what biology calls a Darwinian Demon. We're apex predators and yet we are breeding exponentially. The maths of ecology is clear that we will self-destruct.

Smuel disagrees and thinks the only problem lies in giving everyone a western lifestyle while inventing solar-powered meat-vats, but even then the evolution of pathogens in an homogeneous, mobile monoculture of humans, vat-spam and wheat, points inevitably towards a global system collapse.

I could wax on about the ways in which destruction is assured, but in the end, the place of humans and civilisation in the big picture is nicely summed up by Lao Tze: Nature removes excess.

The only thing left to worry about, imo, is writing our obituary. I think it should be something like: "Sorry about the mess."

Have a nice day.

This is why we need to colonise space. Not even half-joking. If we are going to grow in a Malthusian way, well... a couple of terraformed planets would go a long way towards saving the human race.

Also, there is the possibility of space marines. And whiskey. And Elvis on a jukebox.

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Lacy: How did I fall in love with such a jerk like him? Why can't I ever meet a nice man?
Tom: You've met lots of nice men, Lacy. I'm a nice man. The biggest lie all of you women tell yourselves is that you like nice men, when, in fact, we bore you silly.
The trouble is, you tell this lie out loud and so damned often that some of us more gullible types hear it growing up and work hard to become nice men.
Well, from all the nice men in the world, Lacy, fuck you very much.

A nice idea, and the most popular ending to the myth of modern secular capitalism: Burn the planet fast enough and you can have another one.

This is a wonderful fairytale, but how can we terraform a hypothetical planet when we can't even keep the earth terraformed? Let alone develop the technology and the political will to throw a trillion dollars into deep space with no hope of profitable return for centuries.

Besides, does humanity deserve saving? If I were the green-lantern of this galaxy, for instance, I would be more concerned about preserving the countless species which actually make this planet habitable as well as beautiful, rather than the upstart ape who has done more damage than a direct meteorite strike.

Even if we were uploaded into turning-tested von-neumman machines with solar sails which spread out from sol over millennia and successfully inhabited the entire universe over eons, the survivors, if they did not actually envy the dead, would revile us in exactly the same way as we revile those who kill innocents for the hope of virgins in paradise or clubbed dodos to death for fun.

In conclusion: Doom! Doom, I say!

To me, being dead or never having existed sounds agreeably neutral, and neutral is better than suffering as suggested by your nameless survivors.
A newborn is about as neutral as a living human being is ever going to get. It's had few experiences, good or bad, and the experiences it has had probably are not retained for any appreciable length of time. Killing it at this point is not denying it anything it knows to miss.

How was that?

In infant does not know enough to want to live. It knows that being hungry sucks and that when it cries, somehow it stops feeling hungry. I don't remember being born and I don't remember being hungry as an infant. I think if at this point somebody had cashed my chips in for me, I wouldn't be upset about it. I wouldn't know what upset is. I would have just evaporated into the Æther and mingled with all the other cosmic energies of Xenu. Dead honey badger don't care.

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My North Star: Jose Gomez
I'm an introvert. Now shut up so I can be happy. Except for you, helpful sales bot. Also, download this.
Away from The House, yet forever near to my heart

You can't use the before- and after- backflip quotes as logical steps.

Me: We'll all be dead for most of forever, therefore let's give life when we can.
WS: Meh, compassion is booring!
Me: Hey presto! Backflip! Die, flesh-forms, die!

And, for the record, my hypothetical survivors will be called Atomic Supermen.

Get a cat.


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As for the rest of this thread's opinions: I have no answers to give that you have not already heard. But in case you have forgotten...

Should we be good stewards of the planet? Yes, but of thousands of threads of logic and belief that can be thought and believed, which thread you follow mostly determines how you should be a good steward.

Do I care how you live your life in order to a good steward of the planet? No, because I do not believe that the how matters, only that we as individuals make an effort ...with certain exceptions.

Exception 1) If anyone believes that we should end the human race in order to take of the planet, then they forget that a wild patch of land is not better care of than a garden that incorporates all forms of life. Human stewardship of the planet is one of the purposes of the human race. The goals should not be to turn the world into a wilderness, but into a garden that permits all forms of plant and animal life to exist.

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1 Corinthians 3:18


Truth. Love. Faith.

I love killing newborns, it's like my favourite thing to do.

When I'm not killing newborns, I talk about it on forums such as these.

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Replace "killing" with another transitive verb and you've basically become Drog.

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My North Star: Jose Gomez
I'm an introvert. Now shut up so I can be happy. Except for you, helpful sales bot. Also, download this.
Away from The House, yet forever near to my heart

'destroying'?

Sure. There is more than one correct response.

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My North Star: Jose Gomez
I'm an introvert. Now shut up so I can be happy. Except for you, helpful sales bot. Also, download this.
Away from The House, yet forever near to my heart

But all of them are very, very wrong.

Gee Xyle, it's almost like you're saying that the destination is more important than the journey.

I feel another 16 page saga of nonsense coming on, regardless of the fact that:

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The chemistry must be respected.

For christ's sake I'm still recovering from the last time.

Based on a previous post by YTZK;

Killing humans = pest control. We don't tolerate mice eating holes in our bread and leaving little sprinkle-sized fecal pellets as a trail, now do we?

We could hope that people as a whole have common sense and stop wasting so much, like Smuel says, or we could nip the problem in the bud - people themselves. I've somehow developed a revolver with 7 billion chambers. A world-wide Russian roulette has been initiated with 5 billion live rounds. Don't think too hard about it.

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With regards to time, the journey determines the destination so how can one be more important than other? ... Reminds me of a story I once heard (and if anyone knows the story better, feel free to correct me). The story goes something like There was once was an individual who could only see a street through the space between a fence and daily watched horses travel pass through that narrow gap. Once day, this individual had an epiphany and said "Eureka! The head causes the tail!"



Is 4 more pages of nonsense acceptable?

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1 Corinthians 3:18


Truth. Love. Faith.

Gee Xyle, it's almost like you've taken my post seriously.

Oh, my bad. I tend to take everything seriously.

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1 Corinthians 3:18


Truth. Love. Faith.

>Taking Smuel seriously
>2012

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