I believe humans are going against nature like a pluague or a virus. We completely 'disobey' the laws of natural selection, and we create machines that harm our planet.
Human kind spits in the face of natural selection...Our weak individuals can still breed all though they are meant to die off. Humans throw back the small stupid fish that was supposed to die for the 14 pound lunker that didnt get a chance to breed yet. Its as though we live to ruin our surroundings until we our forced to either change our behavior or move to another habitable plant and repeat the process only faster.
We also will have machines that are rotting our lives. Pollution and such. You know the saying 'Mother Nature always fixes itself', well I believe that we will ruin this planet so bad the only way to fix it would be to destroy the world as we know it and start anew....
What are your thoughts?
(sorry about the grammar)
I think you don't really know what natural selection is. Just because something is weaker does not mean it should not survive. Sometimes a weakness is a strength. Look at Stephen Hawking. The man can barely twitch some muscles in his face, but he has one of the most brilliant minds on the planet.
Natural selection selected our ancestors to be physically weaker, but more intelligent than other great apes. We are strong because of our brains. As long as our intelligence continues to help us survive, natural selection will continue to select for it. This doesn't mean we will get any smarter, it just means we probably won't get any dumber. If something happens where our intelligence no longer benefits us, then we either evolve to the changes or go extinct, just like every other animal on the planet.
Evolution is NOT survival of the fittest. It is survival of the most adaptable.
A fish that weighs 14 pounds is not any better suited to survive in its environment than a younger fish of the same species. The younger fish will eventually grow into a 14 pound fish itself. And if you are concerned over pulling out the large fish before it could breed, why not be concerned about pulling out the small fish before it could breed?
We humans are just another animal. We are nothing special. Sure we are the smartest animals with the most tools, but so what? Whales are the biggest animals, Falcons are the fastest and cows are the tastiest. Every animal is unique, including us. We are a part of nature. How is it any different if we catch a fish, than if a bear catches a fish? How is it different if we wipe out a species of animal than if some carnivore wipes out a species of herbivore?
And I know I am not going to convince you (there is a whole thread about it here anyway) but man made global warming is not real, we are not ruining the planet, and yes, nature always repairs itself.
Something to keep in mind, is that just because we humans like it a balmy 75 degrees with clear blue skies, does not mean that is how the planet is supposed to be. This planet will change. It will change into whatever it wants and there is little to nothing we can do to stop it. A few hundred years ago, the planet was much warmer. The vikings were farming in greenland, which is now covered by a huge sheet of ice. A few dozen million years ago, the atmosphere was twice as thick. A few billion years ago, there was almost no oxygen in the atmosphere and it was composed primarily of CO2. Even the most trashed, dirty, polluted city will one day be covered by plant life, leveled by time, and covered by layers of soil. After that it will one day be subverted into the earths interior and melted away in the giant molten rock the plates are floating around on.
If we took every drop of oil in the earth and spilled it into the oceans, the planet would be fine. Sure a lot of animals will die, but not all of them. The oil would eventually be filtered out of the oceans and the earth will still spin. The planet will eventually make more oil, just as it always has.
If we drive all our cars every day, we still don't put out as much pollution as an erupting volcano, or a giant wild fire. There is nothing we can do to this planet that this planet doesn't do to itself all the time.
The earths crust has formed super continents and split apart 15-20 times since the crust hardened. Pangea was not the first super continent and won't be the last. Who are we to say what level the oceans should be at? What if they are too low right now? There is nothing we humans can do to change any of this. These are processes so far out of our ability to manage, that it seems silly to think we can affect them.
We are not killing this planet, there is nothing to kill. The planet is a big rock floating around in space. Earth is not here to support life, life is here trying to live on earth.
The earth will be here long, long, after we are gone.
I don't want to offend you, but it seems to me you are somewhat paranoid. It seems like you are listening to all the doom and gloom stories in the media and it has disheartened you.
Cheer up, it's not that bad at all. Take comfort in the knowledge that we are simply not important to this planet. If we are a parasite, we are a single, dying flea with a broken leg, gnawing on the toenail of the largest elephant. It doesn't even know we're here and nothing we do will make it change what it is doing.
well, it's pretty clear to me that the advancement of technology runs opposite of that of evolution // natural selection
How so? Some birds EVOLVED to build intricate nests, termites EVOLVED to build towering nests over their burrows. Some apes EVOLVED to use tools to open fruits, catch insects, scratch their butts, etc. If in the far off future a chimp ties a rock to a stick and whacks a predator with it, is that evolution or the opposite of it? It is crude, but still an advancement of technology.
Humans evolved this intelligence we have and we used it to survive. Our survival depends on our ability to create complex tools and homes. It is possible we may have reached a dead end, or it is possible we are just beginning and may some day evolve to be able to understand quantum physics as if it were simple math.
The advancement of technology keeps us alive, natural selection will continue to select for intelligence that lets us advance technology.
