Vultures Are Circling

submitted by EndlessSunflowers from i.imgtc.com

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[–]FormosaOolong 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

What humans do is fundamentally the same as what any animal species is doing - extracting resources from our surroundings. There only difference between human mining and ant foraging is that humans happen to do it at a larger scale.

I heartily disagree with this analogy. Ants are nature's cleaners, not polluters, and they don't extract more than they need. Really the only species that knowingly extracts in excess, pollutes and destroys its environment, wipes out sixty percent of the planet's species in 50 years, creates weapons and machines that could destroy the entire planet, and is actively planning on taking its scathing mindvirus into the greater galaxy, is humans. We are the only one that consistently and ongoingly acts crazily out of balance with its natural surrounds. This is the definition of a parasite of terrifying proportion.

Profits are not an "irrelevant consideration" as you say, because the ignorance that drives this whole disproportionate pillaging and poisoning is always money/power. Even the human endeavors that claim to be for the simple greater good (like health care or policing) have been grossly perverted by their respective monetization. Everything now is being twisted into a cancerous quarterly-profit endless growth model that is impossible and leads to decisions like this, and to products and services that have less and less value and less and less lifespan.

And as for the "simple means by which humans divide resources within the colony," this is a disingenuous representation of the current imbalance and crappy accounting that has led to a drastically widening divide between the haves and have-nots, and to devastation around the planet of which you may not be aware, or perhaps have no concern.

Devotion to the current version of capitalism looks to me like some kind of delusion, in that it refuses to look at the inherent flaws in its design and implementation, and focuses only on the enjoyments of short-term gain gleaned by parasitism, slavery, and destruction.

[–]wizzwizz4 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Ants are nature's cleaners,

No, they're not. Just because they happen to think that what we call "dirty" is lovely tasty food source doesn't mean that they're cleaners; that's a very human-centric view of the ants. They're foragers, not cleaners.

and they don't extract more than they need.

… Have you ever seen an ant colony? They extract as much as they can, and use that food to construct more ants, and extract more resources! If your house gets "invaded" by ants, do they take half of your sugar and leave? No! They get as much as they can.

Don't confuse being unable to dominate the world with a conscious choice not to.

[–]FormosaOolong 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Don't confuse being unable to dominate the world with a conscious choice not to

I'm not doing that. I am pointing out that in the natural world, there is an innate balance at work, a mutual give-and-take, that has somehow gotten perverted in humans. I live amongst an array of huge ant colonies by the way.

It is not human-centric to note that the ants' activity of collecting its tasty food source happens to serve a purpose in tidying up dead and rotting stuff etc. There is a balance that occurs in the natural world, and human-centricism has pushed that way out of wack.

Yes, termites will eat your whole house, so the insect analogy is perhaps not worth arguing.

Perhaps in cosmic time, our misguided behaviors are like those weird moments when there is a plague of locusts, or wildfires. An imbalance to reset the balance afresh. In that way maybe our folly is also a natural manifestation--but the difference seems to me that we are (ostensibly) capable of making a conscious choice.

[–]wizzwizz4 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

but the difference seems to me that we are (ostensibly) capable of making a conscious choice.

Even if you don't consider this a difference, this is definitely the most important part.

  • We're trashing thousands upon thousands of ecosystems.
  • We're part of the natural world.
  • Despite the emergent properties of human behaviour being generally predicable, we can choose to act differently.

Instead of arguing about metaphors or what degree of anthropomorphism goes from unrelatable to inaccurate, we should question why we do not choose to act differently, and work to change the things causing that to be the case.

[–]FormosaOolong 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

we should question why we do not choose to act differently, and work to change the things causing that to be the case.

100% in accord with this essential point

[–]Tom_Bombadil 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Once again, Wizzwizz swoops in to defend the corporate agenda.

The go-to strategy is to forum slide on bullshit.

The soup of the day: Ants are not harmless, and they would conquer the world if they could.

[–]worm 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'll begin with a nitpick that's not really important to the point you're making: I think most people tend to greatly overestimate the power that humans as a species exert on the planet. We may be a dominant species, but we are certainly (for now) incapable of "destroying the planet". Nuclear weapons are probably capable of wiping ourselves out, but our weapons are laughable in comparison to the forces of nature.

As to the fundamental point you are making: You're accusing capitalism of destroying the planet, by saying that the profit motive is the root cause for our excess consumption, which of course is in turn what drives us to extract resources beyond what we should be extracting. I hope this summarizes your argument - correct me if I was wrong. If this was the argument being made, I think it's one that I disagree with.

I'm of the opinion that this argument vastly overstates the importance of social organisation amongst human society. In my view, capitalism is a process tacked-on to the end of the equation, rather than the fundamental driving force of our consumption.

No matter what sort of socio-economic model humans adopt, consumption will always be a part of human life. Survival, even on an individual level, cannot be divorced from the consumption of limited resources which have to be extracted from our surroundings. This is a truism which extends from the largest of animals to the smallest of microorganisms.

It's possible that human consumption will be limited to our means under a planned economy rather than a capitalistic one, but that leads to more questions: what level of consumption would be considered "excess", and who is to decide on what level of consumption is permissible? Would a planned economy even manage to limit consumption, if it seeks to maintain certain living standards? Fundamentally, could there be any model of social organisation which would allow humans to live and consume without impacting the environment around them? It seems to me that no matter the social model you impose upon our civilization, the consumption of resources (and the continual increase in the consumption thereof) will inevitably increase as the human population increases. If anything, capitalism has perhaps limited the increase in consumption by making use of the monetary system to ration consumption and to encourage efficient extraction of limited resources.

But returning to the broader point: the fact that humans must consume regardless of what form of social organisation we adopt. This is what I mean when I say that capitalism is merely "the means by which humans divide resources". Models of social organisation such as capitalism, state planning, or even if you're really far out, anarcho-primitivism all simply change the way we divide scarce resources amongst ourselves. There is no model which fundamentally frees mankind from its physical needs. If we adopted a state-led economy, it would be the demands of the state rather than the demands of the market which then force us to extract resources from our surroundings.

From my perspective, it is the association of capitalism with (for the lack of a better word) evil which perplexes me. The evils you describe are fundamentally part of our world regardless of whether capitalism operates or not.