Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.
It’s also incorrect, since many forms of human communities have existed which did live in an equilibrium with the environment… You know, until we expropriated and killed them to accumulate more resources for capitalism
Some natives to the Americas completely wiped trees from their area causing drought and mass migration. Humans have been dicks since the beginning. Greed can happen anywhere.
Some natives to the Americas completely wiped trees from their area
A counterexample only falsifies universally quantified statements, not existentially quantified statements. My point was that there are historical and present examples of humans living in relative harmony with their environment so it is not a necessity, that we destroy the environment as humanity per se.
Are you arguing there has never been a form of civilisation/community that didn’t destroy their environment or are you arguing they are so few and far between that we should consider them anomalies to the supposed human nature of destroying the environment?
The former is a nigh indefensible claim the latter is somewhat easier to defend but would still require more than an example to be convincing.
There are people living in capitalist societies now that are not destroying the environment. But they are im the minority because humans, when gathered in large enough quantities, tend to destroy their environment regardless of their economic system. I believe any native tribe that grows large enough would also do this. The Iroquois depleted their soil and wood sources and had to move around due to this. Being greedy is human nature but not a death sentence. Education is likely the answer.
Its a great movie quote, but I always found it a bit grating used outside that context, because, well, other animals dont instinctively develop some natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment.
Its not like a wolf will realize that they’ve been reproducing too much for the local population of prey animals and decide to have fewer cubs, or actively avoid certain prey species that have declining numbers compared to the rest, if theres too many to support the excess ones will simply starve, or wander off in search of prey. The rabbits wont decide to reproduce less if something happens to the local predator population, they simply overeat their food supply until their numbers collapse back down or their abundance causes the number of predators to rise.
The equilibrium is a product of every species acting in a way that would upset that balance if they were not all in competition with eachother, and it is only stable over relatively short periods of time, in the long run it changes under pressure from geological and climactic shifts, evolutionary adaptation, etc. All humans have done, is evolve an adaptation that is too disruptive for this process to look the way it normally does. (namely enough intelligence and aptitude for tool use to effectively adapt to different conditions much faster than the time it would take for anything slower breeding than perhaps a single celled organism to evolve a counter for).
Id be willing to bet that, if you gave any other animal a set of traits that effectively allowed them to adapt to things much faster than the pace of natural evolution, you would get similar disruption.
What’s more, such an equilibrium will eventually come back. If humans manage to destroy our natural life support system enough to go extinct? Then it will return as whatever survives our mass-extinction event fills empty niches and carries on as it has. If humans do survive but manage to make large scale civilization impossible and must revert to low tech subsistence hunter-gathering? Then they would be subject to the same growth constraints and competition as other large omnivores. If humans develop technology and infrastructure that allows for high tech industrial civilization to exist with a generally sustainable resource cycle, that doesnt disrupt the surrounding ecosystem anymore? Then that surrounding ecosystem is no longer subject to our disruption. If humans develop technology and infrastructure that just replaces by brute force the natural systems that we rely on, so as to no longer need them to survive, and continue on until the whole natural ecosystem is gone? Then as humans and their pets, crops, livestock, parasites etc would represent the whole of life remaining on earth, that built environment would be the environment, and as it would have to have been made generally self-sufficient and stable to get to that point, it would still represent a stable ecological state, if a very different and less diverse one than what exists now.
That doesnt mean that things wont change anymore once a stable state is reached, even stable environments in nature are not permanent, but humans cant logically continue to diminish a finite natural environment forever. Eventually humans will stop doing that, there wont be any humans to do it, or there wont be a natural environment left to do it to. In that sense, we can be viewed the same as any other disruption caused by any other organism, we’ve just created a much bigger shock than usual and the process of finding a stable state is still ongoing.
A stupid quote. Most viruses also reach an “equilibrium”. Not with a single person, but with the population as a whole. Each species is doing its best to expand its reach, most reach the limit of their expansion when they meet another species or an environment that they can’t conquer. Humans just haven’t reached that limit yet. Maybe that limit will be climate change, maybe humans are able to work past climate change and will never reach their limit. Either way, the distinction between viruses and other life is frivolous.
Corona has become endemic. It’s death rate is now barely above the flu. It is here to stay. Isn’t that exactly that equilibrium the quote was speaking of?
It only worked out this away, as we become more resistant to it thanks to herd-vaccination. If it hadn’t been for our research it would most certainly stayed pandemic.
You’re doing the thing
It’s also incorrect, since many forms of human communities have existed which did live in an equilibrium with the environment… You know, until we expropriated and killed them to accumulate more resources for capitalism
People have been conquering, subjugating, and colonizing for wealth long before capitalism.
Some natives to the Americas completely wiped trees from their area causing drought and mass migration. Humans have been dicks since the beginning. Greed can happen anywhere.
A counterexample only falsifies universally quantified statements, not existentially quantified statements. My point was that there are historical and present examples of humans living in relative harmony with their environment so it is not a necessity, that we destroy the environment as humanity per se.
Are you arguing there has never been a form of civilisation/community that didn’t destroy their environment or are you arguing they are so few and far between that we should consider them anomalies to the supposed human nature of destroying the environment?
The former is a nigh indefensible claim the latter is somewhat easier to defend but would still require more than an example to be convincing.
There are people living in capitalist societies now that are not destroying the environment. But they are im the minority because humans, when gathered in large enough quantities, tend to destroy their environment regardless of their economic system. I believe any native tribe that grows large enough would also do this. The Iroquois depleted their soil and wood sources and had to move around due to this. Being greedy is human nature but not a death sentence. Education is likely the answer.
yes. Just replace Human or Human Being with Capitalism and Smiths observation holds true :)
Its a great movie quote, but I always found it a bit grating used outside that context, because, well, other animals dont instinctively develop some natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment.
Its not like a wolf will realize that they’ve been reproducing too much for the local population of prey animals and decide to have fewer cubs, or actively avoid certain prey species that have declining numbers compared to the rest, if theres too many to support the excess ones will simply starve, or wander off in search of prey. The rabbits wont decide to reproduce less if something happens to the local predator population, they simply overeat their food supply until their numbers collapse back down or their abundance causes the number of predators to rise.
The equilibrium is a product of every species acting in a way that would upset that balance if they were not all in competition with eachother, and it is only stable over relatively short periods of time, in the long run it changes under pressure from geological and climactic shifts, evolutionary adaptation, etc. All humans have done, is evolve an adaptation that is too disruptive for this process to look the way it normally does. (namely enough intelligence and aptitude for tool use to effectively adapt to different conditions much faster than the time it would take for anything slower breeding than perhaps a single celled organism to evolve a counter for).
Id be willing to bet that, if you gave any other animal a set of traits that effectively allowed them to adapt to things much faster than the pace of natural evolution, you would get similar disruption.
What’s more, such an equilibrium will eventually come back. If humans manage to destroy our natural life support system enough to go extinct? Then it will return as whatever survives our mass-extinction event fills empty niches and carries on as it has. If humans do survive but manage to make large scale civilization impossible and must revert to low tech subsistence hunter-gathering? Then they would be subject to the same growth constraints and competition as other large omnivores. If humans develop technology and infrastructure that allows for high tech industrial civilization to exist with a generally sustainable resource cycle, that doesnt disrupt the surrounding ecosystem anymore? Then that surrounding ecosystem is no longer subject to our disruption. If humans develop technology and infrastructure that just replaces by brute force the natural systems that we rely on, so as to no longer need them to survive, and continue on until the whole natural ecosystem is gone? Then as humans and their pets, crops, livestock, parasites etc would represent the whole of life remaining on earth, that built environment would be the environment, and as it would have to have been made generally self-sufficient and stable to get to that point, it would still represent a stable ecological state, if a very different and less diverse one than what exists now.
That doesnt mean that things wont change anymore once a stable state is reached, even stable environments in nature are not permanent, but humans cant logically continue to diminish a finite natural environment forever. Eventually humans will stop doing that, there wont be any humans to do it, or there wont be a natural environment left to do it to. In that sense, we can be viewed the same as any other disruption caused by any other organism, we’ve just created a much bigger shock than usual and the process of finding a stable state is still ongoing.
I would like to give you kudos for this superb dismantling.
A stupid quote. Most viruses also reach an “equilibrium”. Not with a single person, but with the population as a whole. Each species is doing its best to expand its reach, most reach the limit of their expansion when they meet another species or an environment that they can’t conquer. Humans just haven’t reached that limit yet. Maybe that limit will be climate change, maybe humans are able to work past climate change and will never reach their limit. Either way, the distinction between viruses and other life is frivolous.
tell that to virus/bacteria induced plagues… like the bubonic or corona.
Corona has become endemic. It’s death rate is now barely above the flu. It is here to stay. Isn’t that exactly that equilibrium the quote was speaking of?
It only worked out this away, as we become more resistant to it thanks to herd-vaccination. If it hadn’t been for our research it would most certainly stayed pandemic.
And the death toll would have been higher if we just let it spread freely before vaccinations were available.
The bubonic plague did reach and equilibrium. It never went away, it just mutated enough to not kill us so fast.
Same with the flu that was called ‘Spanish flu’ as a slur in the US around 1918 that was extremely lethal.
Rodents and house cats are famous for wiping out native species when introduced to new areas.