Some do, some don’t. Why do you generalize and condemn an entire species?
That wasn’t the point. The point was standard of living and on that, there is no question that the standard of living of most people on this planet is higher than that of their grandfather’s.
And you are still avoiding the question.
Industrial societies despoil their backyard more than societies of more primitive technology.
Virtually all species have a negative impact on some part of the environment and on other species.
I’m not sure that’s accurate at all. I think that today almost half of the human population live in extreme poverty.
But they are not bent on exterminating other species.
There is a long-standing prey-predator relationship.
Humans are not bent on exterminating other species either … except perhaps for some insects and postulants.
Sure they are. It’s the history of agriculture. And no species has ever been exterminated by humans, right?
Of course its accurate. Even the vast majority of poor live at a better standard of living than did their forefathers.
Humans are a prey species. What is your problem with that?
That does not demonstrate a bent to exterminate.
Are their poor sparrows? Why have humans been enslaved? Why do humans kowtow to wealthy elites? Why do humans have haves and have nots? Why do humans have stratified societies? Why have, since the origins of agriculture, have most humans been indebted to powerful elites?
We can actually exterminate ourselves. Pretty smart, right?
Actually yes. It takes a great deal of intelligence to become capable of exterminating our species.
And as humans continue to destroy habitats on earth, for what, to feed more and more people? Or to extract more and more energy? Or to extract rare earth elements? Basically as fast as we can? Why do we do that?
Oh how I wish otters could destroy the world. That would make them pretty cool, right?
Your desperation is becoming clear. None of that has anything whatsoever to do with what we are talking about. Just admit it … you hate being a human and wish you had never been born one. Yet you still have not answered the question as to what species you would prefer to be. Odd that.
Does that mean that you wish you were an otter?
Could does not mean will. It takes tremendous intelligence to develop the capability to destroy the world (which at this point, we have not) and it also takes intelligence to not do so, which we have not done (destroy humanity) since developing that capability some 70 years ago.
Oh Samm, Oh Samm. Yes, I am so desperate to understand the trajectory of human cultural evolution. To understand how we became what we became. That was my early career, as you probably know. I studied the evolution of human societies during their transition from hunting and gathering to early farming, domestication of animals, and sedentary life-styles during the early Post-glacial period. I spent the first 10 years of my career trying to understand that transition. And that may be the most controversial transition in the study of human history (or prehistory). My work on that subject during the 1980s is still cited today. But what all of the experts know who study that period in human cultural evolution, the answers are unclear. But what we do know is that after that moment, societal inequality began and amplified. And it is still continuing today. The Neolithic experiment is only 10,000 years old. A drop in the bucket compared to the temporal expanse of human evolution.
