O/T:- Climate Change

[drillerpie]

Brutal, but ultimately true.

As emotional beings we constantly try to put that reality to the back of our minds whether it's through fear for ourselves or future generations, and a hell of a lot of money is made by selling ideas/solutions offering to push that reality back or make it go away, but the truth is that we're self-destructive and finite, both individually and collectively. There probably is a kind of 'zen' to be found in being able to accept that truth rather than fighting it, but I'm not sure many people - me included - have reached that stage of acceptance yet.

When you look at the climate change case in its most simple form it's not a very logical one: "Human beings are destroying the planet... so we must work harder to preserve human beings".

I know we consider ourselves to be the most 'intelligent' species in existence - having defined for ourselves what 'intelligence' is, like judge and jury in our own court - but if the first part of that sentence is true, then the second part of the sentence arguably isn't the most logical solution!

I think the reason why that isn't a logical case is because it's a deliberate misrepresentation of the case. To really put the ecological / climate change case in its simplest form, it would actually be something like:

"Human beings are destroying the planet, so human beings should stop destroying the planet"

Which is perfectly logical.

I agree that it is a classic 'tragedy of the commons' situation, and human nature causes these situations to arise quite often, but humans do also have a tremendously sophisticated capacity for cooperation and rule making to try and fix these situations.

As regards the part of UTM's post you quoted, I'm not sure what we can take from it. If we take the idea of '**** happens to other species, so will happen to us too' then why bother trying to fix anything?

I also don't know how useful it is for us to look at other species, as we are so different. Should we be modelling ourselves on other species? Would life be better if we did that? I don't think so. Why have hospitals if most other species don't? Why have football? Why have laws? Why have conversations about ideas?

For UTM: I feel by going from a specific question about two scenarios, to experiments with mice, to **** happens this is not CBeebies, to macro-level thoughts about a***uality and lack of spirituality in Western societies, we are moving away from the original point.

Not to say that I don't think it's all interesting, because I think it is, but personally I don't feel like I've got a convincing answer to my original question (however much importance that may or may not have for you!)

[upthemaggies]

Not to say that I don't think it's all interesting, because I think it is, but personally I don't feel like I've got a convincing answer to my original question (however much importance that may or may not have for you!)

Yeah, sorry about that. I can't remember what the original question was and I do have a tendency to pull back and see a much bigger picture based on a far wider time frame, with nobody having any idea what I'm going on about.

As this is a match day, I'm not feeling the inclination to get into it right now. Maybe we'll come back to it.