What did humans ever do for the world?

Ive always been fond of the Rogers Dynasonic. Its such a unique sounding snare. What Floyd Snead did with it while playing with Three Dog Night was great.

Some day Ill own one. The few times Ive had the opportunity to pick up a 60s vintage one the timing was never right for one reason or another–usually financial.

Les Paul thread?

What did humans ever do for the world

Ive always been fond of the Rogers Dynasonic. Its such a unique sounding snare. What Floyd Snead did with it while playing with Three Dog Night was great.

Some day Ill own one. The few times Ive had the opportunity to pick up a 60s vintage one the timing was never right for one reason or another–usually financial.

On the basis that Mother Nature never makes mistakes….we are here as the dominant species. That comes with responsibilities, and management. We need to manage our close environment – like killing wasps in the loft. But we don’t want to wipe them off the face-of.
We are also only here to reproduce and replace/expand ourselves. Which is great, because sex is rather good so the more the better.
The problems that we bring are probably a natural means of balancing out. Yes, even stuff like WW1 and 2. If there was such a thing as a great creator, you’d think “It” would make us in a more peaceful light. But no, we actually like killing – which stems from our need to survive.

What? You don’t get environment is the new religion and god and the liberal who criticizes religion is doing the same thing bringing questions like these. Who has the answers? They do. Who has to live life the way they say in order to correct it? You do.

Yes, OK.

Paul

Eh? :confused:

Paul

What? You don’t get environment is the new religion and god and the liberal who criticizes religion is doing the same thing bringing questions like these. Who has the answers? They do. Who has to live life the way they say in order to correct it? You do.

so did we fly in from some other planet then or not?

According to the Scientologists, yes we did. And aboard a DC-8 too !

Guess who holds all the answers for everyone to live by and follow or else something dire will happen? Sound familiar? In the end activist liberals are no different from right-wing religious types.

Eh? :confused:

Paul

The irony is to ask such a question itself suggests there’s an importance in humans. What has any other species done for the world? So to think that humans have to have contributed to the world while every other species gets a pass must mean humans are special. Simply enough humans are no different from animals. Humans eat and procreate just like any other animal. And just like any other animal that over populates and eats all the food they die off until there’s a balance again. If there were no humans, would the animal world live in peace? Animals can be and are cruel to one another. So why ask such a question in the first place?

The bigger irony is that this is one of many questions liberals ponder. What’s the purpose? Guess who holds all the answers for everyone to live by and follow or else something dire will happen? Sound familiar? In the end activist liberals are no different from right-wing religious types.

And Symon, what if we reduced all animal species to just the useful ones and then a disease mutated that wiped out one or more species ?

We could clone a new breed of that species that was immune to that disease? Again, just another theory, not a belief 🙂

Interesting point Paul, though personally I believe (going on what you said) we have taken something magical and turned it into something extraordinary. I think we’ve developed our art of science. Fair point, the principles have always been there, but we have manipulated it into doing incredible things. No other species has been able to do that to the level we have.

There’s me saying everything has its place in the grand scheme of things,but when I used to go into my daughter’s primary school to help with the reading I once caught headlice from one of the little sods.
What earthly use can they be ??!
And Symon,what if we reduced all animal species to just the useful ones and then a disease mutated that wiped out one or more species ?

A world without my Cousin – well, that solves the excess METHANE problem – now for the other gases 😀 😀 😀 LMAO 😀

but through our own ingenuity we have developed science and have been able to create a vast number of genetic advancements that may one day vastly decrease our need on the natural world (cloning of animals (even verging on humans), genetic crops, seeding of vegetation).

We haven’t developed science though, we’ve merely discovered it. There’s a huge and very distinct difference. Nothing we really know about science was developed by us, all we’ve done is discover things that existed long before we did and try find new ways of working those things to our advantage. Even the principles of jet propulsion; something we generally consider to be quite advanced, have been used in the oceans for millions of years by a variety of creatures. All we did with the invention of the turbofan was find a way of using that principle to work for us practically.

Nature still knows an infinite amount more than we do.

Paul

Has science not enabled us to pollinate plants ourselves? I don’t know too much on the subject.

No, we don’t own the planet, and there are fortunately a number of brilliant people who strive to preserve the lives of other species, but… What I was thinking, was that if we ‘allowed’ all species to become extinct other than those that we really need (e.g. pigs, cows, sheep), we would still get on ok. By chance we are here, but through our own ingenuity we have developed science and have been able to create a vast number of genetic advancements that may one day vastly decrease our need on the natural world (cloning of animals (even verging on humans), genetic crops, seeding of vegetation).

I guess I am alluding to some of the ideas in Science Fiction – where perhaps one day we have taken over all corners of the globe, grow/harvest things for our needs and are but few of the remaining species. Then, the world would ‘exist for us’. Currently, we have no one challenging us for this apart from perhaps Mother Nature herself.

One small example – we don’t give much thought to the bees buzzing around on a sunny day,but if the bees die out we’re all ****ed – no bees=no pollination=no plants=no animals=no humans.

Funnily enough I was actually going to use bees as an example, but decided to use spiders instead as so many people seem to hate them but never realise they actually do us a huge amount of good!

Paul

If I remember rightly,the former World Wildlife Fund used to have a slogan showing pictures of various animals and the slogan, ” It’s OUR world too “.

It’s true that the world as we know it now exists due to the complex weaving together of the many threads of all forms of life,however humble and pointless they may seem ( woodlice,anyone ? )

To me,it’s inconceivable that this is just a random arrangement,so we try to rationalise it by various theories – benevolent creator,God,Allah,whatever team you support – or Intelligent Design,evolution or whatever else scientists care to call it.

It seems to me that as the most highly evolved form of life we have a moral duty to do our best for the lower forms of life which have been provided for our use. This means being careful to maintain the world in its present state,whilst making appropriate use of what we’ve been given.

One small example – we don’t give much thought to the bees buzzing around on a sunny day,but if the bees die out we’re all ****ed – no bees=no pollination=no plants=no animals=no humans.

The only certain thing is that this debate must have been going on since humans began,and not one of us is ever going to be able to come up with an undisputable answer.

I believe this world exists for us (again; evolution, dominant species etc), but certainly not any more than that.

Ahhh, let the debate begin! 😀

This is where I think the human race is its own worst enemy because we think we’re far more important than we actually are. We didn’t create the planet and we didn’t ask to be put here. We didn’t evolve through choice; it just happened, so taking that into account isn’t it a little unreasonable, possibly touching on arrogant, to believe this planet exists purely for us? We weren’t given the earth, evolution just gave us the intelligence to selfishly take whatever we want however we want it, but I don’t believe that gives us the right to say the planet is ours.

Looking at it from a slightly wider perspective, if the ecosystem changes slightly then life either becomes much more uncomfortable or difficult, or even impossible for us. If a single species we take for granted were suddenly no more (like spiders for example), our lives would be hell. Hundreds of millions more flies would be free to speard disease and generally annoy us. That being the case, surely the planet exists for every living thing on the earth rather than just us because every single living organism plays its own part, however large or small, in the bigger picture.

Paul

I think the whole progress of evolution is to create a spiecies that can go flying among the stars and earth is just a stepping stone to it. If we destroy the earth, then I think we are ment to destroy it in just to give us better reason to start space traveling.

Sounds like a first principles mission statement on a pretty fair religion there Symon!. 🙂

….which raises the second, natural, observation that the discussion point is mans place in the world and wider ramifications yet the mention of divine intervention is cursory at best.

Man 1 God 0?

Do we make other species extinct? Or is in natural evolution that we have become the dominant species and they have not evolved enough to survive? This sounds selfish, but is there a great need to protect the survival of every species? What do they offer to us? Of course it is in (most of) our natures to protect others, including animals, and we will go on trying to preserve life. However, were large carnivorous dinosaurs ever to blame for bringing on the extinction of another species? Were they ‘naughty’ for doing so, or was it just evolution then? Perhaps as Paul suggested; our natural evolution will lead to the extinction of ourselves, by ourselves.

I use so many questions as I don’t think any of us (or perhaps, anyone) is entitled or qualified to provide a definitive answer. Any ‘answers’ are nothing more than general acceptance.

As Anne alluded to, it is amazing where we are today. I often sit in my room, office or a meeting and just think about how we have developed even small scale things like white boards, projectors, stationary, tv’s (general arbitrary stuff we rarely think about) – general technology – from a point thousands of years ago when we didn’t even know how to speak or defend ourselves (I recommend 1001 Inventions: That Changed the World for insightful reading). An interesting thought of where we’ll be in a one or two thousand years from now (if, as before, we haven’t wiped ourselves out).

I believe this world exists for us (again; evolution, dominant species etc), but certainly not any more than that. It would be naive to think about how many stars there are and to consider that no others have planets proportionally far enough away from them to sustain life. And from that, that not at least one has had a fortunate series of events that has led to intelligent life as ‘smart’ as, or smarter than us. I’m not a crazy UFO nut, but I would like to be around for ‘first contact’.

Next person’s outlook?

I’m sure that zoos have managed to save a fair number animal species from extinction.

But that would be more than cancelled out by all the species we’ve made extinct.