On the other hand, and as alluded by another poster, there’s actually a movement advocating the extinction of the human race. The mean promoted is to stop reproducing. Sorry, I don’t remember its name.
Well, if that’s the way you feel, let me tell you a little story.
Once upon a time there was a country that decided that a large fraction of its population had to be removed. So squads of soldiers were formed who would round up the bad people, shoot them, and bury them in mass graves. Except the soldiers assigned to this duty couldn’t take it. It drove them crazy to have to massacre people, even these really bad people who deserved to die, who were destroying the country. To have to shoot them, face to face, was more than most soldiers could stand.
So they invented a way to exterminate humans where the soldiers didn’t have to look the people they killed in the face. And that worked well, they found that the soldiers assigned to this duty could tolerate massacring any number of humans, as long as they didn’t have to look them in the face as they killed them.
So when you start massacring people, you’ll probably need a way to do so where you don’t have to look the people you kill in the face, and you’ll probably need to avoid reading news about the people you kill, or you won’t be able to take it. Just a simple word of advice.
Why is it that “lovers of nature” always wish for a world in which they (and the rest of us) do not exist? :rolleyes: Yes, we humans have an impact on the environment. But we are OF the world, too. Everything in this world is of it. We are part of the environment, we are affected by the environment and we are a force upon the environment. But an Earth spinning along its way without people is no more natural than the Earth as it is today. The development of technology is a natural evolution of the human species, just as the development of claws was a natural evolution of cats.
Yes, we have ignorantly abused our delicate but amazingly adaptive blue-green planet, and we do put our creature comfort above all else (what creature doesn’t?) Yes, we need to do a better job of cleaning up the messes we make, because if we are supreme on this planet, then that supremacy comes with a responsibility that humankind has so far shirked.
But an Earth without people? What would be the point of that? How would the extermination of the only self-aware creatures on the planet make it a better place for the other creatures? They would still kill and eat each other, so they would live in constant terror of something bigger with sharper teeth and claws. How is that better than an Earth with people in it?
I don’t, either, but I’ve heard of it. And on yet another hand (how many hands do we have, so far?) the idea of extinguishing humanity by not reproducing is one of the silliest ever proposed. I’m reminded of a movie quote (don’t remember the movie or the exact circumstances) in which a grizzled old Texas undertaker sits atop his horse-drawn hearse and growls to his wide-eyed assistant, “You know why we’ll never go outta’ bidness? ‘Cause f***in’ will always be more fun than dyin’.” I think that’s called instinctive survival of the species, or something.
A different planet (supposing that one exists and can be found) is likely too far (many, many light years away at best) from our current planet to effectively transport the human race from here to there, even assuming finite number colonists as seeds.
We need to take better care of the planet we’ve got; humans are part of it, but not the end all to be all of it. In other words, the human species can’t be preserved without the planet as a whole with other species. If that means eventually curtailing or limiting our own kind, so be it. I’m a far cry from being a human supremacist.
I haven’t read the whole of the Hugo de Garis link, but Hans Moravec in Mind Children proposes transferring human intelligence and individual consciousness into robotic bodies. Theoretically, these post-biological “humans” could travel to other planets, but they might not be too interested in setting up an environment for their biological ancestors.
Oh, I’d never hold that against anyone.
Thanks for making me smile.
Well, I’m not musing about anything for you and your loved ones that I’m not musing about for myself and mine. So it really isn’t personal in any way.
But the main reason you shouldn’t feel threatened is that exterminating the human race is not something I am intending to do or exerting one iota of effort to figure out how to do. It’s strictly a hypothetical exercise (“gee, if such a big red button existed and I happened to pass it, would I lift the plastic cover and push it?”) I’m not for one group slaughtering another or reducing the human population in some hideous way. I just happen to imagine that Earth would be a better and healthier place for most of the rest of its inhabitants if the human race didn’t exist.
I suppose my previous post could make me sound like a sociopath. The only thing I can say in my own defense is that I don’t exhibit any other signs. I’m a fairly normal, happily partnered, taxpaying, homeowning, government-employed, travel-loving, editor type. No history of criminal behavior or mad-scientist tendencies, and no desire to acquire any.
I hope that can make you sleep a teensy bit easier at night.