See, and I was just thinking that the subtraction of roughly 4,000,000 people would make driving around Chicagoland infinitely easier (I keed, I keed).
But I have always wondered that about Feed the Children et al. Not that hungry children are a good thing - just that saving them = more reproduction.
That’s because all morals, except for the most atypical ones, are strictly humanist. The OP has no leg to stand on - he can either appeal to morals, which strongly favour human life, or he can appeal to amoral logic, which favors self interest (and thus human life).
I’ll go you one better, fessie, and admit that I’ve occasionally thought an old-fashioned war with spears and swords would be a better thing for us all than the modern computerized long-range warfare with its (comparitively) low mortality rate.
It’s just obvious to me that there’s a certain amount of aggression and stupidness in our young male population. Letting the most aggressive and stupidest get themselves killed before breeding would be bad for who, exactly? (Besides them, I mean.)
And, like you, I don’t want to volunteer myself or my son, of course, because I’m personally fond of him…but as he enters the teenage years, where his physique is getting stronger and his IQ drops accordingly, and more tellingly, his friends are all getting dumber and more aggressive by the minute, I am left to wonder if the ancient Celts weren’t onto something…
Heck, just reading any one of START’s threads has me wondering if it would be so detrimental to us as a species to just let his friends off each other with impunity.
Why, yes, I am feeling especially cynical today. Let the pile on begin.
Isn’t it interesting, to contrast the “civilized” world we’ve created with the instinctual drives we inherited?
I think the point she’s trying to make is that 40 million people are replaceable, while whole species aren’t, especially when it’s our fault that some species are dying out due to things like pesticides.
Bald eagles go extinct, and they’re gone forever. 40 million people die, and… well, 40 million people are dead, but there are several billion others.
And… as for the comment that Rachel Carson is somehow bad for noticing, documenting and publicizing the environmental problems of DDT, well, that’s ridiculous. Talk about a case of “shoot the messenger”. The various national goverments that banned DDT are at fault for whatever deaths occured, not the person who brought it to public attention. The governments should have weighed the human vs. the environmental costs and come to their own conclusions.
Blaming Rachel Carson for 40 million deaths is about as idiotic as blaming Harriet Beecher Stowe for the US Civil War.
Off topic a bit I know but DDT is still used today in 25 countries
DDT is a probable human carcinogen per the EPA - removing it from the food chain (where it shows up in human breast milk) and BTW probably save some lives - but no where near 40 million. Banning it in the US may have saved the Bald Eagle - but it really had nothing to do with the worldwide deaths.
The people dying - (the dubious 40 million no. ) are dying in Africa (1 million kids per year) - they are counting from '72 and again not all these deaths can be traced to DDT where, again, in many of the worst off places DDT is still in use.
To the larger thread issue - and end of highjack- of whether 40 million African and South American lives, many destined for poverty, are more worthy than 1 species of raptor I would say “definitely”. Everysingle one of the humans of them had the potential to make or re-make the Earth better for all species - something that could not be said of any individual from the Raptor’s species : from evolution to extinction.
round of applause for **Captain Amazing ** v. funny
I thought the crux of the argument was not that we sacrificed 40 million people for the sake of the bald eagle and other species, but that there were indications that DDT did not endanger avian species and Rachel Carson’s research did not stand up to later review. At least, that’s the argument I’ve heard. I’ve no idea whether it’s accurate or not.
By what means? I used to accept that argument, that any one person has the potential to turn the planet on its ear, and thus all human lives are valuable. But I’m not sure anymore. I don’t think it’s going to happen. We can introduce new fun and games, solve some superficial problems, create beauty, live and love. But change everything? Nope.
Since the DDT issue may not be accurate, let’s just hypothesize - is it worthwhile to introduce an element into the enviroment that kills other species in order to eradicate a human ailment? Malaria might well serve a necessary purpose, by keeping the human population in check. Same with other diseases we’re busy fighting. Who says it’s the right thing that all people everywhere should live long lives? Is that really in the best interest of the planet?
Or is it possible that human diseases like forest fires - small ones that clear the brush are necessary, otherwise a big blaze can gather steam and wipe out the whole region.
I can see where our desire for health and longevity, our desire to see others’ suffering eased, might well be our best quality. Is it really going to behoove us, though? Or do we perhaps need to take that empathy to the next level (extend it to other species) in order to survive?
Actually, they are. We can develop more or just wait. Indeed, we’ve developed many new species (or at least complex variants on them).
One of those million kids could invent a way to bring back extinct species (just like in Jurassic Park :rolleyes: ] - or invent or proselytize farming techniques that reduce erosion or help global warming or cures skin cancer or sumpin’. Maybe they could be a political leader that leads their country out of poverty, and ends environmental degradation of theier area with effects for the whole earth. Of No raptor species, even if they worked together as a unit from the Jurassic until now, could we say the same “maybe“.
What is “the Planet” ? It is a rock that was once a lava covered rock, now it is covered in water and concrete and plants and animals and people, one day it will be a burned cinder. It has no interests. Sentient live has interests.
There are two thought threads here: If we are extending our compassion to preserve other species in order to survive it is not empathy - it is survival.
As to letting diseases make a “controlled burn” through human populations I am not sure how to respond to such a notion. Certainly one thing to ask is why stop there? Mankind’s natural span is <30 years, living in small hunter gatherer groups – no computers or medicine at all. If we think that way why is it moral to transform large areas of earth’s habitat over to agriculture? Or to burn fossil fuels to generate electricity or spend the planets resources to write stuff down. Certainly woodland creatures would be much happier if we just replanted the aboriginal N.American and European Forests and restored the grasslands and pulled our cities down … I submit that is the moral equivalent letting selected disease take a “natural” course through what, after all, is selected human populations.
fessie, without wanting to make this aggressively personal, perhaps it would help to put yourself into the equation; should we kill the scorpion hiding in your shoe, or just allow you to die? After all, you’re just another hungry human mouth, in the midst of a vast number of similar hungry human mouths… do we really need you?
I think we should kill the scorpion and thus save your life; you seem to be arguing that it isn’t all that important if we don’t bother.
No, that’s fine. Of course I care about my own continued existence, and would walk through a thousand fires to save my kids. My heart bled for those tsunami victims (and survivors!). That’s how humans are. And I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I just wonder if it’s going to be our undoing, to the extent that its applied erratically.
Maybe it should be a separate thread, but I really don’t think 40,000,000 people one way or the other have a significant impact at this point. Not when there are 6+ billion of us.
Well, I can’t say that my mind is completely made up on this, but I think I see where fessie is coming from.
I don’t mean to hijack the debate, but I’m curious about what I think is a related question. If the choice was between saving some human lives and saving some pieces of great art, would the decision be as easy to make? Is there any question of scale, or is human life infinitely more worth saving than any other non-human-life-related thing?
~ Isaac
I’m sure you’re right - the loss of a relatively small proportion of the total human population won’t doom us; in fact it probably just frees up resources and opportunities for the rest to exploit and thrive, quickly filling the space. If the population growth was impacted because 40,000,000 couples trying to concieve their fifth child were simply unsuccessful, it would hardly matter at all, but when it’s the cutting short of 40,000,000 existing lives of people who had ambitions, hopes, families etc, then it’s a tragedy.
It’s possible to have a balanced view of the whole thing that includes population growth control (say, by contraception), but also includes strenuous efforts to mitigate human suffering and early mortality.
Human life is inherently valuable and sacred in a way that animals are not. Asking whether or not we “need” more people is obscene: 40,000,000 lives trump endangered species any day. Aside from the issue of the 40,000,000 people who never were there’s the question of the people who existed and suffered and died needlesly from malaria. Why do I think suffering, death, and the supression of human life are bad? It’s an axiom of my religious beliefs…
Two seperate issues are being confused and cross argued here.
I think the answer to 1) is probably “no”. Realistically, most people aren’t going to make a huge difference outside of the people immediately around them.
For me the answer to 2) is “yes”, but this is a little more complicated. I personally empathize with people far more than animals, and concepts such as “the planet” or “a species” are too abstract for me to get worked up about. Forty million people or a species? So long species, it’s been nice knowing you. Each person has vast history, emotion and sentient awareness that makes the loss of just them a tragedy. A species, not so much. The individual animals are a different story, perhaps they are sentient, but I don’t believe to the extent where I could empathize with them much.
True. But why stop with human suffering, why not care about other species as well?
Interesting question about saving art vs. human lives – particularly when the U.S. is busy killing people in the Middle East in order to (fill in the blank). Clearly we don’t value human life, either. Because it’s not about imminent threat - in the case of me v. a bug, a rabid dog, a human assailant, there’s no argument. But we kill people (or let them die) for abstract reasons all the time.
Dunno; the further away something is, the smaller it looks; the smaller something looks, the less important it is to us. Maybe this is wrong, but it’s what we do.
False dilemma: I care about BOTH humans AND animals; I just happen to care about humans more.
Its looking at the whole population rather than the individual. In the current globalization thread, Sam Stone (and others) are busy arguing that globalization is - in the aggregate - good. But that doesn’t mean than you won’t be hurt by it as an individual.
At the time of Silent Spring, DDT was linked to cancer, liver damage and nervous system disorders as well - all of which are more of a problem in the U.S. than malaria. We didn’t get rid of it JUST to save birds. And the ecosystem is tied together. Who can say what impact losing so many birds would have had. http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/tfacts35.html Also, the U.S. banned DDT, but the U.S. doesn’t have many deaths from malaria (about 100 per year, almost all who have recently travelled). Africa (where most malaria deaths occur) is free to spray mosquitos with DDT if they wish. Also, many malaria deaths are preventable http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/050213121449.htm. Spraying with DDT may be the most effective way to stop the transmission, but you can’t blame every death on the lack of DDT. First of all, other, insecticides with less impact can kill mosquitos, secondly, malaria is treatable if you get it.
In 1998 alone 1.17 Million people worldwide lost their lives in traffic accidents - the low end of the estimated deaths yearly from malaria range. And yet most of us drive a car. Was the invention of the automobile worthwhile?