Date: Wed, 03 Feb 1999 22:45:38 -0800
From: Jonathan Kratter <jonathan-AT-kratter.com>
Subject: Re: baby food


At 12:55 AM 2/4/99 -0500, Aaron Micheau wrote:

<SNIP>

>i made two basic assertions:
>
>1) human beings are biologically successful

But is their success sustainable?  And does this superlative success make
our lives more miserable than they would be were we NOT so successful?

>2) like other biologically successful species, human beings despoil their
>environment; or, to be more precise, they destroy the equilibrium of their
>environment due to overpopulation and overutilization of resources

But they do so DIFFERENTLY, which is what I was trying to make you see.

Did the elephants go out and systematically hunt down the gazelles and
antelopes and giraffees and other species that fed on the grass and kill
them?  Did the locusts fence in the land and then only regrow their food of
choice, forcing every other species to move elsewhere?  No, they didn't.
They may have eaten a large portion of the available food, but that's far
different from what humans do.


>The biggest difference between other animals and humans in this sense
>is that humans have managed longterm survival in (and thus despoiled)
>virtually every type of environment on this planet.  Something no other
>species (i know of) has done, and another indicator of biological
successWhether other species hunt for pleasure is an interesting question, but
>more or less irrelevant to the issue at hand. (DK is fond of saying that
>felines do, btw...)  
>You seem to think that humans made some evolutionary mistake in developing
>widespread agriculture, and in doing so, showed ourselves biologically
>unfit.  That the opposite is true is rather obvious, i think.  

If I have led you to believe I feel this way, I apologize... I don't think
this is true.  Humans who choose to practice our "totalitarian" agriculture
are making a mistake because this way of getting food endangers our
long-term survival because it keeps increasing population beyond the
carrying capacity of the environment.

And you
>should be more clear what you mean by "completely destruction" of the
>environment.

That the environment is converted into biomass consisting solely of humans,
their food, and the food of their food.


	-- jonathan






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