"We are undeserving of this planet"

[Ex-User (9086)]

Covid pandemic has shown how humanity is incapable of safeguarding against relatively simple global catastrophes. It could be argued that we are really lucky that nothing severe has hit us yet. It's obvious that governments are incapable of dealing with anything threatening.

Depending on how much you want to admit it, we exist by sheer luck and we need even more luck to survive until, if ever, to a time when our existence will not be based on chance.

I see the phrase "undeserving of this planet" as pretentious (used here as click bait), though I hear it and phrases similar to this one being used. Though perhaps it points to the problem of collective agency that individuals like us may have to develop to decrease the randomness of our existence. Or maybe it's just that we may need leaders that will feel more responsible for their task in protecting everyone and planning the future.

In this sense once we get our shit together and deal with global catastrophes more effectively we will become more deserving of this world, by having earned it.

Or we will stay lucky and laugh at any aliens that had to meticulously and fearfully plan their advancement, they're complete try hard losers after all and we were bold enough to sleep on hydrogen bomb switches for decades.

I personally think there is no "we". The arrogant elites that are actually responsible for the show tend to dilute their fuck ups by shifting "I fucked up" into "we fucked up".

 

[Rook]

Eh, cockroaches crawl, microbes microbial, I live, I die.

Blaming elites? Blame? Meh. History is filled with assholes, and the future will be plastered with them as well. Every time one caveman has more rocks or dried meat than the other, shit happens. This age has more humans than ever before, and tech on a level not easily grasped, so the schemers can weave greater tapestries of control and subversion. It is what it is, and without battle, without war, it will remain so.

I'm selfish, I do what I do to profit myself and those near 'n dear to me, and by profit I ain't just talking about scrounging for cash.
Let the planet burn or let them form their utopia. Time marches on, all shall turn to dust, and the cockroaches shall inherit the earth. Fuckers outlived the dinosaurs, they might yet die with the sun's end.

Earning a world? How do you earn a plot of land? These days, buy it. Or occupy it illegally. Join a commune, look in a government's eyes. Not so easy to murder folk and take their fertile acres in this age. Not so easy to settle on land no one owns - you'll have to walk pretty damned far for that.

Humans don't need to earn jack shit or prove jack shit. We are as much part of nature as any other thing crawling, flying, swimming, or floating.

The factories we build and the rivers we pollute are all the signposts of our nest-cities. The songs we craft are our grasshopper legs rasping and our frog lungs bellowing. Different hives have different queens, and most of them bore me with their simplicity. The meek, mellow, and munificent stand by on the margins of history as they watch the outspoken believers preach about gods and clouds and masks and growth and shoe sales and churches of glamorous atonal deities blaring out products designed and crafted to be so mediocre that none shall love them yet all shall sup upon that altar of collective acceptance.

Fuck leaders, fuck followers. Embrace the chaos, cos it's fun, it's a bloody adventure-

-not a deathly march down the halls of absolute reason, past the forests of mossy stones and deepest caves to bow down upon the rubber bathroom mat of being sensible, of being right or charitable. Be practical, aware, and kind.

Let loose the dogs of war and plague and art; let the heavens rain with doom and the streets be filled with the wails of the fearful. Just as warlords of old strode over mountains of corpses, so too might things once more be.
Why? Because from danger comes appreciation of safety, from starvation comes appreciation of bounty, from death comes appreciation of life.

Strapping billions of animals to machines and making them run their little rounds to generate this or that - is that life? Is such peace and certainty worth it?

Well, one day, I'll die, and the cockroaches shall prosper. What more can be said?

I hope that the first planet earth colonizes will have these plucky insectoid pioneers take the first step upon it. Let the cockroaches inherit the galaxy, let them survive, for they are a simple folk with simple needs.

 

[Hadoblado]

I see it as dependent on whether the consequences of our actions are gradually received or not. There is a version of humanity that can do this, and we need the right feedback to allow us to adapt toward that. But if we reap too much too quickly, we are going to regress in capacity to the point where our collective disposition doesn't matter anymore.

Either way, I think most of humanity won't make it.

 

[Cognisant]

Covid-19 is but the latest in a long history of pandemics, history teaches us a fundamental and incredibly insulting truth, that no matter how momentous the event the world will move on.

Was the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a war crime? Doesn't matter.
How many people died from the Spanish Flu? Doesn't matter.

The September 11 attacks are already fading from the public mind, it was a different time back then and in the years to come Covid-19 and Trump's presidency will be remembered ambivalently as just more stuff that happened.

Do you think humanity will survive and permanently colonize other planets?

Planets are overrated, it would be easier and frankly preferable to make O'Neill cylinders, but before that happens somebody needs to build a mass driver.

 

[sushi]

nature and the universe tries to kill us
we try to kill nature, it goes both ways

 

[Creeping Death]

We need to colonize other planets in order to ensure that our species lives on. The eventual goal is type 3 civilization.

 

[Siouxsie]

I don´t think we´re deserving or undeserving of anything. It´s funny how we´re still alive as a species, I believe it´s all a tragic joke.

Why should we feel empathy for the planet? I firmly believe we can´t, we´re not wired like that, that´s why we keep reapeating history and mistakes and all of that.

Question: do you have the mpression we are back in some sort of dark ages? like medieval times?

 

[sushi]

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

Blaming elites? Blame? Meh.

Well put. It's pointless to blame or focus on things beyond our influence too much.

I see it as dependent on whether the consequences of our actions are gradually received or not. There is a version of humanity that can do this, and we need the right feedback to allow us to adapt toward that. But if we reap too much too quickly, we are going to regress in capacity to the point where our collective disposition doesn't matter anymore.

Either way, I think most of humanity won't make it.

So we are making a tech switch to battlecruisers, but if we use too many mules or build useless nukes we will mine out before we can expand to island bases? Well, I tried to stretch sc analogies. My actual question would be; by most of humanity do you mean that most of us won't live long enough to see it or that if it's going to happen at all the tech switch (or the world state requiring the tech switch) will consume many lives leaving a small group by the end of it?

Covid-19 is but the latest in a long history of pandemics, history teaches us a fundamental and incredibly insulting truth, that no matter how momentous the event the world will move on.

Was the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a war crime? Doesn't matter.
How many people died from the Spanish Flu? Doesn't matter.

The September 11 attacks are already fading from the public mind, it was a different time back then and in the years to come Covid-19 and Trump's presidency will be remembered ambivalently as just more stuff that happened.

Do you think humanity will survive and permanently colonize other planets?

Planets are overrated, it would be easier and frankly preferable to make O'Neill cylinders, but before that happens somebody needs to build a mass driver.

True, the world will move on, unless it's an earth crust-melting event, or something that leaves nobody to move on or nothing to move forward to.

Do you think humanity is gambling with civilization threatening crises by not safeguarding against them, or maybe such threats are too unlikely?

Space habitats are more scalable and can be placed anywhere. Planets are a simplification.

 

[scorpiomover]

Covid pandemic has shown how humanity is incapable of safeguarding against relatively simple global catastrophes. It could be argued that we are really lucky that nothing severe has hit us yet. It's obvious that governments are incapable of dealing with anything threatening.

Depending on how much you want to admit it, we exist by sheer luck and we need even more luck to survive until, if ever, to a time when our existence will not be based on chance.

In this sense once we get our shit together and deal with global catastrophes more effectively we will become more deserving of this world, by having earned it.

Given how much effort went into travelling to the stars, and how far we've got so far, compared to how far we'd have to go to live amongst the stars, I think that we'll need to get ourselves together before we'll make it to colonising other star systems.

 

[scorpiomover]

I'm selfish, I do what I do to profit myself and those near 'n dear to me, and by profit I ain't just talking about scrounging for cash.

It's very evident that many humans don't think purely in selfish terms.
Had all humans been incredibly selfish, then humanity would be predictable and easy to direct. But some are not that selfish, and that screws with the plans of the selfish to manipulate each other.

 

[scorpiomover]

Earning a world? How do you earn a plot of land? These days, buy it. Or occupy it illegally. Join a commune, look in a government's eyes. Not so easy to murder folk and take their fertile acres in this age. Not so easy to settle on land no one owns - you'll have to walk pretty damned far for that.

Humans don't need to earn jack shit or prove jack shit. We are as much part of nature as any other thing crawling, flying, swimming, or floating.

I gather that people with a lack of self-efficacy and lack of self-esteem seem to generally fail at situations where everything was headed their way.

A person who perceives himself as being poor, even if they have $100 billion in the bank, will be suspicious of anyone offering to do them a favour that would normally be only given to the mega-rich, but will accept any charlatan trying to con them with a deal that would only be acceptable to the very poor.

So even if the universe would not require us to prove ourselve worthy, our subconscious requires it of ourselves.

 

[BurnedOut]

The locus of perspective matters. You are absolutely right if everybody considers the situation from the locus standi of a human being otherwise it does not matter.

I mean if somebody starts a movement 'Stop killing of Samaritan microbes', it is hard to judge if they are stupid or not

 

[Rook]

@scorpiomover :

1. Correct.

I think self-drive might be a better term for what I tried to say? As in, doing what you do for what you hold dear instead of doing it for a greater external goal, or an imposed goal etc.


Selfishness for benevolence, ie. caring for yourself and those you adore by actively battling against/struggling with/bearing through prevailing circumstances is, imo, the normal state for most humans.

If a human has no self-drive at all, it becomes a slave - even if it is a benevolent slave.

If a human is only selfish, it becomes an entity set on only acquiring/fulfilling desires, also a slave.

***

2. Correct. Many fail in good winds because they imagine storms on the horizon, and so scuttle their ship.

Humans have an inherent drive to prove themselves, either to themselves, others, religions, ideals, concepts, et cetera; list goes on.

I speak of humanity as a whole from the perspective of a mountain

It is a species I see as having risen from the primordial sludge as any other species, and just as finches build nests and lions tackle zebra foals, so too does man persist, constantly evolving itself and its habitat - to whatever end.

 

[gilliatt]

Let's move forward, let's not dig the soil with our bare hands.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Capitalism is great in getting us through the day to a nice comfy bed. Only to a fraction of population that is.
Other than that it is entirely useless.

Experiments have show that the better your life is, but without a proper challenge our minds end up creating nonexistent problems. These problems become so detrimental that eventually they can destroy us.

In capitalism people often forget what is critical and important. We are like moths flying around the light-bulb.

 

[gilliatt]

The basic question to answer, the basic issue is only: Is man free? Are is he born is bondage, like an indentured servant who must keep buying his life by serving the tribe. Does man have the right to exist for his own sake? Capitalism recognizes individual rights, property rights in which all property is privately owned. A government is only an agent to protect man's rights, protect him from physical force, fraud. Capitalism, you have the right to agree or disagree. Collectivism, tribal premise, not so. Freedom, that is the most important principle, that is my thinking. You could write volumes on this subject, not enough space on here.

 

[Artsu Tharaz]

Humanity has fallen. We are too evil to be saved, if you ask me. Eventually the population will die off. People will have to be born into the spirit world. Technology has advanced too far. Abominations at every turn. A fragment may survive. Technological collapse. Clamoring for life from the evil, leaving everyone with nothing. Alas, we have fallen.

 

[BurnedOut]

Abominations at every turn. A fragment may survive. Technological collapse. Clamoring for life from the evil, leaving everyone with nothing. Alas, we have fallen.

Goddamn. Are you Rambo?

 

[Artsu Tharaz]

Abominations at every turn. A fragment may survive. Technological collapse. Clamoring for life from the evil, leaving everyone with nothing. Alas, we have fallen.

Goddamn. Are you Rambo?

No, I'm the lamb though.