Reply #3: i'm not so sure about that... [View All]

[ashmanonar]

humans have ALWAYS been destructive little beings. there's anecdotal/archival evidence that the native americans (the wonderful, earth-friendly people) drove many species into extinction 40000 years before columbus sailed across the atlantic. they ran entire herds of large mammals (buffalo, mammoth, etc) off cliffs to make killing them easier (instead of doing so one at a time).

and before, when hominid species coexisted with other animals: they weren't human. they were hominid precursors. Cro-magnon, the sub-race most closely associated with homo sapiens sapiens, warred their way across europe, breeding out/killing the neanderthals along the way. there used to be lions in persia: destroyed by men. there were lions and other large predators in europe: they managed to wipe them out with stone/bone weapons.

i think agent smith in the Matrix puts it best: humans are a virus. before humans came on the scene, animals fit their own niches very nicely. we went from a small species of hominids (maybe a few hundred thousand on the african savannas)...to 6 billion. without checks, without predators (anymore) except our own stupidity and our growing technology.

i don't know what the solution to this is: i don't proclaim to know the answers. but i do know that we're headed for destruction one way or another.