Reply #4: I was talking about times before what you describe. [View All]

[tubbacheez]

No living being, plant or animal, can live without any impact on the ecosystem.

I actually don't believe that any animal is in perfect harmony with nature... at least not in the Disney-esque sense of total cooperation.

I'm talking about scale.


Nature is full of conflict and strife. Living creatures compete for resources all the time. The harmony of nature is not at individual levels or even tribal or pack levels, but at regional and global levels.

Sometimes you get the bear. Sometimes the bear gets you. But over the years and months, both bears and humans persist in a stable balance.




In the examples you gave, just like in the OP, human smarts changed the game so that we win virtually all of the time. When humans win every conflict, and we do this for long periods of time, and we multiply our numbers (like in your Agent Smith reference), this results in a huge shift in the balance of nature.

Modern industrialization is the most blatant form of this imbalance. And I'm open to considering the examples you gave as potential imbalances too.

But the scale is the thing.