Where did us humans cross the line?

[ConcernedCanuk]

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We now have the capability to destroy this whole planet

We are now engaged in destroying parts of it, some on purpose, some by ignorance

So where did we cross the line?

Was it when we harnessed the power of the atom?

Was it when we mastered flight?

Was it when we invented the internal combustion engine?

Or does it go as far back as when we learned how to control/create fire . . ??

We DEFINITELY have passed the barriers of the "Balance of Nature" - and Survival of the fittest" - because the most unhealthy human with the wizardry to rape our financial sectors succeeds

while the physically and morally healthy hard-working person fails . .

SO

Where did we pass the point of no return . . . ? ? ?

I'm thinking of making a poll,

and welcome input from concerned DUers

I'm sorta thinking that it's having the ability to cross the oceans, which sorta embraces many of my enquiries above . . .

[hobbit709]

1. When we first picked up a stick.

[depakid]

2. Or a bone

[wuvuj]

3. Generally speaking....

....we are dumber than yeast.

ASK YOURSELF: Who is it that is always making humans out to be some kind of hot sh*t?

ANSWER: Humans.

So "we" have our really great and wonderful magnificent brains...and yet we are still dumber than yeast.

Cognitive dissonance?


As to when we crossed the line? Day after day...since the beginning? We may be a fatally flawed species.

The question I have...is how could nature or Gaia allow one species to become so destructive? The biosphere is about to turn on us as a species?

Then again...maybe your God did it?

[ConcernedCanuk]

6. We may be a fatally flawed species. - I think you got it - hmmm

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and welcome to DU

We may be a fatally flawed species.

WOW

fatally flawed species

that we are, that we are

every other species balanced itself out.

But then again

North America was doing quite well before it was "discovered"

Millions of Buffalo roamed the continent

Natives migrated with the weather and the the crops/herd

They never stayed in one place long enough to ruin it - they kept moving

and nature did fine

BUT

our "fatal flaw" - at least in the white man's World -was/is always wanting MORE

I wonder if anyone has done a study on how "The Americas" would have progressed/survived if the Europeans hadn't discovered and occupied them

If only they'd stayed on their own respective continents

OH WAIT . .

The Americas didn't discover and invade Europe . . .

Europe discovered and Invaded the Americas . .

Something to ponder . . .

[pecwae]

12. May be flawed?

No doubt about it IMO.

[tom_paine]

15. I believe you are correct. Dumber than yeast. Well, as dumb, anyway.

Maybe not dumber, since yeast in a beer fermentation vat exhibit the same general lack of awareness about drowing themselves in their own excreta .

Of course, yeast have no self-awareness. No brains nor spinal cords nor nervous systems. And definitely no frontal lobes that can, under the right circumstances, occasionally provide humans with foresight and planning ability.

Yeast have none of these things.

What's our excuse.

So, yes, maybe considering the cognitive tools we have and waste, maybe we are dumber than yeast, instead of just as dumb as yeast.

[Dead_Parrot]

4. Lots of fish, small barrel.

When we invented agriculture (and learned to steal land)
When we invented fire
When we invented beer
When we invented the wheel
When we discovered pointy sticks
When we learned how to smelt metals
When we invented the bow
When we discovered Rick Astley
When we discovered how to ride horses
When we discovered the the meaning of life
When we discovered gunpowder
When we invented taxes
When we invented "democracy"
When we invented God
When we discovered God
When we realised there is no God
When we realised there really is a God.
When we realised we could blame God for everything else
When we realised that excluded Rick Astley
When we realised that included Rick Astley
When we realised Rick Astley is God
When we realised God is Rick Astley
When we discoved that Lim Jeong-hyun is God
When we realised that Fredrik Larsson is Rick Astley ( <- this guy is actually quite good. Fredrik, that is, not Rick. Although Rick is quite good too.)
When we realised that Lim Jeong-hyun is Fredrick Larsson

Or, my personal favorite, when we discover that we've run out of beer. Oh, fuck.

[ConcernedCanuk]

7. gunpowder, bow - k - getting an idea - when we could fight from far away

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like now

With our drones - someone sitting in Texas can bomb someone in Pakistan . . .

we don't fight face to face anymore like every other creature on earth has to

hmmm

[Dead_Parrot]

14. Well, every step is, err, a step

I can smack you in the face
I can get a stick and poke you in the face - and you can't smack me in the face
I can throw a rock at your head - and you can't get a stick and poke me in the face
I can launch a stick from a longbow - and you can't throw a rock at my head
I can fire a canon at you - and you can't launch a stick from a longbow
I can fire a 20mm HE round at you- and you can't fire a canon at me
I can napalm you - and you can't fire a 20mm HE round at me
I can drop an ICBM on you - and you can't napalm me

Thing is, this isn't a who-sleeps-with-who argument (You can have my wife at the canon stage) - it's a who believes in the right God, or is the right colour, or has the fertile farmland, or likes Rick Astley, or has the most productive manufacturing base: We invent out own reasons for war that are well beyond our requirements for a happy life by normal mammal standards.

That's what land us in the shit. Not our ability to wage war, but our invented reasons for doing so: the rest is just technology.

[TexasObserver]

5. Disagree with your premise. We DO NOT have the ability to destroy the planet.

We might have the ability to destroy the conditions which allow humans to live on the planet, and if we do, the effects of that will subside within a few thousand years.

When did we get the ability to destroy human life on the planet? That would be the splitting of the atom. Only atomic weapons have the power and numbers to effectively destroy human life on the planet, and even then, the cause would be a nuclear winter which kills off life under clouds of debris.

[cali]

8. The earth will survive our species

and mend itself after we're gone.

[ConcernedCanuk]

10. I suspect you are correct - too bad we have to destroy so many before we leave

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but you didn't answer my query

where our turning point was. . .

any thoughts on that?

[cali]

13. I'm afraid that I believe that our turning point

was so early in our evolution that one can't really point to any moment in time; in other words, it's inherent, part of our genetic makeup. "In our beginning is our end".

[rug]

9. I blame it on the telegraph.

[Orsino]

11. When our brains suddenly outstripped any predator's threat.

Overpopulation was inevitable, then.

[pink-o]

16. We crossed the line when our Big Brains started giving us the idea

That humans were the superior species on the planet. When we began to believe we were infused with this superiority by a divine creator. When all this "manifest destiny" crap occurred to us and we began to act as if it were our "God" given right to do whatever the fuck we wanted just because we were human.

Religion breeds megalomania. You can excuse any act if you bring in a shadowy authority figure and say he told you to do it.

Whereas, in reality humans are a work in progress. It's gonna take us another few eons to reconcile our survivial instincts--the aggressive and xenophobic instincts that helped us evolve as far as we are now--with our intellect. We're at a crossroads, in the toddler stage of our existence and we're acting out destructively like toddlers do.

Only in our case, the destruction is on a far bigger scale!

[GliderGuider]

17. I'm torn between the development of symbolic culture, agriculture or the neocortex

The core of the problem seems to me to be the sense of separation that we have. The gift of a neocortex appears to carry with it the Faustian price of dualism: man/nature, self/other, mind/spirit, man/god. That sense of separation leads us directly to the assumption that we can manipulate our environment at will and manage all the consequences, and that our own needs are paramount over all others' needs (whether those others are human or not). For more on this topic I strongly recommend Charles Eisenstein's remarkable online book The Ascent of Humanity.

Anarcho-primitivist philosopher John Zerzan places the beginning of the breakdown at the point where we began symbolic manipulation of or environment by developing the concepts of language, numbers and time. This probably began to occur several tens of thousands of years ago. I refrain from "blaming" these developments for our eventual downfall because I suspect they were inevitable given the nature of our brains. Certainly no human civilization could have arisen without them, but to blame them seems as logical to me as "blaming" our opposable thumbs.

Other anarcho-primitivists like Derrick Jensen and Daniel Quinn place the turning point at the development of unsustainable organized (or what Quinn calls "totalitarian") agriculture as opposed to the benign and sustainable horticultural practices of hunter-gatherers. That happened just 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. There's a reasonable case to be made that this transition was a marker of our shift to unsustainable activities, especially since humans had existed on the planet for hundreds of thousands of years without causing the ecological damage we saw immediately upon the development of agriculture.

I feel that focusing on agriculture might be a bit of a red herring, though. Like the development of language, the development of agriculture was almost inevitable, as it similarly depends on the logic and reasoning power of our neocortex. Once language and numbers were in place, agriculture can be viewed as just another step up the slope of technology. Again it's more of a consequence than a cause.

It could be that the current disastrous outcome was written in our stars when the reasoning rind of the neocortex formed on the surface of our brains. That's not to say that doom is inevitable. Humans are very adept at living within limits, and at finding joy and happiness in very constrained circumstances. The fact that the limits we will face in the future are largely of our our own manufacture makes no difference at all. We will do what we do until we can't do it any more, at which point we will do something different. Life goes on.

------------------------------------------

Now is the time.

Time to wake up;
Time to understand what is happening;
Time to understand why it happened;
Time to accept the change;
Time to accept that we caused it;
Time to forgive ourselves;
Time to make peace with our personal gods;
Time to reach out;
Time to reach in;
Time to re-connect;
Time to begin the healing;
Time to remember that every ending contains the seed of a new beginning.

Now is the time.

[cobalt1999]

18. The development of agriculture may not have been inevitable

Even with a modern neo-cortex we went 10's of thousands of years without agriculture, so I don't know if it was inevitable. Of course with agriculture, the supply of food and therefore population took off and we became like any other species without population controls.

[GliderGuider]

19. It happened, so from our perspective it was inevitable.

But yes, there's a lot of scholarly debate about why it suddenly appeared after so many millennia of ecological stability.

One of my favourite comments about the food/population debate is this: "Asking how we will find enough food to feed this growing population is like asking how we will find enough fuel to feed this growing fire."

[NoPasaran]

20. I'd have to to say it was the Spice Girls movie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhzymHPdal8