Generally other animals are restrained by the environment so they live in balance and harmony. Humans are capable of very advanced technology which makes us less restrained to the environment since we can modify it as we please. But that capacity also gives us the ability to know better and to realize what an unrestrained consumption and exploitation of the environment leads to. Even though we have that ability we mostly ignore it and exploit it like no other species in the name of things we made up like the idea that progress means more production and consumption. Other animals have no capacity to know what we know nor to come up with made up definitions of things like progress but that we do and that we still act in the way we act is proof enough that we are not very smart. That level of stupidity can only be achieved with our cognitive capacities. We could also choose to be more intelligent than any other animal since we have the capacity to be so, but more often than not, we don't act that way.kuraimen
No, that capacity of stupidity is achieved by sheer efficiency. Which is, again, really not unique. It's sheer short-sightedness. Which is, again, not unique to humans.
Rabbits don't PLAN on only reproducing in a responsible way which keeps the ecosystem in check. They reproduce when it's viable for them to do so, and then they consume available resources. This can very easily result in a population explosion, which then results in them consuming everything in sight. But keep in mind...they aren't planning for 50 years down the road. They aren't concerned with whether or not the environment is going to be hospitable for their grandchildren. They're just concerned with producing children. Those children are then on their own. Most species do NOT plan for the long-term, they just deal with the immediate circumstances. Humans are basically the same way. The way that the worldwide global civilization works now...I absolutely don't believe that it is sustainable in any long-term kind of way. A crash is inevitable.
But here's the thing...our "stupidity" is basically in causing long-term damage for the sake of short-term benefits. That's EXTREMELY common among animals. The point being...we are just animals. The whole thing about humans being stupid and evil and a cancer sort of stems from the notion that humans SHOULD be better than the other animals. It's basically just a case of setting expectations WAY too high, and then getting disappointed when the actual result is basically just par for the course. It's like, I see on this forum OFTEN comments such as "bad parents should know better than to have kids." And...how does that follow? Rabbits, flies, rats, birds...they aren't looking for the long term benefit of their descendants (or even their children). They're just having kids, and that's the extent of their duties. There is a biological need to procreate, and that's about that. At what point exactly did humans stop being subject to such biological needs? At what point does being able to invent or use a computer or a power drill invalidate the biologivcal urge to procreate?
Bottom line is that we're animals. We reproduce when possible, and we generally are very bad at long-term planning. You can call that stupid all that you like, but that doesn't seem much different than what the vast majority of life on Earth tends to do. Keep in mind that the VAST majority of human existence didn't involve anything resembling modern technology. We learned how to build cities, clear forests, and poison the oceans, but that WASN'T happening for most of the time that humans have been around. Our situation is basically like if monkeys somehow discovered how to build shotguns. Would they use those shotguns responsibly? Probably, no. Because they're ****ing MONKEYS. See...you wouldn't expect the monkey's ability to invent a shotgun to some how stop that monkey from acting like a monkey. So why is it that when people create the means to build cities and scorch the land and wipe out inconvenient species, that we expect our technological and scientific progress to somehow make us stop acting like people? You're looking at incredible advances in a few areas, and using that as a means to set an unrealistically high standard for the entire species.
But all things considered, we're basically just the equivalent of monkeys that discovered how to build shotguns. Building shotguns would be an impressive achievement, no doubt, but we're still talking about monkeys.
Log in to comment