One of the many problems with genetically modified foods that I have encountered is the fact that bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics that are put in foods to combat disease in the developing crops. I recently found that the research group at a state university has found a way to disengage the properties of the bacteria that allow it to become resistant to antibiotics. This is one of many examples you can find of humankind taking more and more control over its own existence. How close are we to losing the natural balance we one had with each other and the earth?
The growing complexity of the survival and heath of our race hints at a trend toward a synthetic existence. But should we learn to scientifically manipulate everything that sustains us, what will we lose with our innate dependence on pure earth? Does our dependence on the natural world provide us with some degree of humanity, or is it something that we can freely “progress†away from toward a life of autonomy from the natural world and utter dependence on our own means of technical production?
we blew that balance at the very least 100+ yrs ago, id say maybe even with the advent of agriculture. the ice age can very possibly happen in 20 years (20 degree change in 20 yrs has seemingly been observed to have happened in the past) if the atlantic conveyor is slowed or stopped due to the alarmingly melting greenland ice cap.
it provides us with nothing that a synthetic alternative cant, unless you respect the souls of the organisms we kill. if we found a way to have self sustaining stations away from earth, in space or on another planet, there would be no fundamental difference in the humanity of the people.
sure, having the population contained on earth ensures to a large degree the evolutionary stability and non-diversity of the people, but if humans on a space station evolved stronger non-gravity muscles, id still call them human. id still assume that god gives them the same soul that i have.
id say the only two reasons why anybody protects the earth are to save the souls of potential equals (save the whales) and to save a resource that is required for our continued existence (save the rainforests)
if we can kill all the trees while still having plenty of oxygen, and kill all the whales once we prove that they dont have souls (and prove that we do, most likely impossible) then no part of our ‘essential humanity’ will be lost.
will our society and behavior change? of course.
the benefits i see from nature consist of specific elements such as oxygen. we are dependent on that molecule, and if we changed to be dependent on a different one, then we would essentially be changing. if the oxygen happens to come from a machine and not a tree, i dont think that is relevant.
i think humanity should take every step possible to control this less-than-perfect universe. god most certainly gave us the ability to, how could he expect us to not? because we heard the story of the tower of babel in a dusty old book? i dont think so.
I think that the humanity of a person is not simply the ability of that person to survive. I see humanity, or being a human in its most natural state, as having a connectedness with the natural environment. It is, after all, the environment that produced and sustained our speicies in the first place. Should we not have a bond with mother earth? The ecosystem that we are a part of, is it not also a part of us?
Is having whatever it is that has been dubbed a “soul” the only thing that should make a being worth protecting? Regardless of wether a tree or a whale can have a “soul”, shouldnt they be kept around because they are part of the balance that produced humans? These organisms are not below us on some kind of metaphorical ladder of importance. We all survive with and because of eachother. (and if you ask me, a redwood tree or a great whale can help put people in a state of awe, and perhaps start to rid them of the egocentric epidemic of today)
And of course someone on a space station would adapt to that new environment. and of course they would still be human. but is there a part of humanity which is being lost? perhaps the word humanity is giving my discussion an incorrect sound. I am trying to explore a part of the being which is alive because of a connectedness with the rest of the world. A space station colony eating foods grown without the sun or the soil, in a synthetic gravity world would survive, adapt, and be human, but if i were to live in that environment, i believe that a part of my existance would cease to be.
I think that the humanity of a person is not simply the ability of that person to survive. I see humanity, or being a human in its most natural state, as having a connectedness with the natural environment. It is, after all, the environment that produced and sustained our speicies in the first place. Should we not have a bond with mother earth? The ecosystem that we are a part of, is it not also a part of us?
Is having whatever it is that has been dubbed a “soul” the only thing that should make a being worth protecting? Regardless of wether a tree or a whale can have a “soul”, shouldnt they be kept around because they are part of the balance that produced humans? These organisms are not below us on some kind of metaphorical ladder of importance. We all survive with and because of eachother. (and if you ask me, a redwood tree or a great whale can help put people in a state of awe, and perhaps start to rid them of the egocentric epidemic of today)
And of course someone on a space station would adapt to that new environment. and of course they would still be human. but is there a part of humanity which is being lost? perhaps the word humanity is giving my discussion an incorrect sound. I am trying to explore a part of the being which is alive because of a connectedness with the rest of the world. A space station colony eating foods grown without the sun or the soil, in a synthetic gravity world would survive, adapt, and be human, but if i were to live in that environment, i believe that a part of my existance would cease to be.
i dont know man. i see our ‘connectedness’ as no more than a reliance upon specific outputs that nature produces. for example we require oxygen, which requires either trees or high technology. if we can produce oxygen without being connected to earth, and there is no observable difference in the molecule itself, and there is nothing else we receive from a tree that is empirically useful (such as a sense of awe and humbling at its great size) then there is no reason for that tree to continue to exist at the cost of human expansion.
i see nothing intrinsically valuable in a thing that does not share with me any of the behaviors or characteristics that i consider valuable about myself. a plant does not think on a human time scale, and therefore is not comparable to a human. perhaps they consciously think very slowly and they consider us in the same way we consider the fast, fleeting lives of fruit flies.
perhaps we should investigate that possibility completely before we exterminate them permanently. but as for our essential connection with them being neccesary for us to stay human as we are, i think their consciousness or their intrinsic importance are unrelated.
if there is an essential connection between humans and their environment that is beyond our reliance on those chemicals we can ingest in pill form (or perhaps ideally a different, more digestable medium), then science has yet to identify it.
what reasons do you use to theorize the existence of this extra-science connetion?
well if the only reason to keep them around is because of the empirical, balance-creating effects they supply, then certainly they can die and we can replace them with vitamin synthesizers.
perhaps you are talking about the behavioral effects that may turn us into emotionless robots when the only behavior we see is that of utopian harmony, and not do or die cliff hanging excitement, filled with tragic loss and spine tingling victory.
I think that we, as humans, are not truly defined by “outside entities” (i.e. dependencies on things) as much as we are defined by a single factor: the fact that human-life never stops changing in every way as time progresses.
Consider this rather semi-confussing example (sorry guys, my idea makes sense, but I’m having trouble putting it into words ):
We are becoming increasingly (at a very rapid pace) dependent on computer-based machines, but we can never be (universally) so dependent on any computers to the point that we are absolutely helpless to live without them. we may eventually become so dependent that if we ever had our computers taken away, we would have a hard time figuring out how to do simple activities without them. But it is not possible for the potential of the human intellect to be truly lesser than the potential of the computer.
At the very worst, we will become so dependent on computers that we will eventually need to re-learn how to do simple tasks.
I say all this to propose this point:
Since becoming dependent on something is allways a “voluntery” choice (we could, in theory, have chosen back in the 60’s to not computerize as many tasks and jobs as we actually did), we are never so dependent that we lose total control over our life. Hence, dependency on the things of the world and enviroment really do not contribute to our human-ness.
sorry if that didn’t seem to make much sense…just my humble opinion, anway.
Lemme come at this from a slightly different angle.
I’ve read far too much science fiction for my own good. I am of the (educated) opinion that our species will soon expand into the cosmos, permanently settling places that are not this single planet. Until we manage to terraform some of them, we will be functioning on air that is not part of an entire biosphere. That is, we will not be able to take off all our clothes and run around barefoot outside, smelling the summer aromas of flowers and grass and barbeque, and watching the clouds. We will be limited to whatever we can fit and balance in our little domes.
So while I am quite enthusiastic about leaving this goddamn polluted hellhole full of fanatics and existential cowards, I will certainly miss having seasons. While I’m sure it would technically be possible to go skiing on a Martian glacier, it would be hella awkward if we had to do it wearing pressure suits. Swimming in other than a pool is right out. I suppose we can have autumn and spring if we build big enough domes and plant the right trees and dick around with the sunlight and temperature schemes, but I don’t think it would quite be the same.
bmw guy just won it. unless you live in the african bush, you currently live in an environment containing all different kinds of things that were not a part of previous human experience. if our ‘essential nature’ consisted of the things we started out with and not those that change our lives away from the original, that changed a long time ago. we “left our world behind” plenty of times so far.
i think it will turn us into robots though, at least temporarily before our colonies turn into diverse cities.
imagine the first mars colony. its gonna be a mine. theres gonna be an exact number of workers there, nobody unemployed, nobody worried. it just seems that, at least for a generation or two, it will be so ridiculously boring, and hopefully not but possibly impossible to get drugs. video games will probably be awesome though.
It seems that the basic difference is that i feel a sence of different realms of existance in which one can become utterlly connected with another life from. be it a tree, a human, the wind, a fish…however i would still like to explore the changes that can occour in the general personality of society as a whole as the environment around them changes…
perhaps the essential human nature is not a continuing relationship with those things that produced humans to begin with, but a dependence on something other than ourselves for survival. Should we learn to produce everything that physically sustains our life, and are autonomus in our survival, wouldnt some aspect of humility be lost? and with that humility our ability to relate to even those humans less fortunate than ourselves?
Just as our reign over the biosphere of modern earth has allowed many to forget (or i should say not believe in) our place in the universe as no more than one of the myriad creatures, couldnt a perpetuation of this independence produce an even more production/consumption-based society in which people care only to advance their personal lives?
or perhaps our need to be dependent on some larger force is supplemented with unquestioning faith in organized religion. The teachings of most religions would (if uncorrupted) promote the protection of the less fortunate, and other things that could be lost in an entirely progress-focused society.
Future man
this is something that is beyond my grasp as someone who feels a deep respect for the wonderful combination of biologic and geologic existance on our planet. would i be wrong is thinking that you, future man, are whole heartedly utilitarian? do you see no value in sea, which is the reason why any life arrived on this planet at all, which is home to marine life larger than you could imagine, and beings so complex that scientists do not know to classify them as a plant or animal?
is there no value in sharing the world with other life forms, even if they do not give you sustinence or share characteristics with you?
i am obsessed with nature, they are my favorite tv shows, and i hate the idea of destroying one adorable rodent.
that doesnt mean that those little guys are an essential part of humanity, or that humanity would suffer greatly if not in the presence of those things.
i live in a city, there is no nature. i might as well live on a moon colony. there are nice trees in my complex and i love the fact that they are there, but they dont change who i am. they just look cool in contrast to the skyscrapers.
i want to know what the connection is. is it a meta-connection that cant be described?
i would say that a dependence on a machine, for an individual, is no different than relying on a cow. i would prefer a cow sit in my backyard and dispenses all my foods instead of a lifeless machine, but thats just because cows are unusual and therefore ‘cool’. if my whole life was full of smelly messy cows, id be glad to have an efficient clean machine.
i think youre thinking of a more complete domination over our nature. i think what your describing would require that each individual human actually provide their sustenance themselves, like by converting poo into food. at that point, our humility will be lost and we will consider ourselves dominant over the universe.
i dont think that would effect our empathy towards humans who we consider equal. it might affect who we consider equal, but any society is going to have the outcasts and should always be trying to prevent this.
as long as religiously righteous quakers are around at the time, i see no fundamental problem with technological advances getting in the way of humanitarian efforts. that just so happens to be the trend today. i would attribute it not to tech, but to a misplaced focus on faith over works. aka god damned christians.
YES!! At least I can know that my posts are not too confussing if at least one person correctly understand them (and, plus, he likes it too ). Thanks.
I’d really hate to live to see the day when I am made so lazy because my “Stephen-O-Matic” Robot does everything for me, but somehow, earlier in my life, I had managed to survive without my robot. Hence, the worst that can happen is I will have to learn how to do the trival tasks of life that were once so elequently done for me by my robot…like scooping icecream, or tieing my shoe. Mortifingly-embarressing? Maybe. But Fatal? No.
It seems that no one who has seen this discussion can do anything but question my sensation of a intimate connection with the natural world, so i will disregard that portion of my argument. but for clarification, i do think that it is hard to describe, as most abstact concepts are (are, by definition really). but just imagine the difference that it makes in your mood going outside into fresh air and sunshine after being stuck inside, or the feeling of seeing the wind blow through tree limbs and through your hair. it makes me feel more alive, and i think that those are small, tangible examples of a much larger connection that i feel.
The situation i am imagining is not really one where each individual has the technology to convert waste into sustinence, but something more along the trend of today’s food industry. Food will continute to be dominated by industrial agriculturalists, the community’s ability to produce their own food becomes lost, and they are dependent on the questionable food produced using insufficently tested technologies.
The problems that arise because of our tendency to try to duplicate natural occourances that are too complex only leads to us needing to use more technologies to make up for whatever is being lost. i think that the lack of natural support would hurt our essentail nature, but even biologically, wouldnt our immune system and bodies otherwise encounter adverse affects from being thrown around in our technological tampering with our own existance?
I feel that this discussion is running in different directions as each reply is posted. The original idea in my opinion seems to be essentially the same as what the criticizers opinion’s are, except with the only difference being, that the orginal post talked of a reliance on the life around us, and that moving away from that can take away from our “humanity,” or our sense of selve’s as i see it. The critique’s of this idea i believe criticize only because they can believe the computerized cow could act, and serve in the same manner as a real cow, in a technical, providing sense. The flaw here is that even if, and which i dont believe can occur, all that we take from cows could be produced scientifically, or technologically, i believe that my “humanity,” as i have experienced it thus far, would be threatened. On what level? It may be that i receive all the proper nutrients from the cow still, but my humanity would still be threatened with the loss of the cow by a loss of more affective stimuli. One thing the cow can offer that the industrial cow can’t, is the question in the observers eyes as to how that cow survives. When confronted with the computerized cow, the design is purely human. Thank you for your time, and opinions.
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