IS EARTH ALIVE?
(On global warming and over-population)
If the age of earth of 4.5 billions were compressed into the size of an encyclopedia, the whole life history of mankind would only consist of 1/2 page of the entire encyclopedia. And yet in the history of planet earth, man has changed and deformed the face of earth as never has been done before by any living beings, dinosaurs, etc.. Earth, too, has suffered several cataclysms, re-super-comet impacts, super-volcanic explosions but nothing compared to the deformation on the face of earth by humans in this very brief modern times. Geologists have unearthed evidences caused by impact comets/meteors, super-eruptions, ice ages, but geologists will agree such deformations of Earth caused by human will supercede all, 500 millions from now…there will be scattered all over planet, earth, and just a few meters below the ground, innumerable mementos, re-structures, cement/iron, etc. made by human will still be glaring...
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There was a scientist, fifty years ago, who conceived of Earth as a living being (in the Revelation, Bible, there were four angels who guard the four corners of Earth, they were super-giant angels of Revelation)), with the rivers as veins, the land as flesh, the oceans as the pools of blood, the heart the interior center), and if Earth is alive, the scientist echoed, lamentably, humans, whose population explodes geometrically, is cancer of Earth.. Human now is shocked and surprised to find that he is capable of changing Earth, that his activities is causing Earth to warm up, . Earth, as conceived alive, is rebelling, is hitting back with a vengeance, re-super-typhoons, super-hurricanes,: as if reminding us, human, that enough is enough, we have to change our attitude, our ways, our life...Unbelievable as it seems, and difficult to understand in the face of modern science, but in the deeper mystical analysis, there is grain of truth: Earth could be alive. Perhaps, this explain why weather is still unpredictable, in spite of modern weather instruments, satellite imaging.. Fingers are pointed as the culprits re- CO2, sun warming up or may be another factor has yet to be considered, that Earth simply just gets fickle at times. Human being, itself, is a universe, with trillions of cells, each one alive and harmoniously living with one another to make one whole healthy human being that needs tender loving care. Earth, too, is like a human being, that craves for tender, loving care, (thus, population must be controlled, use of fossil fuel must be controlled,, destruction of forests must be controlled, etc., thus, return to old values, morality, etc. are knocking) and, perhaps, it is not yet late to nurse Earth back to its former status, re- a truly “green planet”, this tiny Earth, our only “home” in the universe..
jsaldea12
11.1.09
QUOTE (jsaldea12+Nov 1 2009, 01:55 AM)
If the age of earth of 4.5 billions were compressed into the size of an encyclopedia, the whole life history of mankind would only consist of 1/2 page of the entire encyclopedia.
What encyclopaedia?
Whole life history of mankind? ..... please define and specify time period - otherwise people will think you're spouting absolute bollocks.
What encyclopaedia?
Whole life history of mankind? ..... please define and specify time period - otherwise people will think you're spouting absolute bollocks.
I stand corrected. The whole human life on earth could be comparable to 2 pages, more or less, of Grolier encyclopedia. That 4.5 billions life of earth is calculated age of earth. Human life on earth could be .1 million years, again calculated guess. It was meant to give idea just how BRIEF is the sojourn of human life on earth, the latest, newest, living organism to take hold of planet, earth, compared to hundreds of million years occupancy by the dinosaurs. A Grolier encyclopedia has 20 volumes of average 430 pages.
jsaldea12
11.1.09
jsaldea12
11.1.09
To be sure, human life like any other life, or even natural forces and inorganic energetic processes, such as erosion, TRANSFORM the matter of Earth as they do all matter in the universe.
To call such transformative processes "deforming" contains a value-claim that is presumed by this post, without systematic argumentation. Metaphorically referring to humans as "cells of a cancer" is not argumentation but persuasion. For those who practice ideal skepticism on this forum, the only effective persuasion would, I believe, be based on reasoning and valid argumentation.
My problem with this post is generalizing all human history as a cumulative, monolithic process that must be either beneficial or detrimental for the Earth as a whole, also cumulatized and monolithized as a single organism.
I would like to put forth a tentative generalization at this point, and I am interested in what others would say about it, that the practice/art of medicine has always been predicated on the development of knowledge that distinguishes the body into constituent processes, whether those be organs, biles, systems, processes, tissue-types, cell-functions, etc. The purpose of distinguishing sub-processes within the organism is to recognize that the good functioning of one part may occur simultaneously with the malfunctioning of another. In this way it becomes possible not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, i.e. cause less collateral damage with interventions that one might otherwise do using a less-nuanced approach.
Generalizing all human history as either benevolent or malevolent is very close to the least-possible nuanced approach to diagnosing the effects of humans on the Earth. The only approach that might be less nuanced would be to say that organic life itself is a cancer on its host.
As one increasingly fine-tunes one's analytic gaze in distinguishing benefits from pathology in human activities throughout the history of Earth, it becomes eventually possible to "zoom in" to the individual level and then go beyond ascribing goodness or harmfulness to a single individual as a "cell in the body of humankind." In reality, human individuals are not good or bad, beneficial or destructive, as a whole. Rather, their actions can be divided into those that are beneficial and those that are harmful, and how. To assess this, it must be asked what makes a particular action beneficial or harmful and how? To whom or what, specifically.
Careful study of the specific actions of human individuals is more so the province of religion than the diagnosis of human history as a whole as being generally good or bad, which is poorly represented by this post's reference to the book of revelations.
Ultimately, the study of specific human actions can be further nuanced beyond whether they are ultimately good or bad to dissecting them into constituent elements and the multiple consequences of each element, each of which may in itself be good or harmful.
E.g. a human who sets fire to a forest to destroy the house of his enemy may succeed. Yet in so doing he may inadvertently trigger the payment of a lucrative insurance payment that allows his enemy to buy a far better house than the one burnt. At the same time, he may have destroyed the homes of many animals who lived in the forest, with the consequence that many either died in the fire or were unable to build a new home in time for the winter. Nevertheless, the forest fire may result in the sprouting of many pinecones that would otherwise not have sprouted, and as a result the forest that grows to replace the burnt one may provide a more hospitable ecology after some years than it would have had it not been destroyed by arson.
So it is hard to see what all the possible consequences of any human action will ultimately have been and sum them up as cumulatively good or bad, let alone all actions of a single human or many humans or historical periods monolithically. Too many people throw their hands up with this knowledge, in hopelessness of ever creating a comprehensive evaluation of any human action(s) and their consequences. This is not necessary, but it does render meaningless such sweeping generalizations that fail to contain explicit or implicit recognition of the underlying complexity of what they represent or ignore at the level of specific details.
To call such transformative processes "deforming" contains a value-claim that is presumed by this post, without systematic argumentation. Metaphorically referring to humans as "cells of a cancer" is not argumentation but persuasion. For those who practice ideal skepticism on this forum, the only effective persuasion would, I believe, be based on reasoning and valid argumentation.
My problem with this post is generalizing all human history as a cumulative, monolithic process that must be either beneficial or detrimental for the Earth as a whole, also cumulatized and monolithized as a single organism.
I would like to put forth a tentative generalization at this point, and I am interested in what others would say about it, that the practice/art of medicine has always been predicated on the development of knowledge that distinguishes the body into constituent processes, whether those be organs, biles, systems, processes, tissue-types, cell-functions, etc. The purpose of distinguishing sub-processes within the organism is to recognize that the good functioning of one part may occur simultaneously with the malfunctioning of another. In this way it becomes possible not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, i.e. cause less collateral damage with interventions that one might otherwise do using a less-nuanced approach.
Generalizing all human history as either benevolent or malevolent is very close to the least-possible nuanced approach to diagnosing the effects of humans on the Earth. The only approach that might be less nuanced would be to say that organic life itself is a cancer on its host.
As one increasingly fine-tunes one's analytic gaze in distinguishing benefits from pathology in human activities throughout the history of Earth, it becomes eventually possible to "zoom in" to the individual level and then go beyond ascribing goodness or harmfulness to a single individual as a "cell in the body of humankind." In reality, human individuals are not good or bad, beneficial or destructive, as a whole. Rather, their actions can be divided into those that are beneficial and those that are harmful, and how. To assess this, it must be asked what makes a particular action beneficial or harmful and how? To whom or what, specifically.
Careful study of the specific actions of human individuals is more so the province of religion than the diagnosis of human history as a whole as being generally good or bad, which is poorly represented by this post's reference to the book of revelations.
Ultimately, the study of specific human actions can be further nuanced beyond whether they are ultimately good or bad to dissecting them into constituent elements and the multiple consequences of each element, each of which may in itself be good or harmful.
E.g. a human who sets fire to a forest to destroy the house of his enemy may succeed. Yet in so doing he may inadvertently trigger the payment of a lucrative insurance payment that allows his enemy to buy a far better house than the one burnt. At the same time, he may have destroyed the homes of many animals who lived in the forest, with the consequence that many either died in the fire or were unable to build a new home in time for the winter. Nevertheless, the forest fire may result in the sprouting of many pinecones that would otherwise not have sprouted, and as a result the forest that grows to replace the burnt one may provide a more hospitable ecology after some years than it would have had it not been destroyed by arson.
So it is hard to see what all the possible consequences of any human action will ultimately have been and sum them up as cumulatively good or bad, let alone all actions of a single human or many humans or historical periods monolithically. Too many people throw their hands up with this knowledge, in hopelessness of ever creating a comprehensive evaluation of any human action(s) and their consequences. This is not necessary, but it does render meaningless such sweeping generalizations that fail to contain explicit or implicit recognition of the underlying complexity of what they represent or ignore at the level of specific details.
So many words, and still no-one has even mentioned the Gaia Hypothesis.
Look it up.
Look it up.
I have read this
QUOTE
So many words, and still no-one has even mentioned the Gaia Hypothesis.
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