Is Humanity a disease?

[Shu]

So I know this is a strange question, but to those folks who want to think a bit outside the box I wanted to ask a pretty general question.

Is Humanity a disease?

My take on it is pretty simple. To the planet earth we've always been a pretty screwed up species. With the countless wars over religion, resources and territories we don't really think about the outcomes or collateral damage we do to the actual environment or planet earth. When we actually do gain resources we tend squander things and hold them for higher value instead of learning to share at a lower based economic stat.

True, some continents are known for rarer raw materials, but what gives one the right to sell for more in the first place? Also the question comes into place.. are the resources that we have becoming more and more limited?

We tend to burn things, chop things down, oil spills in the sea killing countless animals and making life unlivable.

In my opinion, I think Humanity is the next environmental extinction. We will kill everything off to try to preserve our species. The fact we are cutting back on NASA and scientific research into space, means less room for spreading out and finding a new habitable planet. We waste too much money into R&D for national defenses or offenses. (Army/Navy/Air Force) - Planes that cost a 6 billion a pop.

Not to mention if some asshole sets off a nuke that place is unlivable for years due to nuclear fallout. Just look at what happened to Japan. People still have cancer due to trying to live in these places from WW2.

Due to we are speeding up on military weaponry, I give Earth 50 years before some stupid country goes "EFF THIS.. BIOCHEMICAL WEAPON IN 3..2..1.."

What are your views? Are we a disease? Are we the next "thing" to cause Earth's extinction?

 

[iSmiff]

Are we a disease? Sure, if you think the planet belonged to the Cetra in the first place

Are the resources we have becoming more limited? without a doubt.
Are we the cause of the end of the world ; ofcourse. I agree that nuclear war will kick off too, although my prediction is much sooner than 50 years..

I'd describe us more as parasites than a disease. But then again, so is every species of animal. The planet is the host; and all living things feed off of that host until it dies in which they try and move to another host (planet) or they die aswell.

 

[Dionysos]

I’d say that we don’t have to be parasitical, but the way we act is sometimes very detrimental to our planet. We are also quite unique in that we (or some of us) also have the ability to feel guilt and concern and wish to protect our planet, other people, the future, the past, and even other species. When we care, we can be quite incredible at it.

The anxieties expressed in the OP are well founded, but I think they are only a part of the human condition. Not all people endorse war and violence. Not all religious people are intolerant. Thousands of people have concern for the planet, and would care for its future. A much lesser percentage of these people would act to do something about it, but the concern itself is a start. Perhaps the concern needs to be kindled a bit more. It seems sometimes that those in power do not care, and for many that is perhaps the case, or perhaps ruling a country is a bit like whack-a-mole in that when you wallop one or two issues on the head, you are leaving other issues time to resurface. That seems to be the way of things (discounting instances of corruption and greed, obviously). Whether it is possible to truly settle some issues is perhaps never to be seen. People care for the economy (and related issues) presently, and so that is often the focus (/ if it ever will not be….), and environmental or even human moral issues are sometimes sidelined.

To be honest, I’d consider humans to be just like any animal, but an extreme one. Since we developed advanced language, are able to use tools and build and create very complicated things, and now our species has impressive technological development, and the number of humans on the planet has risen enormously. It's inevitable that we've left our mark, perhaps irreversibly in the near-far future.

Is humanity a disease? Perhaps all life is to an extent. All creatures use their environment to suit their own needs and survival. Animals destroy and murder just like humans. If it wasn’t for the checks and balances of natural order, animals might live longer and cause serious damage too. For humans, the difference is a matter of scale, and that because humans have advanced so much (and so quickly) we’ve caused a massive amount of damage and have affected the harmony of earth’s circle of life. It cannot keep up, and neither can we. Our world is so fast today that this becomes part of the problem, as people do not want to set the time aside (or believe they can’t afford the time aside) to critically analyse the modern way of life, and to seek an alternate means to live more healthily, but retain the benefits we’re now accustomed to.

But, again, on the flip-side humans also have a guilty conscience on some matters, which has been developed and tweaked over the ages, such as views on killing and destroying wantonly. Some of us care. To the extent to which some of us begin to dislike what our species does and wish for people to consider how to mitigate our damage. We're lucky we have this capability.

Perhaps humans were never meant to get this far. Perhaps ‘never meant’ isn’t the right phrase, since perhaps things ‘just happen’.
Complex and deeply ingrained historical, political and cultural factors sometimes prevent us from truly transcending our destructive nature, but we can all as individuals work towards that aim once we acknowledge all that leads us to what we have become, and seek to improve for our future. Perhaps. Or perhaps, after a slight pause for reflection on this, our computers are turned off, we go to sleep, in our dreams we bathe in the River of Forgetfulness, and in the morning after breakfast we live as normal, and life sweeps us away and prevents us from progressing. That is also a common problem.

 

[Dragon Mage]

We're as much a disease to the planet as floods, earthquakes, lightning in dry plains, and other animals are.... we're just magnified because our species size.

We're a part of the earth's life cycle. Our impact on the planet was meant to be. If we weren't suppose to be here, we would have been wiped out by now. So I think our presence is meant to be. We do a lot of negative, sure--but everything apart of our planet's life cycle offers a negative. Hell, the planet is a danger to itself. One day the planet's core will cool down and life on the planet will end completely--and with every earthquake we have it's slowly inching us towards that doom.


Our negative impact on the planet will come to an end when it's meant to. And if it never comes, that just means that was how the planet was suppose to go.

Death is apart of life.

Quite honestly, I think a few nukes dropping in the world would do the planet and the species good. That sounds a little new world-order-y, but whatever. The fact of the matter is, while everyone pisses and moans about war, war also cuts down population size--smaller population means less negative impact. so if people are so concerned with the human species destroying the planet, they should be all for all out war.

Even if every nuke drops, it wouldn't destroy the planet like people think it would. It would most likely end the human species, but the planet's life? No.


What we do to the earth will never "kill" the planet... it'll just harm it enough to the point that we can't survive on it anymore, but once we're gone--life (benign life) would find a way and the planet would go on as it has been for billions of years. Even if it took hundreds of millions of years, life would continue on. New trees and plants, and animals would evolve because

This.

Word for word.

I don't know why, but anti-human attitude has become very popular these days. I've seen it in movies like Brother Bear to Avatar (where the main character literally changes species and abandons all humanity.)

People seem to think that humanity is 'unnatural' and that we're aliens to our own planet. That the world would be paradise if it just weren't for -- us.

And this view honestly confuses me. We fought very hard to survive. Our planet has, by and by, done its damnedest to kill us. Plagues, earthquakes, ice ages, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes -- When you think about it, Terra is a very hard place to live. And yet, we've thrived. We haven't conquered our planet, we just got very good at rolling at with all the homicidal punches. Humanity has been around for about 45,000 years or so and yet we only developed technology to drastically effect our world in the last 200 years. That's just downright amazing.

This kind of resiliance isn't unnatural -- in fact, it's exactly what our planet has bred us to do. We adapt or die. And adapt we have. All the amazing feats of technology are not an affront to nature, they are not the antithesis of the natural world -- they are the ultimate crowning achievement in response to surviving the cruelties and massive odds of nature itself. Our planet has shaped us more than we could ever hope to shape it.

And yet, people think the world would be perfect without us.

And I honestly just cannot understand why. Are we not born of the earth as well? Are we not grown and nurtured by mother nature? People forget -- we are children of the earth too/

Some people think 'Humanity is bad, there's nothing good about us, we should all kill ourselves we are so evil!' (Just check out the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement if you want to see some really impressive self-loathing.)

I think that's a generalizing a bit too much. There's this common phrase that goes, "I'm only human." We know we aren't infallible. We know we aren't perfect, we make mistakes, and we can do some truly terrible things. But that is what it means to be human -- to be imperfect, to be awful, to be vicious and violent and mean. And yet, despite all this, we haven't killed each other off. In fact, we all get along really well, especially when you consider how easy it could be for us to just wipe each other out.

Yes, we have wars and we have serial killers. But all those things are, by and by, exceptions to the rule. We hear about it so much and yet we never stop and think -- how often do random acts of kindness get reported on CNN? The other day, I saw a girl crying into her phone on campus as she sat on a stone bench in the rain. I had an umbrella so I went over and held it over her until she ended her call. She asked me what I was doing and I just said she looked miserable enough without getting rained on and I figured that was one thing I could help out with. Long story short, my one action really made her day a lot better. It boosted my mood to wonderful heights throughout the day, too.

I was also 15 minutes late to class and was docked a point because of it, but I didn't care. I still don't. My one little act of kindness did a lot for one person and I would do it again without hesitation. Would my random act of kindness get me a medal? No. Would it go on my record? No. No trumpets or parades or speeches -- but it made all the difference.

This is actually a well-known phenomenon. When people give to charity, they feel good. Helping out your fellow person actually releases a ton of endorphins and makes people happy. Basically -- we are naturally designed to be kind and supportive to complete strangers.

Wow. Just... wow. You don't see that in animals. They form into packs/herds that are aggressively defended against outsiders. But humans? We are naturally wired to be accepting and supportive. I think this ties back to those 45,000 years ago where humans -- who had no teeth, claws or fur to survive -- had to rely on one thing for survival: Each other. And this is a consequence of us trying to survive against Mother Nature; conditioning us to be better.

In fact, I think humans are pretty awesome. Sacrificing one's life to save others seems like a fairly natural thing to us -- but we never consider that such an idea would be inconceivable to an alien race out there. We don't really regard it as anything truly extraordinary -- and therein lies how easy it is to belittle our own nobility.

Humans are great. We're the opposite of a disease. We have the power to save just as much as we have the capacity to destroy. All the trouble, all the strife and hate and killing in the world -- when you really take a step back and look at it, you'll realize it's only a minority of people that's causing it all. By and large, people are decent, good-natured folk that want to get on with their lives. What's shocking and appalling is that so few people can cause so much damage. It's weird and it's crazy and it's -- human.

We are flawed. And we are great because of it. The very fact we have governments and countries that can talk to each other and trade with each other for decades is remarkable when you compare it to our earlier years. The attitude today isn't 'kill and conquer' (a la Rome, Persia, China, etc.) it's 'live and let live.' We, as a species, have grown and matured and gotten better against all odds. Yes, terrible things still happen, and they always will -- its in our nature to not be perfect. That's what makes being decent, good people such a feat. We could all easily be assholes and just want to kill each other but instead we just go about our lives, content to be good and do good.

Our destructive power is not remarkable; any species can tear itself apart. It's the fact that, in spite of such devastating ability, we consistently try to be tolerant and supportive of each other that is truly amazing.


If you think humanity sucks, just go here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Heartwarming/ActsOfKindness

And then go here: http://www.givesmehope.com/top

Yeah. I think humans are really awesome. We shouldn't be so hard on ourselves.

P.S. That was longer than I thought but man, it's really bugged me how much people hate humanity because we aren't perfect.... What is?