Oh really?
Then let's accelerate climate change. I won't let those green fuckers win
That's right! Besides food, clothing, housing, tools, weapons, erosion control, and beauty, what have the plants ever done for us?
Medicine. A lot of plants are used in medicine as well. Asprin came from tree bark.
Okay. Food, clothing, housing, tools, weapons, erosion control, beauty, oxygen, and medicine. But other than that, what have the plants ever done for us?
Also oxygen..
Won’t the extra CO2 just help the heartier plants (weeds) take over?
That's too slow. Take us to defcon one.
I'm Jewish, so unfortunately, Kanye has already taken me to death con 5. But I'm not sure if those are related.
Yuval Noah Harari light heartedly raises the question in his book Sapiens, of whether men domesticated wheat or wheat domesticated humans.
Humans went from wandering through the world exploring and foraging, to doing the back breaking work to grow and farm wheat.
Wheat went from being fairly unsuccessful in evolutionary terms, to covering something like 20% of the earths surface !
Something similar is suggested to a lesser extent about psychedelic mushrooms by Melvin Sheldrake in Entangled Life. No where near the same scale as wheat, of course.
This is my tune, not only biocentric, but also a very healthy dose of anti-anthropocentric. A species traitor, if you allow me to be as bold.
I really don't think that talk about humans being the god on earth, center of the universe, with a metaphysical excuse to exploit everything around us is doing wonders to our health nor long term survival... And obviously the "sapiens" of our epithet is only there because we gave it ourselves chef's kiss
Anthropism
yuck
It's also a very Buddhist outlook. Not because of anything specifically antihuman or pro ecology but simply because we as humans are part of a cycle that lives and dies. We don't have a say.
You could say our karma is that we will be too proud and be too exceptionalist and end it all earlier than expected because we couldn't come together and take care of the earth.
It sucks but the earth will go on for a few more billion years without us.
Oh yeah, I believe nature, the planet, will carry on, we're just shooting ourselves in the foot. I just feel for the part of it that won't survive our stay.
Sometimes I make this joke about all currently living higher primates, including us, sitting at a table, and we are yeeting our way around the room, and the other primates look at eachother and go "wait, that's the sapient one?? :D
I think we as a species took a very nasty turn in our evolution, either biological or social, that allowed us to "break away" from nature, so to speak, and create that duality Man/ Nature that in my opinion really didn't work that well. I'm pretty sure other animals have a consciousness too, so probably being conscious and self aware is by itself not the culprit. But something makes us feel so far removed from the rest of life that I find really unsetling, and it also only makes dealing with being that much more complicated, for example, not being able to accept death like you said. In that aspect, some religions are definitely better than others to mitigate that damage. Either way, I'm just here doing my best and hoping for the best!
Lol the sapient one is hilarious. Especially when our ancestors probably murdered and bred out of existence other sapient species.
Part of me wonders if that turn you mentioned is our industrial revolution, invention of agriculture, or whatever set us apart from other sapient species.
Some cultures and Indigenous belief systems accept death and the process of not being an immortal to be expected while ironically the Abhramic faiths that have a huge aversion to idolatry tend to want to follow in the steps of their God by living forever and exerting control over all things.
It's fascinating to me to explore this but while I'd love for us to explore the cosmos like Carl Sagan implored us to do, it's also so frustrating we can't get past our initial hangups.
Yeah, I feel that. It's like part of me thinks there could've been another way to get to where we are, and go beyond. Sometimes I feel literal awe about our species ingenuity, hell, cerebral organoids??, but other part kind of yearns for a simpler, more natural, somehow healthier, more respectful and fulfilling, way of living and interacting with our surroundings (and ourselves!). But yeah, those moments in our history you mention certainly didn't work in favour of a greater togetherness with nature. Maybe it was something deeper. Maybe not, dunno, but either way, sometimes I feel "intelligence" as we describe it especially in relation to our species is a kind of an evolutionary dead end that was useful but eventually exhausts it's usefulness and starts working to our detriment. Having in mind the cost each leap or advancement has in the environment, in the ecosystems, sometimes I feel tempted to think it was nothing but a mistake, taking in consideration the planet and all it's life including us as a whole deeply connected system.
Another Sapiens reader. Look, I don't care how uppity those maize are -- there's no way they trained us into cultivating them, we slaughtered their brothers and sisters and kept only the tamer, weaker, fatter renditions that we could use for our own means. If that benefits them, then they're psychopaths.
Corn is not sentient, and I will die on this hill!
I feel like I heard this perspective elsewhere...it may have been The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben. Which I really enjoyed, myself.
But everyone knows that the kingdom that's really in charge is the fungi.
Corn is the vegetation equivalent of a cubicle dweller.
Wouldn't fungus be more immediately interested in being among us?
The common, did we domesticate XYZ, or did XYZ domesticate us? Conundrum.
Myc is the real death dinner monster. When everything dies, it'll be them that don't and then eat everyone else's of whatever's left.
The primordial soup developed animal life to reproduce itself. We are all basically the reproductive stage for crap.
Yup, bury me in a burlap sack in a deciduous forest.
Why deciduous? Because fuck pine trees, that's why. I don't want to feed those assholes.
Jokes on them, we’re going to put carbon into the atmosphere faster than they can process it raising the global temperature to the point of extinction
Oof! Cool perspective
Symbiosis
Eukaryotes likely evolved during The Great Oxidation Event which saw oxygen levels rise to levels that were toxic to the Cyanobacteria (which use photosynthesis). We evolved to save them!
I wanna fukken die, free my soul, the plants can have my body
This is why I don't eat edibles lol.
Cue music: "It's the circle of life"
Reminds me of this modern classic: https://youtu.be/Cf2Q-McO_Fw
Thanks so much for posting that. I hadn't heard it before and loved it
We all give back in the end one way or another.
And yet we're here for it:-)
It's mutually beneficial gardening.
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
