Why are humans not part of nature?

[Tim01]

These discussions about wolves and such always bring out the comments about how humans should leave nature alone.

So, do people think that humans somehow exist outside of nature?
How does that work exactly? Humans are the most influential force the world has ever seen. Humans were clear cutting forests to build ships to make money thousands of years ago.In some of those places the forests are still gone. How is that not being part of nature? A bad part of nature maybe.
When animals habitats are destroyed so that crops can be planted for vegans to have some food, that is humans having a bad effect on nature. The fact that the end users see a grocery store instead of animals caught in farm equipment does not change the real impact on nature. It just makes the the humans removed from seeing their own foot prints on the planet.
When mines destroy top soil for miles in order to get at metal for batteries to be used in electric cars, it is part of nature.
When a human does anything at all that a human does they are manipulating nature.
Not knowing anything about nature doesn't make a person any less destructive to nature, it just makes them happy in their ignorance to not see the plants and animals they kill.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. Natural fail.

[Deja Q]

2. Okay, so stop eating.

Popping pills won't help; some animal's or plant's guts were used to make those too.

Not to mention how far water diets don't go...

[arcadian]

3. Everything is natural

Even that chemical plant down the street dumping dioxin into the river.

[terisan]

4. Well said. nt

[BlooInBloo]

5. Whatever importance you place upon the simple words "outside of nature"....

The distinction has its roots in Aristotle's description of us as sentient (roughly: awake) and sapient (knowing) critters. We differ from the other critters in the sapient area. Essentially the same distinction could be cast in terms of the "rational animal" verbiage that some people are familiar with.

[valerief]

6. Jesus says we're different. nt

[wuushew]

7. Your post is not clear

are you for or against aerial wolf shooting?

[Tim01]

12. It depends entirely on the result.

I don't generally approve of something like shooting animals from a helicopter. But it is entirely possible that it will improve the environment overall for a lot of reasons. If it is just shooting wolves for fun, I am against it.

I am totally against trophy hunting. But trophy hunting is the only thing saving some animals from extinction in africa. So I am in favor of african trophy hunting, in order to save rhinos and elephants from ivory poachers who would kill them all. Not pretty. Doesn't give me the warm fuzzies, but it saves animals from poachers.

[Avalux]

8. You are so very wrong.

Other mammals do not purposely destroy their environment for pleasure.

[Mike 03]

14. I agree with you. I think this is an ethical issue having to do with the concept of "moral agency."

For a good primer on this topic, see Tom Regan's book "The Case for Animal Rights." It is a good introduction to this concept of who is responsible for what and why.

Peace.

[Warren DeMontague]

9. You cannot go against nature... 'Cuz if you do---

going against nature

is part of nature, too.

Anyway, as far as "the most influential force the world has ever seen"-- don't give us too much credit. I don't think we've got anything on the episode of mass vulcanism that is suspected to be behind the P/T die-off, much less the meteor that slammed into Chicxulub.

[RedCappedBandit]

10. Humans, the most influential force? hah!

Other than that, I agree. What's your point, though?

[ZombieHorde]

11. Humans are a part of nature.

Humans are the most influential force the world has ever seen.

Greater than the Sun or gravity? I doubt it.

Is the entire universe nature? I think so.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

13. We have the capacity to think. Therefore, we have the capacity to delude ourselves.

We like to believe that we, a minor species, new to the scene, residing temporarily, on an insignificant planet, circling a quite unremarkable star, on the edge of an equally unremarkable galaxy made up billions of other stars, that is part of a universe made up of trillions of galaxies, which may be only one of trillions of universes, manage to to convince ourselves that we are important.

Kind of like a flea on an elephant's ass that thinks he's driving.

[Tim01]

15. Fine,"most influencial force" rightfully retracted.

It is still true we are able to be more destructive, OR more productive than any other animal on the planet, and we can think and use tools. If we choose to.

[Lint Head]

16. Technically everything is a part of nature. Duh!

It's when meat obtains the brain power to consciously change the nature of chemistry and physics that it becomes destructive.
:dem:

[enuegii]

17. *self delete*.

[hunter]

18. Very soon now nature is going to take care of our population problem.

It's an ancient story on earth. For any one of the usual reasons a population sometimes expands wildly, overshoots the sustainable carrying capacity of it's natural environment, and then it crashes.

Apparently humans aren't any more cognizant of this pattern than a jar full of fruit flies.

We came upon a planet rich with fossil fuels, and we utilized those to increase our numbers.

With oil becoming much more difficult to extract now that the easy oil is gone, and the earth's climate becoming less hospitable to us as a consequence of our fossil fuel use, especially coal, we now face the crash, very likely to amplified by our behavioral tendency to become violent with our neighbors whenever resources become scarce.

Nature will go on doing what it's been doing for billions of years whatever the mess we leave behind. We've already killed off much of the environment we inherited from our less voracious ancestors, but Nature doesn't care, she's seen worse, and recovered from worse. If we care it's entirely up to us to do something about it, but I look around at the people on the fringes of our civilization, or outside the protection of our dominant political ideologies, and they are already dying like animals. Which is not at all surprising because we are animals.

If we are unable to find a sustainable niche for ourselves within earth's greater natural environment then I'm unable to attach any deeper meaning to our self described intelligence. If we find ourselves dying off like an algae bloom in a summer pond and we sink to the bottom in a stinking rot are we really any smarter than the algae?

[BuyingThyme]

19. Semantic variance.