All animals in their nature exploit the resources they have access to in order to survive/multiply.
Humans however seem to have a trend of exploiting things to the max, even to our own detriment when we completely obliterate the land we’re using. Despite having the knowledge to thrive without destroying the planet, we still do it.
Is this human nature at this point, or something else? Interested to see what the science community thinks about how we go to this weird place in our species’ evolution
A framing here is carrying capacity.
Occasionally you have a season that increases carrying capacity (say for kangaroos) and then a season with a far lower carrying capacity (say slightly lower rainfall than usual) and a result can be the environment getting stripped (say trees).
Humans keep modifying the environment so that carrying capacity is far higher than it was a few decades before.
I think though you’re looking for some sort of philosophical answer and I’ve got nothing for that, in part because I think the question is largely based on a false premise
Money. Most rich people don’t give a shit and they make most of the decisions that lead us down this path.
Greed
We’ve been reasonably steady for 10 thousands years.
this technological explosion and endless growth is a rarity and more like cancer. so unless there’s something inherently different between modern humans and humans 500 years ago, I’ll say no
That’s not quite true. The Roman Empire cut down forests all around the Mediterranean that haven’t recovered to this day.
my point is that becoming an expansionist greedy cancer is not the norm of human civilization, 10000 years of human civilization and only a handful of ecological collapses on these scales, like Romans, modern industrial society…
I don’t think humans are different from other animals, except in having opposable thumbs and enough brain to use tools. If a crow had hands and thumbs, or a chimp the necessary brains, we would probably see equal behavior.
We have both capabilities - just as all other animals -, but it is mostly ideology/culture and swarm information control by psychopaths and dark-triad humans that causes these major power-dynamics - destructions.
As you said, we have all the tech and knowledge to create a kick ass world for everybody, but we have no control of our global information - psychopaths does, and we can’t break out from that information bubble, so human civilization are in an “Ant-Mill”.
We won’t progress - break out of the mill - until we have reined in our top psychopaths and finally ended the system of manufactured ideology, morals/‘values’ and information control that generate and nurture these thrash people to power - and keeps ordinary peeps from organizing our selves in more normal/intelligent structures.
I think the only thing that sets us apart from other animals is the level to which we can modify our environment and (so far) survive it.
In The Matrix, Smith says that humans are not mammals because every mammal maintains an equilibrium with their environment. But this is not something inherent in the animal, but rather the checks and balances in the environment itself. Take away the predators and deer populations grow until all the food is gone and then they starve. We’ve seen it happen.
If the deer could make food for themselves, they would just keep on breeding more deer.
This reminds me of an article someone posted titled Homo Stultus: The Case For Renaming Ourselves. It mentions that Homo Sapiens means “wise man”, but:
The more fitting name is Homo stultus—“foolish man.”
To most people I’m sure that might sound a bit misanthropic, but:
To rename ourselves Homo stultus is not mere cynicism. It is an act of moral realism. Names shape identity, and identity shapes behavior. To be “wise man” is to assume that wisdom already defines us; to be “foolish man” is to recognize that it does not. Such recognition could mark the beginning of genuine wisdom—the kind born of humility rather than hubris.
I think it’s actually a pretty valid wake up call. The article brings up a lot of good points.
Here are a couple more quotes talking about the problem:
The root of our folly lies in the myth of human exceptionalism
Anthropocentrism, in other words, is a kind of education—a cultural conditioning that replaces empathy with hierarchy.
I’ve actually started thinking we’re due for a name change now myself. It’s like holding up a mirror that confronts us with an image that maybe most of us never look at very honestly if we can avoid it. It might help if we started looking at ourselves as we are demonstrating ourselves to be by our actions, rather than the more comforting yet ignorant narratives we tell ourselves. Maybe then we can start trying to become actual Homo Sapiens.
Some males kill their own offspring so they can mate again. That is max exploiting.
At this point it looks like it’s human nature to deal poorly with extremely gradual problems that aren’t easily fixed (like the ozone hole crisis was). Emissions could be peaking as we speak, but only because changing technology bailed us out. 2100 is just too far away and abstract for people to really care about when they have needs and wants today.
It’s not just us, either. The main thing that stops other animals from overexploiting is not being able to. If you have a pet, you might have noticed they struggle with things requiring prolonged attention over far less than decades.
There is some psychology around this. In nature things are random and impermanent, and it’s not necessarily a great move to assume you can work on a thing forever and you won’t be interrupted by inclement weather or a visit from a rival. Far better to assume a constant probability of everything going away, and that means living in the moment more.
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