From: Brad McCormick, Ed.D. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>already possesses (do 'more of the same'). But, to use Jacob
>Bronowski's word, human existence also ascends, and ascent
>is vertical (something decidedly better, 'a cut above'), not
>horizontal (more of the same). None of the things that make
"ascends"? Human existence can not "ascend". None of this
stuff means anything to me. It's just a bunch of words strung
together. It sounds good, but it doesn't mean anything.
A human can't ascend any more than a cow can ascend. We are
like a herd of cattle feeding on -- and utterly destroying --
the world around us. We make soothing sounds and tell
ourselves fairy tales in order to live with the brutality of
our existence.
Billions of years of solar energy inputs created low-entropy
matter here on Earth. Low-entropy matter is the prerequisite
for human life. The human evolutionary line has existed for
about 5,000,000 years, biologically modern humans appeared
sometime in the last 120,000 years, and behaviorally modern
humans probably appeared sometime between 120,000 and 40,000
years ago. Over millions of years, the human animal evolved
to "fit" their billions-of-years-old environment. Major
changes in our natural environment make it unsuitable for us
-- perhaps we will no longer "fit".
No mater what our intention, no matter what fairy tales we
invent to rationalize the brutality of our existence, we are
nothing more than a herd of animals devouring the world around
us as we have for the last 5,000,000 years.
Jay
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It was thus becoming apparent that nature must, in the not
far distant future, institute bankruptcy proceedings against
industrial civilization, and perhaps against the standing
crop of human flesh, just as nature had done many times
to other detritus-consuming species following their
exuberant expansion in response to the savings deposits
their ecosystems had accumulated before they got the
opportunity to begin the drawdown... Having become a
species of superdetritovores, mankind was destined
not merely for succession, but for crash.
-- William Catton
