Thomas_More
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Significant and insignificant are but our terms, as I said.
Supreme arrogance is a quality of the human species alone, as far as we know.
Cruise ship corporations are pushing vulnerable POLAR BEARS closer to EXTINCTION!
Arctic polar bears are already clinging to survival — their fragile habitats are RAPIDLY MELTING AWAY and they are suffering from STARVATION due to the human-driven climate crisis. In fact, the Arctic is warming TWICE AS FAST as the United States.
Meanwhile, profit-driven cruise corporations are making this ecological disaster EVEN WORSE, charging through the Arctic with their massive ships that are causing colossal amounts of hazardous pollution. Carnival Corporation is the biggest culprit, carrying over 11,000 tons of TOXIC heavy fuel oil through essential arctic habitats in a single year.
(Friends of the Earth)And yet, Wez, we will cease to be humans in less than a split-second of cosmic time, and the species will have ceased to be, forever.
Significant and insignificant are but our terms.
ALB, or Wez?
As bears enter their dens for hibernation this winter,they have no idea it could be their last.When spring comes, blooming flowers could be splattered by the blood of mama bears being gunned down while looking for food to provide for their babies — leaving cubs orphaned and alone.
Trophy hunters are tracking down and targeting bears across the U.S., putting them more at risk each day. Mama bears are being torn apart by bullets, leaving their babies to starve, freeze, or fall prey to other species. But private interests are working to remove grizzly bear protections so they can kill more bears and take over the lands they call home — all to turn a profit.
(Friends of the Earth).
And nothing does not exist.
You see nothing when closing your hand in the air. In fact you have just grasped trillions of particles. You walk through clouds of atoms and subatomic particles, which others have breathed in and out, which have formed countless existences and are continuing to do so … mammalian, reptilian, arthropodic, dinosaurine, botanic, your ancestors, of countless species.
You call what is invisible to you a void; I call it a soup.An infinite “void” is ok with me. I would be frightened if other worlds were to threaten our imminent destruction – a wandering gas giant for instance, about to swallow the Earth, but it isn’t likely in our lifetime.
A nuclear war, on the other hand, could be very likely in our lifetime.For you space is an infinite void. For me, I think galaxies, distant exploding suns, stellar clouds etc. are incredibly beautiful and wondrous.
I see space as a rich cosmic soup, bursting with energy and movement. Planets so varied and colourful. To know my atoms and those I have loved will be hurtling through space and forming trillions, zillions, of forms, including life forms, billions of years from now, is exhilarating. What types of conscious life they may even build one day … it’s beyond our perception.
I agree with you about size.
But you are assuming that consciousness is only our kind of consciousness.
We know, from our own brains and nerves, that matter thinks and feels. So it has consciousness. Our type of consciousness, or intelligence, results from the specific formation of our material being, the material formation of animals on this planet. What of other formations of matter?
When we say we think and feel, we can only comprehend those words as members of an Earthling animal species.
We are an example, one terrestrial example, of matter being conscious. There are doubtless trillions of examples who could equally think it their “role” to “introduce” self-knowledge to the cosmos, which you appear to be claiming as our “role”, as though we have an importance beyond ourselves.
Even if we establish socialism in our society, it does not guarantee that we will still exist for long in evolutionary terms. As Great Apes, Gould says, we are a branch that evolution has not much more to do with, having exhausted adaptation. This makes us ripe for extinction. Even if we have tens of thousands of years left, we are likely to become extinct without discovering life beyond this planet.
To say it is our role to bring self-consciousness to the universe is, therefore, arrogant and ludicrous.
As for humility, who can behold the cosmos without feeling awe, vulnerability and humility? Even if we have millions of years left as a species, we will only ever comprehend the equivalent of a speck of dust. We are still ignorant of more than 99.9% of fellow beings on our own planet!
