It's been a while!

[falciform_ruin]

And here I am at Tufts. This is my first post since I've been here!

I had an interesting conversation with a friend yesterday. She was questioning nature, wondering if we were really doing anything bad to it. Her hypothesis was that Nature-the all-powerful, abstract entity that she be-wouldn't have devised a race that could damage her against her

Comments

[peccavo]

1) You might want to check out The Gaia Hypothesis. It's really cool.

2) You haven't given up smoking. GRRRR!! You have any idea how many carcinogens you're welcoming into your body? And how cigarette smoke ages the skin and makes you look older!

[falciform_ruin]

Hmm...I don't see how it's intelligent design. Intelligent design acknowledges God as the creator of all things, asserts that it is by his divine will that things are the way they are. I don't. I don't think that it's necessarily wrong or inaccurate, therefore, to deem nature our creator. It lives and changes, after all! It's difficult to respond to what she said without personifying nature, especially because my friend did.

[falciform_ruin]

Ah I've been caught...

I guess I mean to identify nature-the result of undirected evolutionary processes-as a creative force. In general, I think it stands to reason that natural selection doesn't result in life that is detrimental to nature as a whole, although I might be wrong there, too. Natural selection breeds life that can sustain itself in a given time and environment. It also appears to sustain symbiosis. In that sense, species can be "perfect" in their abilities to subsist and fulfill their environmental duties. We humans seem to be an exception to the second part, as we have a negative effect on the natural world. Our ability to live in nearly any environmental condition, though, is truly incredible. That might be closer to what I meant by "yes and no".

[dagodevas]

I'm pro-entropy. Everything creates it, we just do so more efficiently.

[freedomriddle]

It's interesting. We've become horrid in our mistreatment of nature. But our treatment of each other is in some ways more "enlightened". There is accepting of those different then us (gays, different races, religions) that would have caused war/murder (granted, still do. But theoretically not as much) "back in the day".

There's gotta be a balance somewhere *head desk*

[freedomriddle]

And now just completing a semester of Cultural Anthropology, I have to point ut that the hoarding of which you speak allowed Bach to create music. As well as every other great composer of the Western hemisphere.

Not to say they couldn't have created in a hunter-gatherer society, but the output/complexity would almost certainly have been reduced.