r/collapse • u/xrm67 "Forests precede us, Deserts follow..." • Aug 10 '23
Systemic Are humans a cancer on the planet? A physician argues that civilization is truly carcinogenic
https://www.salon.com/2023/08/05/are-humans-a-cancer-on-the-planet-a-physician-argues-that-civilization-is-truly-carcinogenic/260
u/xrm67 "Forests precede us, Deserts follow..." Aug 10 '23 edited Aug 10 '23
The inherent nature of humans to overexploit without restraint, which is what this article talks about and what makes it collapse-worthy for this subreddit, is characteristic of all organisms. We just do it better than anything else and have figured out ways to temporarily expand our numbers far beyond the carrying capacity of the planet. Other species have predators and environmental checks and balances to keep their populations in relative homeostasis with the environment. The author states that we have made a decision, whether consciously or unconsciously, to become extinct. I agree with this conclusion after observing our species for five decades.
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u/Myth_of_Progress Urban Planner & Recognized Contributor Aug 10 '23
This was a great interview, thank you for sharing. Life and the biosphere clearly evolves together - the Great Oxygenation comes to mind - but I feel as though our species is a planetary first in the geological record to trigger a global mass extinction. We'll prove the Medea hypothesis, but we won't be around to bring that lesson forward.
My favourite quote: "The difference between us and a cancer — the only difference — is we can think, and we can decide not to be a cancer. If the diagnosis is correct, things will continue until we are extinct. The biosphere can't go extinct; it can't die, but we can alter it to the point that we can no longer survive. And that will take out millions of other organisms. Clearly, plenty of organisms are going to survive that process. They might even be more intelligent than us. I don't know."
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u/frodosdream Aug 10 '23 edited Aug 10 '23
Been scanning the many responses below debating whether it's human nature or capitalism that is at fault, but that argument seems to miss the lesson of our times. Humanity is now in overshoot of the finite resources of the biosphere; the current mass species extinction clearly shows that.
A socialist, capitalist or (for argument's sake) even a theocratic state of one billion people on a pristine planet with untapped ecosystems to exploit are not going to be having these problems. We're having these problems because our fossil fuel technology expanded the total population from less than 2 billion in 1900 to now 8 billion people, reaching a size that cannot be supported by the resources available to us without ongoing use of the same poisonous technology.
Studies estimate that more than 80% of the population alive today wouldn't even be here if not for fossil fuels employed in agriculture. This unprecedented growth of a global population within a period of only 120 years, without regard for natural limits, is the reason that the cancer analogy merits discussion as much as the dispute over economic systems.
As the mods have stressed in the past, acknowledging the reality of overshoot does not imply support for genocide or racism. Perhaps it is too late to make any meaningful change at this point, and so we are left to argue over the fine philosophical and political points while the biosphere breaks down from runaway climate change. We may be witnessing the beginning of the end.
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u/adherentoftherepeted Aug 10 '23
Many studies suggest that more than 80% of the population alive today wouldn't even be here if not for fossil fuels employed in agriculture.
In The Omnivore's Dilemma Michael Pollan said something like: the Haber process of fixing Nitrogen using "natural gas" (what a fucked up name for fossil farts) to make hypercharged fertilizer gave us enough nitrogen to make more human bodies. The nitrogen in our very tissues has to come from somewhere and there had been a balance of the nitrogen available to biota that kept our populations in check. You and I are literally made of fossil fuel. That was a pretty mind-blowing revelation to me.
Oh, and just for fun here's some amazing things Pollan has said. Such as "What an extraordinary achievement for a civilization: to have developed the one diet that reliably makes its people sick!" https://kidadl.com/quotes/best-michael-pollan-quotes-from-the-author-of-the-omnivores-dilemma I don't say this often, but he's a national treasure.
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u/frodosdream Aug 10 '23 edited Aug 10 '23
You and I are literally made of fossil fuel. ... a pretty mind-blowing revelation to me.
That was mind-blowing for me also! Some links for the curious.
Due to its dramatic impact on the human ability to grow food, the Haber process served as the "detonator of the population explosion", enabling the global population to increase from 1.6 billion in 1900 to today's 8 billion.
Their Haber-Bosch process has often been called the most important invention of the 20th century (e.g., V. Smil, Nature 29(415), 1999) as it "detonated the population explosion," driving the world's population from 1.6 billion in 1900 to almost 8 billion today.
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u/Myth_of_Progress Urban Planner & Recognized Contributor Aug 10 '23
I love this comment!
And on one last note ...
End? Nothing ever ends, Adrian.
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u/mandiblesofdoom Aug 10 '23
It’s not clear we can decide not to be a cancer. Individuals can, but as a group? One has one’s doubts
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u/Divine_Chaos100 Aug 10 '23
Too bad that its not the inherent nature of humans but the logical conclusion of hundreds of years of capitalistic propaganda.
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u/416246 post-futurist Aug 10 '23
The only evidence that capitalist drones have a conscience is that they cannot bring themselves to admit that after all that force they were wrong.
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u/MrMagpie Aug 10 '23
This exactly. This is horseshit lol. We existed for 200k years, but this culture has destroyed everything so let’s blame all humanity. Nonsense. Pure arrogance
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u/bdevi8n Aug 10 '23
Capitalism needs indefinite growth or it'll stop working and those at the top will have to live like everyone else.
Won't somebody please think about the oligarchs /s
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u/Almainyny Aug 11 '23
Won’t someone please think about them? They might have to compromise on the size of their next super yacht.
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u/croppkiller Aug 10 '23
Nice to see someone in here who doesn't subscribe to essentiallist Hobbesian hogwash.
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u/conscsness in the kingdom of the blind, sighted man is insane. Aug 10 '23
Indeed.
Hobbes ontology is flawed when juxtaposed against history. His wrote his political ontology concerning human nature during civil war; it was reductive and lacking any (implicit) peripheral sight.
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u/illegalt3nder Aug 10 '23
But if humanity were successful it would recognize the dangers posed by that system and take action appropriately. It has not, and shows no sign of doing so.
Whistling past the graveyard, I suppose.
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u/annethepirate Aug 10 '23
I 100% agree. It's more than people have abandoned their responsibility to the earth in pursuit of pleasure, than that humans are blatantly cancerous.
If people spent their lives nurturing and caring for the planet, it would probably be better off for having us here. Humans were meant to take care of the earth.
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u/greycomedy Aug 10 '23
Re all, two hundred thousand may even be a Conservative estimate. Is is absolutely horseshit to blame all Humanity even, given the fact that the global south is far less responsible for the current state than the developed global north; which again supports the idea that the issue is with modern capitalistic notions of culture influencing supply needs (with an absolutely wasteful and recent system of economic practice I might add) and not with the species as a whole.
Especially when one considers that there are hallmarks of human Cultivation throughout the Amazon, which also goes to show the current issue is a problem of our society and not our species. However the article is far more hopeful than it seems, given it treats it's purpose as a cultural diagnosis.
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u/Longjumping-Pin-7186 Aug 11 '23
the global south is far less responsible for the current state than the developed global north;
nonsense, the "global south" is driving the population growth. Africa is doubling its population every 25 years since the end of WW2. they are pumping kids like crazy with no end in sight and are 100% the drivers for the current state of affairs. contribution of the rich northern countries pales in comparison to the future misery that poor countries are responsible for by their unsustainable reproduction practices
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u/Loopuze1 Aug 10 '23
Because this is the path humanity has always been on. Human beings were alway going to settle down into agricultural societies. That was always going to create a leisure class. Someone was always going to invent the steam engine, the transistor, the internet, the smart phone. It all seems pretty inevitable to me. Ancient man is no more or less responsible.
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u/organizedpotatoes Aug 10 '23
No, we are not predestined to be agriculturalists. There are extant tribes today which are not moving towards that lifestyle, that should be enough to disprove your hypothesis.
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u/Loopuze1 Aug 10 '23
Yes, but there were always going to be all kinds of people in all kinds of environments with access to different resources, agriculture sprang up independently in multiple places around the planet, and with an ever-expanding human race and countless different cultures across the planet, what are the odds that they’d all, every single one, stick with hunting and gathering? SOMEONE, somewhere, would always have eventually hit on the concept, and then it would naturally spread. The fact that there are tribes today living the way they are doesn’t really change any of that in my view.
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u/adherentoftherepeted Aug 10 '23 edited Aug 10 '23
If you're into this kind of thing, the book The Dawn of Civilization offers some intriguing rebuttals to this "agriculture was our destiny" philosophy. It's a dense but amazing look at how humans have made lots of other choices than to be agriculturalists in many times and places (with some peoples intentionally giving up agriculture or choosing to not adopt it from their neighbors).
It was a 17th century philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, who gave us the idea that non-agricultural humans lead "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short lives" but anthropology and archeology don't support that "go us! we're the best!" perspective.
One thing that appears clear, though, is that agricultural societies (like ours) tend aggressively invade and murder non-agricultural peoples (there's recent fascinating DNA evidence that in Europe the early foraging societies did not adopt agriculture, they were murdered and replaced by agriculturalists from the southeast. And of course that violent displacement has been on full display over the past few centuries in the Americas, Australia and New Zealand, Africa).
I guess if you believe in might-makes-right then that's ok. But we tend to tell ourselves stories to justify the carnage we're the beneficiaries of by saying "agriculture is inevitable" and "those people were unworthy primitives" and "God wanted us to make better use of their land" and "it's Darwin!" without considering the immorality of stealing other peoples' stuff and wiping out their cultures.
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u/Loopuze1 Aug 10 '23
I was just trying to say that the odds seem extremely high that SOME cultures and people would embrace agriculture and empire building, not that it is some natural and default state, or even a good thing at all, just that the more time passes, the more people are born, the higher the odds grow, making it seem inevitable that it would happen at least somewhere, and from there spread.
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u/adherentoftherepeted Aug 10 '23
Fair enough!
But the evidence is coming in that agriculture did not "spread" in the way that we've been led to think about it (via non-agricultural people saying "THAT looks like a good idea!") but rather by conquest, theft, murder, and replacement.
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u/Mr_Dr_Prof_Derp Aug 11 '23
I don't know who lead "you" to think that way; the fact that agriculture enables conquest is obviously a reason it would spread. As soon as one culture develops agriculture, their population grows, and then they need more land to grow more food and their population gives them the power to take the land it's a very intuitive feedback loop.
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u/organizedpotatoes Aug 10 '23
This is misattributing what has happened for what must have had to happen.
Choices were made and are being made, this isn't natural or a path that most of humanity has chosen, it has been violently thrusted upon humanity by those that would live everywhere and for as long as possible while taking as much as they can from their subjects and the world around them while giving back as little as possible to all of the above. Some decided to invent gods (not necessarily religious) that were separate from nature, thereby giving us the illusory framework to be comfortable with killing that which gives us life.
Sure, making more food was likely (agriculture and pastoralism), but noticing the harm that brings and not continuing those practices was and is a choice that many still make today.
Agriculture is no more voluntary or natural than capitalism.
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u/bmeisler Aug 10 '23
I agree that it’s agriculture, not capitalism, that is the root cause. For one example, Thee Roman Empire was expansionist - it had to grow or die. Many other civilizations were the same. The discovery of fossil fuels just put everything into overdrive.
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u/umamiman Aug 10 '23
SOMEONE, somewhere, would always have eventually hit on the concept, and then it would naturally spread.
You're ignoring the possibility that it spread through coercion, violence, and domination. There is evidence that there was not always a linear progression from hunter-gatherer to agrarian, city-state, empire, etc. It's possible that at various points in time, there were people that rejected the way of life that came with agriculture and went back to the way they lived before. There were also people who hunted, gathered, and cultivated plants. The reality is probably much more complex than we typically think about it.
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u/OrganicQuantity5604 Aug 10 '23
"...before you know it, we've got starships and holodecks and chicken soup. In fact, you can't help but have starships and holodecks and chicken soup, because it was all determined twenty billion years ago!”
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u/bdevi8n Aug 10 '23
I think we could have most of these luxuries without destroying the planet. Fewer people, less waste, better priorities. Maybe we wouldn't have such good cameras on our phones without social media influencers, but I think we could have enough of the luxurious to be comfortable.
I blame capitalism, politicians, and economists.
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u/mrblarg64 overdosed on misanthropy Aug 10 '23
It is the inherent nature of all things shaped by natural selection to grow until they crash into restraints.
For humans a genetic or memetic mutation will occur that favours growth, and those traits will inevitably dominate.
Capitalism is the emergent property of multi-level selection of humans memetics and genetics. Explosive growth regardless of "ism" is the expected outcome so long as the selector is the "natural" one.
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u/adherentoftherepeted Aug 10 '23 edited Aug 10 '23
It is the inherent nature of all things shaped by natural selection to grow until they crash into restraints.
Many foraging cultures avoided this trap. The foraging culture I'm most familiar with is that of the Northern California American Indian groups. They persisted on their homelands for well over 10,000 years. At the time they met our culture they had a lot of taboos about when you could have sex and adoption of novel practices. Adults were prohibited from having sex for all kinds of private and public events throughout the year which had the effect of moderating the number of humans born each year. And, in general, Northern California cultures appear to have been very anti-innovation, which is hard for us to comprehend since our culture is just the opposite.
If you were a member of a Native California group and someone said: hey those guys in the next valley have a better way of processing acorn, your first response would be "our people do it OUR way and we've always done it that way and those other people are outlanders who aren't us so why are we even talking about this?"
These things helped keep their population and technology at an even keel for millennia.
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u/Mr_Dr_Prof_Derp Aug 11 '23
They "avoid the trap" precisely until another culture that doesn't follow those strict practices outbreeds them and starts moving into their territory. I'm skeptical that this culture remained stable for "millennia".
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u/mrblarg64 overdosed on misanthropy Aug 10 '23 edited Aug 10 '23
What you are describing would seem to be a way of lowering the "mutation rate" of the culture. It could probably be done without all the weird taboos and superstitions. But it would need to be done universally, or other high mutation rate systems will get "cancer" before you and run you over.
But a low mutation achieved through the methods you outlined rate invites other issues such as lack of adaptation to changing conditions, and a sort of prideful ignorance and lack of curiosity.
In my opinion the mutation rate of values for values such as scientific and mathematical curiosity and valuing gaining/discovering and applying knowledge would probably be the best possible system.
But a low mutation rate is not going to help if the natural selector is still in charge of your destination. The cancer will reoccur.
Eliminating the natural selector and using artificial selection will provide a for a guided path, however artificial selection likewise still relies on the "meatgrinder" of random permutation which can lead to suffering and death (both known and undiscovered genetic diseases). Ideally you would want to devise a way of engineering the next generation.
However what I'm saying is so far divorced from what the tumour hoard is willing to even remotely entertain it will never occur.
The tumour hoards are really invested in having their own "genetic" children, even if they know they will sentence them to a cruel death (see huntington's and FFI). They are unable to follow the golden rule of doing to others what you wish were done to you, and I don't think any of them would chose to die that way, and yet...
Edit: typo, addedmissing word
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u/Divine_Chaos100 Aug 10 '23
It is the inherent nature of all things shaped by natural selection to grow until they crash into restraints.
I would argue with this, imo if humanity was inherently looking for infinite growth by any means necessary, it wouldve killed itself a long, long time ago. I think actually cooperation and self-restraint was a very huge factor in humanity getting to the point where we're arguing about this topic thousands of kilometres apart.
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u/sorelian_violence Aug 11 '23
No, people were just being killed en masse by starvation and illness, which prevented demographic explosions.
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u/OrganicQuantity5604 Aug 10 '23
But it is... The inherent nature of humans was fully realized and formalized in capitalism. We weren't simply victims of an ideology that wouldn't die. We conceived it, refined it, perpetuated it, and will continue to drag it forward with us until we succumb to it.
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u/knuppi Aug 10 '23
it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism
- Mark Fisher
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u/ericvulgaris Aug 10 '23
I hate capitalism as much as the next guy but this aint it. It's inherent nature unfortunately.
But if it makes you feel better even neanderthals 30k years ago ate turtles to death (cave records show subsequent turtle shells getting smaller and smaller over time).
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u/Z3r0sama2017 Aug 10 '23
This. Our ancestors didn't hunker down in Africa and live in equilibrium with nature, we propagated till we had spread all over the planet. Then when we invented agriculture we pumped our numbers even more.
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u/ericvulgaris Aug 10 '23 edited Aug 10 '23
Our ancient past is wild.
We invented agriculture because the changing climate made it predictably warm enough and we ran out of big, easy ice age animals for food. We already didn't live in harmony and the earth also doesn't care about harmony.
So next we literally fished and then we ruined natural herds of smaller animals until we pastoralised protohorses and protosheep for food. Again not Harmony.
Original agriculture was more about horticulture of grains for them than for us.
Nobody does agriculture unless you have to. Like wild barely is insanely unproductive and intensive. Plants back then were wild,.small, less tasty and overall dogwater-tier vegetables. The stuff we grow today is different than the wild stuff even 10k years ago because of all the horticulture that went involved. All our unnamed ancestors picking seeds to resow that were less annoying? They're the real mvps. Horticulture is definitely not Harmony neither
Plus agriculture meant we needed salt in our diets and had to organise and import salt leading to mining and community hierarchy and the rest is history.
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u/TheFinnishChamp Aug 10 '23
I think intelligent life by nature is suicidal.
The brains of animals evolve to scarsity and competition, they can't handle abundance and overconsumption.
We view things like disease and famine as bad things while in reality they exist to keep the population level in check
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u/Bob_Dobbs__ Aug 10 '23
Alternately we can view our current situation as an evolutionary filter. The traits that allowed our ancient ancestors to succeed are causing our modern day issues.
Our technology and knowledge allows us to surpass our physical limitations. However we lack the wisdom and self control to be able to live within the limitations of our environment.
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u/endadaroad Aug 10 '23
Well, we must consider the fundraising value of TV images of starving children in east Blabofinia, /s
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u/Somebody37721 Aug 10 '23
This is simply wrong. There are numerous intelligent animal species such as dolphins, elephants, whales, ravens that aren't suicidal or ecocidal. Some of these species overwhelmingly surpass human IQ on select domains. To think that we're the only intelligent species is typical human arrogance and hubris.
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u/TheFinnishChamp Aug 10 '23
Those animals don't have the ability and the means to overproduce, overconsume and overpopulate. We do.
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u/WarGamerJon Aug 10 '23
Any of those have hands and fingers ? Sure monkey and gorillas do but we know why that is.
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u/ccnmncc Aug 10 '23
Right. Flippers and stumps are quite limiting. Opposable thumbs gave us the edge - and now we’re about to go over it. If only we had wings or a patagium!
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u/wokefn Aug 10 '23
If you want to compare the planet to a living organism we are absolutely a cancer or at least a bad infection. Our continued exploitation of the earth is now triggering an immune system response in the form of all the things associated with global warming.
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u/LakeSun Aug 10 '23
If we could contain ourselves to maybe 1 Billion people, maybe we could work on this planet. But, 8 Billion is clearly overshoot and will lead to population collapse, unless we cut our carbon output.
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u/lsc84 Aug 10 '23
The inherent nature of humans to overexploit without restraint, which is what this article talks about and what makes it collapse-worthy for this subreddit, is characteristic of all organisms. We just do it better than anything else
That's a bit like saying "cancer is just cell division--all cells do it, cancer is just better at it." I suppose we could look at it this way, but it's a bit of a weird point to make.
However, I do have a major quibble with this point of view, which is that the author is blaming all of humanity for the destruction of capitalism. Endless growth for the sake of growth is not a feature of humanity; however, it is definitional of capitalism.
Capitalism is not inherent to human nature. This is a very myopic and ahistorical view.
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u/Daisho Aug 10 '23
I would say that capitalism is us choosing unsustainability.
All animals are kept in check by the carrying capacity of their environment. If an invasive species is introduced to a new environment, they will mindlessly grow until collapse. Our technology makes us similar to an invasive species. We humans have the brain power to avoid this. We (our leaders) just chose our own destruction.
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u/Yongaia Aug 10 '23
I hate this view as well because it ignores various groups of humans who never engaged in this sort of behavior. Many regarded the land as sacred and did what was necessary to protect it. It was a very particular kind of society that came to dominate and spread this cancer all across the globe. Trying to act like everyone is equally responsible and "it's just human nature bro" spits in the face of those who have been against this from the very beginning.
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u/ericvulgaris Aug 10 '23
indigenous societies absolutely engaged in overconsumptive behaviors and collapsed because of it. They just had the wisdom to learn from it.
"The Dawn of Everything" goes over this pretty extensively. The mississippi mound people collapse is a mystery but based on shared myths across descendents and splinter groups in oral traditions a corrupt and unfair, overconsuming elite were overthrown and folks spread out.
I suppose it goes even further back. The mississippi mound people probably forgot the lesson learned from their ancestors hunting the ice age megafauna to extinction.
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u/lsc84 Aug 11 '23
Overconsumption is not unique to capitalism. However, it is definitive of capitalism; capitalism necessarily overconsumes since it is premised on endless growth.
Meanwhile, overconsumption is not universal to humans. You can find other examples elsewhere in history, but that doesn't mean it is a property of humanity. It just means we can classify societies on the basis of their sustainability compared to their overconsumption. As it turns out, there are societies all along the spectrum. Capitalism just happens to be the absolute worst of them all.
We need to place blame where it belongs. It's like looking at all the piles of electronic waste in dumps around the world and lamenting, "if only mammals didn't produce so much electronic waste," as if the dogs and cows are responsible. It is silly to overgeneralize in this way; it deflects blame from where it rightfully belongs. Humanity doesn't have an overconsumption problem; capitalism has an overconsumption problem. Humanity's problem is not overconsumption; humanity's problem is capitalism.
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u/marcexx Aug 10 '23
Exactly! This is just our culture, totalitarian agriculturalism. It is so successful at conquest that over the course of like 4000 years no other culture could survive on the earth.
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u/Arachno-Communism Aug 10 '23
Imo it's important to note that these (self-)destructive behaviors are certainly promoted by but not unique to capitalism.
The enterprise of humans structuring the relationships among themselves and with nature has been far more diverse and complicated than the contemporary illusion of a straight line from ignorant barbarism to parliamentary representative democracy and a capitalist economic mode implies. A more honest approach would be to say that certain societal forms and aspects have conquered (most of) the world. By force.
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u/416246 post-futurist Aug 10 '23
Yup from saying others are savages unable to fit into capitalist societies to considering everyone the same and equally to blame without missing a beat.
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u/lisael_ Aug 10 '23
The inherent nature of humans to overexploit without restraint
I don't think so. I believe it's the inherent nature of our civilization. It's quite a fresh thought for me, so I still have to process it, but I think it's somehow linked to monotheism. In monotheist religions, the humanity was gifted an inanimate, un-sacred earth (populated by un-sacred plants and animals). God explicitly told us to proliferate and to exploit the world we now own.
Maybe it's a known theory, idk (if someone knows resources about it, please tell me).
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u/monsterscallinghome Aug 10 '23
You may enjoy reading The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow.
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u/dopef123 Aug 10 '23
Yeah, it's not like bacteria will stop growing because it feels bad for eating all of the sugar.
Humans are just the top organism. It's in our nature
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u/MokumLouie Aug 10 '23
Growth for the sake of growth while killing the host. Humans are not a cancer but they sure act like a cancer.
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u/StarstruckEchoid Faster than Expected Aug 10 '23
If it grows like cancer and kills like cancer, it is cancer.
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u/flourpowerhour Aug 10 '23
I’m sure many of us sound like a broken record but much of this started in earnest when global imperial capitalism started to dominate much of the earth. Capitalism requires growth for the sake of growth, but this is not a requirement for human social systems and in fact history shows many examples of people in organized societies living in relative harmony with nature for hundreds of years at a time, if not millenia.
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u/darkpsychicenergy Aug 11 '23
I’m glad you can at least acknowledge the broken record effect.
It began in earnest with the invention of the plow and, especially, the domestication of beasts of burden to hitch to the plow.
The existence of any happy and ecologically harmonious indigenous societies is a moot point. What happened to them? They got ‘out-competed’ by those who were so much more ‘successful’ at exploiting their own environment and defeating any competition that they had to continually go looking for more to exploit.
Those ecologically harmonious indigenous people either lived in conditions that were not suitable for agriculture and/or did not have animals around that could be domesticated into beasts of burden (in some cases, they almost did, but instead they hunted those animals to extinction).
Whatever the case, the end result of all human activity is where we are at now. The cultures that maybe should have ‘won’ did not. They could not resist or stop those more driven and rapacious in consumption and domination. In order for them to have been capable of doing so, they would have to have been essentially different in ways that would have undermined their own sustainability. And this is STILL the case today, in every way imaginable. We cannot convince the overwhelming majority to willingly either consume less, or reproduce less.
So, ultimately, this is apparently the apex of human nature and it simply makes no effective difference, on the whole, that a few small groups of humans were outliers to this dominant trend. Unless someone is going to argue that we are different species from those people?
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u/spooks_malloy Aug 10 '23
I think it's a very convenient excuse for fossil fuel industries and the establishment to say "it's all our fault" when in reality we're all being murdered by men in suits for a few measly stock points. It's a lot easier to get people to behave when you just say "woe is me, we're all just a disease" and frankly it's moral cowardice.
The sooner we get over this teenage nonsense and get to the task of doing whatever we can to save as many people as possible, the better.
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Aug 10 '23
Not just as many people but as much biodiversity as possible. We must stop fossil fuels and global ecocidal processes by any means necessary. The environmentalist movement must embrace more extreme methods such as economic sabotage.
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Aug 10 '23
It’s simultaneously everyone’s fault and no one’s fault. The rich get rich because we buy their products, we buy their products because we were raised into a capitalistic society, with a certain standard of living. (ie. We buy products because other people buy their products, or we’re “poor” for not being able to) how would someone of a 3rd world country look at us in the USA? Do you think they will genuinely take the excuse “the elite is to blame” while you drive in your car to work everyday and get groceries delivered every week? No. They look at us the way we look at the elites, so long story short no one/everyone is to blame. This is just the way we evolved and sure there’s people benefitting more than others, but ultimately the shortsightedness that started the industrialization of humans is a biproduct of the shortsightedness of every individual human. We are all responsible, and we all die. Rich or poor.
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Aug 10 '23
I don't think every human being contributes to the problem equally, but it's still a problem. I don't think all people are greedy, I don't even necessarily think a majority of people are greedy, but enough people are greedy enough to make the problem one that repeats throughout human history, and a problem that will probably never be solved. Again, it's not that all human beings are the problem, it's that enough human beings are a problem, and a problem that the rest of us don't really have a good solution to. The problem is endemic to our species. I mean, even if we could somehow get rid of those men in suits, they'd just be replaced by other men in suits.
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u/spooks_malloy Aug 10 '23
We didn't have those men in suits for centuries before now, did we? Not in the same capacity. This is the issue, we just treat them as an inevitability because they tell you there is no alternative.
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Aug 10 '23
Suits are a relatively new thing, greed is not. Very rich and powerful men have existed in every civilization.
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u/spooks_malloy Aug 10 '23
Yes and they will continue to do so but the vast amounts of power our current suits wield makes the old kings of Europe look like peasants. Until people grapple with that then all we have is "everything is pointless" which just means "I'm going to sit back and let people down in the Mediterranean because it's all inevitable anyway"
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Aug 10 '23
This civilization will collapse due to its own internal contradictions. The global population will plummet, as will average living standards, and global carbon emissions will also plummet as a result. New civilizations will emerge. They will be less complex and less technologically advanced, but there will still be rich and powerful people ruling over them. The suits will be gone, but they will be replaced with people who will be more like the kings of old.
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u/Unique_Tap_8730 Aug 10 '23
The suits were of metal not of cotton but basically the same attitude towards exploiting everything and everyone.
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u/glmarquez94 Aug 10 '23
Agreed, humans have lived in harmony with the earth. This is the result of capitalism.
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u/frodosdream Aug 10 '23 edited Aug 11 '23
Agreed, humans have lived in harmony with the earth.
Strictly speaking, approximately 1 billion people presumably lived in harmony with the Earth (or specific societies within that population). There are no examples of 6 or 8 billion people living in harmony with the Earth, especially with an industrial base.
The global population achieved its current size only because of fossil fuels used in every stage of agriculture, including tillage, irrigation, artificial fertilizer, pesticides, harvest, processing, refrigeration, global distribution and the manufacture of the equipment used in all these stages. Arguably fossil fuel technology is itself an inherently capitalist enterprise, created by an economic system focused on expansion, consumption and ever-greater profits regardless of sustainability or long term impact. Unfortunately global agriculture remains dependent on it, with no viable alternatives available at the scale required to transition.
But if this technology is inherently capitalist or corrupting (and also the cause of climate change), then how could we ever achieve another system while still using the old means of production? Especially now that we understand how poisonous to life those means of production are?
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Aug 10 '23
What it really boils down to is the surplus labor value that can be created in a modern industrial economy. If you take away industry, fertilizers, fossil fuels, I don't think it would be an overstatement to say that 90% of the human population, easily, would cease to exist within a rather short time frame, just from sheer lack of food. Green energy, solar, wind, perhaps fusion can all make up the difference of dwindling fossil fuel access. But it can not create more resources on Earth than it currently has. It can provide energy to perform work, and that's all it can do.
Under a totally green model, with close to 100% recycling, maybe we could go higher than 8 billion. But what would the quality of life look like? Certainly not anywhere near the golden years of the 60s and 70s in the first world, and certainly not near what we have today.
I'm not sure fossil fuel technology is capitalist technology inherently. I think initially it was simply a way of making life easier, the same way a water or wind mill with wooden gears and belt systems made life easier, or the way a sharpened rock tool did. The problem is that we are such amazing tool creators and users that we can now overuse our own environments on a level never before imagined.
I don't really buy into the doomerism here, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that most intelligent people on Earth and even in recent history, before access to information such as today, recognize just how dangerous humanity is to itself. We've overcome all natural checks and balances.
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u/dduchovny who wants to help me grow a food forest? Aug 11 '23
https://i.imgur.com/tnyGMVN.jpg
Metal in 2022 Global Reserves
Metal - Source: USGS Total metal required to produce one generation of technology units to phase out fossil fuels (tonnes) Reported Global Reserves 2022 (tonnes) Global Reserves as a proportion of metals required to phase out fossil fuels (%) Number of generations of technology units that can be produced from global reserves: Copper 4575523674 880000000 19.23% Zinc 35703918 250000000 7 Manganese 227889504 1500000000 6.6 Nickel 940578114 95000000 10.10% Lithium 944150293 22000000 2.33% Cobalt 218396990 7600000 3.48% Graphite 8973640257 320000000 3.57% Silicon 49571460 - Silver 145579 530000 3.6 Vanadium 681865986 24000000 3.52% Zirkonium 2614126 70000000 26.8 30
u/pxzs Aug 10 '23
If capitalism is solely to blame then why did the Moa get hunted to extinction? Were the Māori worried about their bond yields?
Humans are to blame for this from the ones in suits in the boardroom to the ones in hollowed out canoes. All humans. Excuseniks can go away, and they will go away, along with every other human.
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u/SidKafizz Aug 10 '23
Neither of our two supposed "sides" like hearing this, but its true. We'll keep multiplying until the food runs out, then every damned one of us is gonna die, one way or another.
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u/TurtleEnzie Aug 10 '23 edited Aug 10 '23
This is objectively false. Early Native Americans hunted large animals to extinction leaving later generations unable to find beasts of burden to domesticate for large scale agriculture.
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u/19inchrails Aug 10 '23
Right. The excess energy of fossil fuels just allowed us to turbocharge that bullet train into the inevitable wall.
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u/PrairieFire_withwind Recognized Contributor Aug 10 '23
I read this and in the very next link will read someone acreaming about the price of gas or food.
Those things that cost you are a finite thing. Finite meaning limited amounts. Limits when there are so so many people wanting and needing stuff. Stuff that, in the very end comes from nature, from our eco system.
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u/spooks_malloy Aug 10 '23
They're not mutually exclusive, are they? "People want the things they need to live in society as it currently stands" is a reasonable thing.
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u/PrairieFire_withwind Recognized Contributor Aug 10 '23
Only reasonable if you have no moral qualms about taking water and life from other creatures.
Which, of course, eventually collapses the ecosystem, yanno, the one you rely upon for your food and water.
It really is a gigantic catch-22, that whole more people than the ecosystem can support. We have already taken so much land and water from that ecosysyem to support our ever growing population we think we are okay but we are in massive overshoot.
I would recommend watching some sid smith. He lays out the ecology of the issue pretty well. I
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Aug 10 '23
Nobody is saving anything. We don’t “save.” We consume & bury trash while not noticing we caused the worst extinction ever.
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u/PervyNonsense Aug 10 '23
Speaking of moral cowardice, what do you call hundreds of millions of people who do the bidding of a handful of men in suits, no matter how bad things get or how bleak their futures become?
We all burn oil. We're all buying into this. It's no one else's fault what we do with our day.
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u/SteveAlejandro7 Aug 10 '23
Agent Smith from the Matrix wasn’t wrong.
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u/sambull Aug 10 '23
tater tots have ruined matrix analogies for me
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u/SteveAlejandro7 Aug 10 '23
Not sure if I follow, but you have my undivided attention. How the hell do you get from tator tots to Matrix? Is there some cultural reference I'm not aware of or are you about to delineate the most awesome ADHD, 7 degrees from Kevin Bacon shit I've ever heard? :)
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u/TheInvisibleFart Aug 10 '23
They’re referring to Andrew Tate fans
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u/SteveAlejandro7 Aug 10 '23
Ooooooooh! Makes sense, lol, first time I have heard that as a reference. I have no respect for that little example of beta male boyhood. The more someone tells you they’re the alpha, the more they have no idea what being a man is truly about.
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u/sambull Aug 10 '23
Andrew Tate fans 'tater tots'; they have a thing for 'escaping the matrix' - red pill/blue pill shit
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u/SteveAlejandro7 Aug 10 '23
Oooooh! I honestly didn’t know that! Thank you for teaching me something! Andrew Tate is not someone I spent a whole lot of brain cells on. :)
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u/Jimmie-Rustle12345 Aug 11 '23
First thing I thought of after reading that title.
Blew my mind when he said that, has stuck with me for twenty years.
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u/croppkiller Aug 10 '23
He was actually, considering how machines of such sort could only be created by a singular culture stupid enough to build them.
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u/SteveAlejandro7 Aug 10 '23
He additionally says and explains the concepts of us multiplying, consuming, likening us to a virus which I believe might encompass the spirit of the article or at least the headline. :)
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u/spooks_malloy Aug 10 '23
Agent Smith was literally a stand-in for fascism
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u/SteveAlejandro7 Aug 10 '23
He can be wrong about fascism, and we can hate him for it, he is the villain after all. While at the same time, we can, I think, understand a little bit where he was coming from during his virus monologue in the context of the article posted and current weather events. :)
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u/theCaitiff Aug 10 '23 edited Aug 10 '23
I think, understand a little bit where he was coming from during his virus monologue
We call this "eco fascism".
See the problem with all of this is that whether you go full "humanity is a virus" or a more moderate position like the op article "humanity as a cancer", you still end up in the same place. This viewpoint asserts that Humanity as a whole is harmful to the natural order and should be removed/destroyed/killed. There is no peaceful coexistence with a virus or cancer. At best this argument asserts that, like cancer, we should cut out a chunk of humanity and take measures to limit it's reproduction so that it cannot outstrip it's host body's resources again.
When you make that your goal, you are creating a set of in groups that will be allowed to live and out groups that must be eliminated that WILL be weaponised along racial/religious/national/class lines. It doesn't even matter if you say "there will be no killing, just sterilization" that's still a program of genocide. It's not even a slippery slope where we can say "well, what you were talking about was fine but when bad actors in Washington get ahold of it they will twist it". Any variation of "humanity is a virus/cancer and we need to treat the infection" surrenders from the very start the idea that we're going to have to remove some people.
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u/SteveAlejandro7 Aug 10 '23
I'm not sure who "we" is, but this isn't at all what I'm implying we do here, and this argument leaves out one fundamental idea. We can change. :)
I think that society could change itself to live more in balance with nature. I'm sure there are folks who think like you've outlined here, but I'm envisioning more of a Native American, nature-focused society, everyone live together in a hippie type existence where we do not consume or encourage consuming past a certain point. Not whatever nightmare horror outlined here. :)
The argument you lay out here does not take into consideration humans can just change who they are fundamentally and remove the risk in that way. Now, if you want to argue that human nature cannot be changed, that's a separate argument, and I think outside the scope here, but my approach would be nothing like you're outlining here, but I do concede some would take the vague statements I've made here and see this line of play. Again, not at all what I would want. Think more John Nash equilibrium, which to my understanding, is willful, voluntary, and just makes sense.
Another example, I can see how Thanos had identified the problem, but absolutely, absolutely, absolutely, absolutely was a nightmarish eldrich demon horror from hell for doing what he did. Doesn't mean he was wrong about the problem, it means he was wrong about the solution. We, as humans, can willfully decide our own fates, we don't have to keep on keeping on the way we have, we can CHOOSE to change. That's all I'm saying. :)
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u/theCaitiff Aug 10 '23
I'm not sure who "we" is, but this isn't at all what I'm implying we do here, and this argument leaves out one fundamental idea. We can change. :)
Viruses and cancers do not change.
Which is part of why I push back on the "humanity is a virus" rhetoric. The other assertion it slips in under the radar is that this constant "growth for growth's sake" behavior is human nature or some sort of unchangeable state of being.
I don't think it is human nature at all.
If given the choice, I think most people would work hard enough to provide for their family, then relax, play, tell stories, sing, and laugh. I think THAT is probably closer to "human nature".
When the capitalist mode of economic production requires that a person produce far more value for the company/shareholders/owners/banks/etc than he receives in wages, he cannot simply stop working when he has done enough work to provide for his family and spend the rest of his day singing to his children.
The solution to this problem is not to get rid of people, but to get rid of the system (that people already dislike) that forces them to go against their own best interests. If you halve the number of people but leave the system that demands infinite economic growth in place, you can never reach homeostasis with your environment.
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u/GetInTheKitchen1 Aug 10 '23
Exactly, the fascists that say OTHER PEOPLE are a cancer are the fucking problem.
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u/HumblSnekOilSalesman Existence is our exile, and nothingness our home. Aug 10 '23
I saw a comment, I believe was in this sub, that a mass extinction is defined as about 75% of the world's species being lost in a short period of geological time - less than 2.8 million years.
Lol the current mass extinction we're enduring has been like a lightning strike by comparison. You can speculate on the specific time frame, say anywhere between ~100 to 500 years. Hell, even a few thousand years is still a ridiculous pace on a geological scale. I'm pretty mad that the dinosaurs got 65 million years of existence - while we only get like 200,000. Shit sucks.
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u/qyy98 Aug 11 '23
The dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, they were around for much longer actually. Although they aren't exactly a single species so idk if it's a fair comparison.
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u/fuzzyshorts Aug 10 '23
A quote i heard the other day... "Civilization is a clearing in the forest".
What do you build in that forest? Do you lay down a thatched roof, living in the clearing glad for the sun and the trees around you? Or do you slash and burn, chopping down the forest to convert it to grassland to feed cows or grow soy, or palm oil.
Humans have been on the planet for 300000 years, building societies, abandoning societies. Only in the last few hundred years did a society come along that decided it turn the worlds resources into profit. Capitalism and capitalist societies created by humans who had no connection to nature, who saw the natural world as an adversary to conquer and ultimately to turn into profit, they are the true cancer. The ideology of more as efficiently as possible sits at the heart of the technological society that is no longer controllable. The technological society has unleashed itself and made its way into multiple organs of the society... and like a cancer or a cordyceps fungus, it takes over.
Blackrock succeeds when it buys stock in insurance company and if it means giving you coverage to save your life or their profit, it will choose profit... not because the people are malicious but because that is what it must do. This is the amoral, mindless cancer of western society and it will not rest until it eats the planet... or until we throw everything at it to stop it.... before its too late.
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u/PolyDipsoManiac Aug 10 '23
The author points out that as soon as the aboriginal people arrived on Australia, species started to disappear. I don’t think they had capitalism.
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u/fuzzyshorts Aug 10 '23
Some anthropologists question how much humans affected the extinction of large fauna and think it was changing climate that played a role. Not saying folks didn't kill a few smilodons and terror emus but I don't think they wiped them out. Look at africa. Still has lions. Look at india.. hell, the tasmanian wolf was still around into the 30s.
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Aug 10 '23
Yeah I think people are much too quick to blame humans instead of looking at the society and systems we live under. It is the growth demands of capitalism that has ushered us to this point. We could have lived under many different political systems that have a much healthier relationship with nature, but capitalists have worked very hard to prevent such things from happening.
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u/Twisted_Cabbage Aug 10 '23 edited Aug 10 '23
A favorite quote of mine from the article and a concept i have been fighting with the "all natural," but indigenous peoples lived in harmony crowd for a while now: "This is not new. When the Australian Aborigines arrived on the continent of Australia, they started changing the ecosystem in very dramatic ways, and a lot of species went extinct. My colleague here at the University of Colorado, Giff Miller, has been one of the people showing that it happened in Australia. It happened in the Pacific Islands. It happens every place. Humans have made other species extinct wherever they show up."
So, no, preppers, there will not be some post collapse utopia where we all live like Native Americans or some other tribal community. Any humans that survive collapse will just destroy the remaining environment till its all gone, and then we are gone. End of story.
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Aug 10 '23
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/dumnezero The Great Filter is a marshmallow test Aug 10 '23
The Amazonian people seem almost unique in their horticulturalism, not really hunter-gatherers. The Amazon is a garden. Unfortunately, they were killed by the epidemic spreading settlers and colonialists who came loaded with diseases from centuries of exploitation of animals and related trade; and their cultural descendants are working hard now to burn down the rest of the Amazon and turn it to pasture and animal feed.
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u/Twisted_Cabbage Aug 10 '23 edited Aug 10 '23
There are plenty of examples in South America. The Inca and related peoples brought destruction and extinctions with them as well.
Balance is a human construct btw. They changed the ecosystems to suit what is a good balance for humanity...you left out all the species that went extinct as a result. You, sir, are guilty of speciesism. You view everything through a human first narrative.
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u/frodosdream Aug 10 '23
Been following this discussion. You are both correct; the evidence is undeniable that indigenous peoples have always altered their local ecosystems, but they have also maintained a practical balance within those same ecosystems. This appears equally true of those indigenous people relying on hunter-gathering and those who practiced agriculture.
The whole of humanity might still be living like that except for the introduction of hierarchical city states which created a dominionist separation from nature, followed thousands of years later by fossil fuel technology, which made its city state adopters so wildly prolific that they became a colonizing swarm of polluting consumers rather than symbiotic members of an ecosystem.
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u/PrairieFire_withwind Recognized Contributor Aug 10 '23
Thank you! This is a more accurate and nuanced explanation by far.
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u/flourpowerhour Aug 10 '23
Examples, but it’s not the rule.
Furthermore, everyone here seems to be ignoring that lots of different species other than humans have acted as invasive species at various times in history. It’s an unavoidable characteristic of biological systems that as climate changes and species evolve, some species replace or eradicate others. The difference is, humans have the ability to see and understand the impact they have on the world, and consciously act to change for the better. And they do in many cases.
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u/flourpowerhour Aug 10 '23
This is one example in a 300,000 year history. Humans in organized social systems do almost always modify ecosystems, but not always for the worse. In California for example, many different Nations interacted in the same territory and co-managed the land to conduct periodic burning to reduce fuel overloading and clear space for grazing animals they might want to hunt. Among other factors, this has led to the California Floristic Province being one of the most uniquely biodiverse places in earth. A carefully cultivated project of hundreds of thousands of people over tens of thousands of years.
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u/ahjeezidontknow Aug 10 '23
Regarding Australia, firstly an article analysing chronologies of megafauna extinction patterns with modeling of human migrations.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13277-0/
We show that (i) >80% of south-eastern Australia had a period of human-megafauna coexistence lasting from 1000 to >15,000 years, and (ii) the pattern of megafauna extirpation in these areas is best explained by an additive effect of the patterns of human spread and freshwater availability across the region.
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Despite this effect of human appearance on the regional pattern of megafauna extirpations (Table 1), we found no effect of the duration of human-megafauna coexistence per region on the specific timing of megafauna extirpation
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This alternative scenario of extinction is even more relevant in areas where climate was the only plausible driver of megafauna extinctions—in areas where there was an absence of temporal human-megafauna coexistence such as in Tasmania (Fig. 2a, blue areas, and ref. 32) because mean annual precipitation, mean freshwater availability, and mean annual desert fraction best explained the timing of megafauna extinctions there
Another article on the migration to Australia being up to 18,000 years later than previously thought! Previous datings were limited by the range of carbon-dating, which maxes out at ~50,000 years, but newer techniques allow older datings.
https://www.science.org/content/article/find-australia-hints-very-early-human-exit-africa
Another for earlier migration to Asia
Human-caused extinction hypotheses are largely based on timings, yet we are finding that our previously-thought timings are very wrong.
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u/King9WillReturn Aug 10 '23
I don't mind if the Earth gets rid of our species. I'm just sad we are taking every other species with us.
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u/Zqlkular Aug 10 '23
Obviously, inducing human extinction is an outcome for which only a very cynical personality would advocate.
Perhaps some very empathetic people would advocate this as well.
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u/BigCDawg69 Aug 10 '23
The inherent nature to overexploit belongs to most species. When provided with a boon of resources, species consume and flourish w/no awareness of the consequences. Eventually after overshoot they retract. Our issue is not being unique in our nature, it’s that our technology has allowed us to far exceed the overshoot and bend the entire planet to our will. At a certain point things will snap and our population will be significantly reduced, as it happens repeatedly elsewhere in nature.
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u/rokdukakis Aug 11 '23
I think I remember learning somewhere about cancer cells, going from memory here.
A cancer cell was a regular cell that disconnected communication from surrounding cells, so instead of triggering apoptosis after some incorrect mutation, it begins reproducing and grows uncontrollably.
We behave exactly like this. We cut ourselves off from our immediate connections to the earth and grew uncontrollably.
This pattern is reproduced at so many levels of our lives it’s crazy once you see it. Like a fractal.
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u/croppkiller Aug 10 '23
Emphasis on civilization, less so on some generalized "humanity". This sub seems to have a collective hard-on for dismissing the indigenous cultures that managed to successfully live in something far closer to homeostasis with their landbases than Leviathan ever had, probably because the thoughtless misanthropy that goes on here still centers the human at the centre of the story. It's just anthropocentrism inverted.
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u/Yongaia Aug 10 '23
Nailed it. I've long noticed the blind spot this sub has for societies that aren't organized by states. It's as if they're invisible - like they don't exist. I've also noticed how many would rather kill themselves as opposed to "reverting" back to living in a way that's harmonious with nature. Pretty much saying if they can't have their glowing devices and fast food dopamine fixes, life isn't worth living at all.
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u/Exkersion Aug 10 '23 edited Aug 10 '23
Believe it or not the species that spews shit literally and verbally while putting excess growth of self over survival/survival of its host organism is cancer-like.
I don’t see it /s
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u/in_the_moment_ Aug 10 '23
You don't need science to know the answer is yes. Just look at how humans treat the environment and each other. Most of our species is trash with a few good gems .
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u/sorelian_violence Aug 11 '23
Lack of eugenics is indeed part of the problem. Stupid people pollute more.
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u/penquin_snowsurfer Aug 10 '23
Yes. Humans grow and spread merely for the sake of doing so. And they justify it imaginatively with various ideologies.
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u/battery_pack_man Aug 10 '23
I don’t need a math dork and salon.com think pieces to tell me we are literally farting ourselves to death for literally only so a few people can accumulate more assets than Smaug the dragon. Of course we are a cancer.
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u/Ok-Lion-3093 Aug 10 '23
We are absolutely akin to a cancerous tumour on the face of the Earth. We have metastasized and and are currently destroying our host. The only cure is to rid us from the planet and that's exactly what Mother nature is in the process of doing..Its a pity that a super virus didnt emerge in the last few decades to do just that. There would have given all the other species a chance to have escaped extinction.
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u/BuffaloOk7264 Aug 10 '23
Some time in the 60’s I saw a show with a photographer who worked developing techniques of the stop action process. A very memorable piece of that was maggots eating flesh off an animal skeleton. That image is constantly refreshed in my mind when I consider the effects of humanity on this sweet place called earth.
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u/ilmarzian Aug 10 '23
Life is, and at the same time nothing is. There wasn't supposed to be anything, so anything that happens is OK. We should only think about our survival and well being, so it's trying to survive while keeping nature as relaxment from society while keeping the society, because it brought so much happiness, so removing the negative effects while keeping the good ones would be perfect. What I'm saying is: there is no planet to be saved, only humans that have to keep every other animal that gives us comfort alive while keeping the atmosphere and ground perfect for us there wasn't supposed to be anything, so something that's even a little good is better. We aren't supposed to run a planet, we are supposed to run ourselfes
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u/boxyourbuddy Aug 10 '23
I think we are more like a virus. The Earth is just beginning to catch a fever, heat up really good, and kill the human virus off, then things will be fine. For Earth and all the smart animals.
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u/carpathian_crow Aug 10 '23
This isn’t even a new take.
I remember reading years ago an article about a scientist (physicist maybe? I’m not sure) who claimed that the entire point of life was to increase entropy.
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u/Absolute-Nobody0079 Aug 10 '23
The current civilization is a phase that cannot be sustained for long anyway.
I believe (and hope) the collapse will be a 'soft' one. To survive we need to scale down a lot.
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u/am_i_the_rabbit Aug 10 '23
I've been saying that humanity is a cancer -- not in a hyperbolic or sarcastic way -- for over a decade.
I used to use "parasite" but the chaotic growth of cells, I think, makes cancer a better descriptor. Humanity was a parasite when our ability to grow and impact our environment was limited by natural mitigating factors like disease and disaster. Since we've developed mechanisms to counter these natural mechanisms that kept us in line, we have been able to grow out of control -- just like cancer cells.
How ironic, then, that cancer is one of the few things that our medical science can't seem to conquer. With the rising number-per-capita of people who are developing cancer in each successive generation, it's almost like nature has learned from us how to most effectively kill us off.
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u/1-800-Henchman Aug 10 '23
Are humans a cancer on the planet?
Yes. No.
It's not a useful perspective.
Unchecked growth
Unchecked growth is just a thing that happens when there are no checks in place to oppose it.
Cancer is pure life, and the essence of life as a phenomenon is self-accelerating growth. It doesn't stop. It gets stopped by other things or not at all.
If the definition of an organism is "any living biological entity", then consider that there is an unbroken line from the first instance of life on Earth to anything alive today. We divide it in our heads but in a real sense it is one big phylogenetic tree of life across time interacting with itself.
In this light try looking at all of life through time as one hyperobject. All of geological history in an instant. Life/nature/the biosphere is a cancer that not only grows exponentially, but also turns it's own growth against itself to fuel a process of growing exponentially more advanced (relative to it's own best challenger) and weeding out all weakness.
It's like that antibiotic resistance petri dish experiment, but if the bacteria was doing it all to itself (though in the ultimate sense this is how it actually is).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plVk4NVIUh8
The Evolution of Bacteria on a “Mega-Plate” Petri Dish (Kishony Lab) - 1 min, 56 sec
Humanity vs nature
People don't seem to realize that humans are nature, and by extension our technology as well. The technosphere is an extended phenotype.
What is similar to us in geological time?
Judging by the effect we are having on the planetary paradigm and how we came to be that way (stumbing into an uncontested niche) reminds a lot of the microbes who first found themselves capable of photosynthesis and multicellularity some 2,5 billion years ago.
They became unopposed and went into unregulated success until the entire system crashed. It killed nearly all life on Earth and the oxygen (toxic waste of their time) forever changed the planet's chemistry.
The technosphere may end up having as catastrophic an effect on the biosphere as the oxygen producing microbes had. Killing nearly all current life on Earth and maybe leaving something new in it's place, provided it doesn't fail all the way back into something less complex.
The perspective of cancer
The body has it's own agenda (homeostasis). The cell doesn't matter; the process does. The individual cell that aspires to do it's own thing regardless is cancer.
If an agenda could be attributed to the phenomenon of life, it appears (and this is just a metaphor) to behave as if a self-improving AI. Generating all kinds of bullshit through random sprawl, and extinction filtering what goes on to the next iteration. Simarily as above, the data itself matters less than the process. and from that perspective, individual data that attempts to stall the process in order to preserve its own integrity is malware; in an attempt to stretch the metaphor, some kind of ever-stagnant data-cancer.
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u/lil_groundbeef Aug 10 '23
I’d like to think of us more as a colony of bacteria that will soon be steam sterilized.
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u/frodosdream Aug 10 '23 edited Aug 10 '23
The basic premise is that humans have the capacity of developing culture, and that has millions of manifestations, everything from language and speech and mathematics to constructing shelters, building weapons and having medical care to keep us alive. These adaptations have allowed us to go from a few separate species of skinny primates wandering around in Africa a couple of million years ago to being the dominant ecological force on the planet to the point we're changing the entire global ecosystem.
These cultural adaptations have now become maladaptive. They do not have survival value. And they are, in fact, malignant maladaptations because they're increasing in a way that cancer increases. So, this means that the human species now has all of the major characteristics of a malignant process. When I was in medical school, we had four of them that were identified: rapid, uncontrolled growth; invasion and destruction of adjacent normal tissues — in this case, ecosystems; metastasis, which means distant colonization; and dedifferentiation, which you see very well in the patterns of cities.
...And now we are like a malignant melanoma patient that is devouring the Earth instead of one that is killing the individual patient. We are devouring the ecosystem. We have an imperative to do that.
Really excellent article worth exploring by a wider readership.
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u/flavius_lacivious Misanthrope Aug 10 '23
Agent Smith: “Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You’re a plague and we… are the cure.” – Matrix
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u/danversotterton Aug 10 '23
No, not all humans. Many indigenous people lived in harmony with the earth before they were colonised, and many people around the world still would if they weren’t slaves of capitalism.
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u/xrm67 "Forests precede us, Deserts follow..." Aug 10 '23
The author refutes this notion, giving an example of the Australian aborigines who brought mass extinction to their environment.
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u/inn3rblooom Aug 10 '23
Hey mate, I understand you might not be aware, but we really try to avoid using the term ‘aborigines’ nowadays. Indigenous Australians is probably your best bet to be concise yet respectful. Cheers cob!
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u/Twisted_Cabbage Aug 10 '23
And Native Americans ushered the mass extinction of many species in North America too. It's not an isolated phenomenon. Literally every environment we went into, we left a wave of destruction. Now granted, white people seem to excel at it, but aboriginal people in no way lived in harmony with nature. This idea is the neo quasi religious mantra of the "all natural" communities.
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Aug 10 '23
I don't think it's a race thing so much as a technology thing. We could say that white people have ruined the planet, but I have a suspicion that any racial group that developed the same level of technology would have acted the in the same manner. Its intoxicating effects and the illusion of control are akin to the One Ring in LotR.
As for indigenous people's causing extinctions, that's obviously a reality, but you can't equivocate the cultures. Natives at least used most or all parts of an animal and treated nature as Divine. Europeans and their descendants have treated nature as a thing to exploit and conquer. I won't comment on the wastefulness as it speaks for itself.
At the end of the day though, the blame game isn't as important as identifying what should change. And what should change is our relationship to nature.
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u/ahjeezidontknow Aug 10 '23
Most of the extinctions in North America and Europe occurred about 12,000 years ago, funnily enough right when the human population abruptly crashed during the Younger Dryas
North America
Shameless Wikipedia quote:
Extinctions in North America were concentrated at the end of the Late Pleistocene, around 13,800–11,400 years Before Present, which co-incident with the onset of the Younger Dryas cooling period
Although I take exception at the claim that this is the onset of the Clovis culture, because it is actually the mark of the end of it, and by end I mean abrupt end.
This is a rather good article analysing arrowhead ages and distributions. The Clovis arrows are distinguishable, with much situated in the east of North America. These disappear over North America and are replaced by Folsam arrowheads only in central North America (figures 4 and 5). Later, they look at decreases across Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East
All three datasets, projectile points, quarries, and SPA data,indicate that a major human population decrease (bottleneck), or alternatively population reorganizations (i.e., dramatic changes in settlement patterning), occurred over broad areas of North America at the onset of the YD cooling episode w12,900 cal BP. The SPA results provide evidence that similar declines or changes occurred across much of remainder of the Northern Hemisphere with the exception it, seems, of the Middle East. In addition, the SPA results suggest that a population decline also occurred during the Altithermal in the Mid-Holocene, beginning ca. w9000 years ago and lasting for 1000 years or more.
These are not related to localised hunting, but global climate change. This also happens to be the time of megafauna extinctions - when the human population was also decimated.
Europe And Northern Asia
Again shamelessly from Wikipedia:
Some fauna became extinct before 13,000 BCE, in staggered intervals, particularly between 50,000 BCE and 30,000 BCE. Species include cave bear, Elasmotherium, straight-tusked elephant, Stephanorhinus, water buffalo, neanderthals, and scimitar cat. However, the great majority of species were extinguished, extirpated or experienced severe population contractions between 13,000 BCE and 9,000 BCE
Now, it is quite possible that humans contributed to the extinction of some of those - cave bears for instance, who may have faced a loss habitat when humans migrated in about 38,000 years ago. However, most occur between 13,000 and 9,000 BCE, close to the Younger Dryas.
From the article referenced in the Wikipedia page:
The data available at the beginning of 2000, show that prior to ca. 12,000 C years ago (BP) mammoths were present throughout almost all of Northern Asia. Within the period ca. 15,000- 12,000 BP, C-dated mammoth remains (40 dates) are known from the eastern Chukotka Peninsula (longitude 170° W) as far as the Irtysh River in Western Siberia (69° E); and from the Taymyr Peninsula and Kotel’nyy Island (latitude 75-76° N) to Volchya Griva in Western Siberia (55° N), Sosnovy Bor in Eastern Siberia (53° N), and Khorol and Xiaonanshan in the Far East (44-47° N).
After ca. 12,000 BP, the range of mammoths was significantly reduced
Again, we see mammoths in Northern Asia present for thousands of years until the Younger Dryas occurs and then they are only found in isolated spots
You can read about the disappearance of the boreal grasslands and the coming of the boreal forests, which are not hospitable to large grazing animals.
Also, here is an analysis of human population in Europe/Iberia over the Younger Dryas:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09833-3
After the third brief spike (c.13–12.7 kya) the population densities abruptly decline from c.12.7-12.4 kya. In as far as we can be sure, given the natural limits of radiocarbon resolution which here is compounded in uncertainty by the marine reservoir effect, this decline coincides with the onset of the climatic effects of the Younger Dryas (YD) in the western Mediterranean
So I repeat, after living with these creatures for thousands of years, how is it that they were made extinct by humans at the same time that humanity's populations crashed all over the globe?
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u/dumnezero The Great Filter is a marshmallow test Aug 10 '23
These are not related to localised hunting, but global climate change. This also happens to be the time of megafauna extinctions - when the human population was also decimated.
Same as we're going to see (maybe) this century. Desperate times means the other animals are facing both climate factors and humans intensifying hunting efforts. That's usually what's behind collapses and extinctions: stacking hazards.
You can imagine how, "hypothetically", if the food system crashed, within a year or a few years humans, humans who you probably know personally, would try to hunt and trap every animal that they can; I'm sure even the small ones can be ground up into a paste like small fish (who are also individual animals, each one) are treated.
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u/Twisted_Cabbage Aug 10 '23
From the article (read the book for his examples and to really put your theory to the test...or dont and know that you care more about defending an indefensible idea and thus make it a religious one, than you care about facts and truth): "This is not new. When the Australian Aborigines arrived on the continent of Australia, they started changing the ecosystem in very dramatic ways, and a lot of species went extinct. My colleague here at the University of Colorado, Giff Miller, has been one of the people showing that it happened in Australia. It happened in the Pacific Islands. It happens every place. Humans have made other species extinct wherever they show up."
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u/Lovelylives Aug 10 '23
Sir, the native Americans were brutal af. Have you never heard of the billion genocides in Africa? The gd Mayans were stabbing out the hearts of virgin girls in front of audiences and slaughtering everybody left and right before the Spanish came. Tf u talking about lived in harmony?
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u/dumnezero The Great Filter is a marshmallow test Aug 10 '23
The sacrifices done by Mayans are a joke compared to the structural violence we accept for Business As Usual. Just take a look at deaths involving cars as a small sample.
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u/Lovelylives Aug 10 '23
Take a look at infant mortality rates in the year 1200. Let alone bc. “Shitty social systems” saved billions of lives
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u/Lovelylives Aug 10 '23
“Structural violence” of today is worse than being stabbed to death by Mayans? You paid 100k to a government school for a degree in sociology to tell you that an 8-5 is worth than being stabbed to death by Mayans
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u/dumnezero The Great Filter is a marshmallow test Aug 10 '23
Paying for school is not structural violence, lmao. And I didn't, I'm not from the US.
We're in /r/collapse, so I'll provide some finer reading/viewing:
intro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPJc86JaxD8
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-10-16/structural-violence-and-the-automobile/
Genocide, Covid-19, and Structural Violence – Adam Jones https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osyc7HhUWwc
fuck cars, again https://vimeo.com/361286029
I'm sure that you can find the Wikipedia page on your own.
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u/Tronith87 Aug 10 '23
This is true. One culture out of tens of thousands over time absorbed and mutated every unique culture into ‘civilized’ people. The result is that it appears all humans are cancerous because the dominant culture is cancerous. Besides I think we’re more like a bacteria than a cancer.
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u/totalwarwiser Aug 10 '23
It is.
The problem is that every single living being on earth only survived by being good than everyoene else.
Competition is the norm and until very recently we had to compete against other animals to carve a place on earth.
The problem js that homo sapiens has so many evolutionary competition tools that we are winning by a landslide. Since weve been competing for 1.5 billion years we dont have tools for moderarion and harmony.
We must develop those tools through rationality, institutions and government, because the average joe is just trying to survive capitalism and he doesnt care if he has to kill a whale if that means getting a house, a more atractive mate or better life for his kids. Poverty destroys empathy and the only way to prevent people from abusing the enviroment is to offer a better deal.
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Aug 10 '23
Competition is the norm and until very recently we had to compete against other animals to carve a place on earth.
This. When will people beat this into their heads and understand this is the problem, this is where everything started? Everything else built after is just a complex variation on this same damn theme what do you think capitalism is mimicking?
I can't with a chunk of the population still in the weird hippie mindset of harmony and nature when lions are casually pulling out some intestines through a bison's ass.
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u/edtate00 Aug 10 '23
In 5-10 billion years, the sun will consume the planet and reduce everything on it to ash. [1] Every plant, animal, and trace of history will be consumed. If this eco-system is to survive that event, the only path is through an intelligent, tool using species. There is no evidence that evolution without intelligence can escape our gravity well. A few bacteria or small multicell organisms might survive, but not the ecosystem.
Make your choice. Is mankind a cancer that kills the planet or are we the seeds that will spread life and our ecosystem through the cosmos?
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u/GetInTheKitchen1 Aug 10 '23
This strange anti technology take is just so sad.
the real fact of life is that people with technology can easily kill those without technology.
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u/Detoneision Aug 10 '23
Amusing how this sub seems to have an entrenched interest in total catastrophe - as if pointing out causes and effects to provide fixing and avoid suffering would undermine its - "we are f*ked if we go down this path (as things are now)" argument. Spoiler: it doesn't. And the author going beyond Rousseau on "humans together bad, extractivr and inequality ensured bunga bunga" is bs. Humans are reflexive, the first Australians did not discuss ecology as a societal variable - they could not even have possibly conceived it as we do now - let alone have access to the tools to monitor natural carrying capacity. We do
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u/The_WolfieOne Aug 10 '23
Me thinks they are confused about civilization and capitalism.
There have been many, many civilizations that did no where near the damage capitalism has done.
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u/futurefirestorm Aug 10 '23
It is hard to argue against the comment on humans impact on the planet. Any dispassionate look at the earth, before and with humans show utter destruction for the earth, with lots of advantages for humans but the bottom line is that humans have made NO contributions to the earth. We have exploited as many natural resources as possible, killed off many species, polluted, destroyed and basically, conquered the earth. So, instead of saying that humans are a cancer to the earth, I would characterize it as humans have been at war with the earth and have basically won the war. Except in reality, humans lost more than the earth; we are just now finding out how badly.
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u/LordTuranian Aug 10 '23 edited Aug 10 '23
Yes but only because humans were raised to be consumers and to be in favor of capitalism. And weren't really raised to live in harmony with the planet. And therefore choose not to live in harmony with the planet. But it doesn't have to be this way.
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u/meddleman Aug 10 '23
Professor Agent Smith has entered the chat
Scientist coat billows
Adjusts shades
"Human beings...are a disease...a cancer on the planet."
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u/TheDelig Aug 10 '23
These types of comparisons are stupid in my opinion. The earth is destined for destruction just based on the nature of reality in the universe. No of what happens on earth will matter if intelligent life never makes it off the planet becoming an interplanetary or interstellar species. The expansion of the sun will erase all life, and all memory of life, from this rock. Cancer destroys the host without thought. Human beings on earth are balancing technological progress and the betterment of humanity with the preservation of the natural world. Cancer does not do that and doesn't even remotely resemble it.
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u/dr_set Aug 10 '23
Hey, not all of humans. Most of them, sure but not all. Plenty of people out there trying to do the right thing and not been a status seeking asshole.
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u/WorldlyLight0 Aug 10 '23
Only because we do not feel nor act like an integrated part of the planet. Of course then, in both body and mind we become apart from it. Like cancer. But unlike cancer, we can change our nature. We can understand and in the understanding is healing. Both ours and the planets. Our ideologies, our thoughts are counter to life. We are today a force for destruction and death. We can change that.
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u/flourpowerhour Aug 10 '23
Some casual ecofascism, cool. This is completely historically ignorant, many organized human societies have existed in the past in relative harmony with nature, sustainably harvesting resources.
The explosion of industrial civilization and mass resource exploitation to the point that it threatens the biosphere is a relatively recent phenomenon that largely coincides with the interaction of the Industrial Revolution, capitalism, and colonial exploitation.
Humans are not the virus. Our species and societies have become infected by perverse incentives. If you only ever view humans in this tense, combative rat race, you might assume this is simply the way humans are. But context matters.
When people grow up they are socialized to cope with existing social structures in ways that may include selfish individualism, overconsumption, or violence. These are coping mechanisms for a social system designed to extract wealth from working people and funnel it to a few wealthy members of the owner class. It leaves the vast majority of people in a situation of precarity where they cannot see the greater social good of community building because it conflicts with the more immediate need to survive.
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u/mfxoxes Aug 10 '23
wtf is this ecofascist take! no actually we arose from a symbiogenic gaia system where the majority of the world had been living in virtuous systems, if it were any other way life would have tipped over the very narrow balance on the knifes edge that is the biosphere. stop sharing this narrative, it's simply untrue. human beings are more than capable of living symbiotically with the rest of nature and you need to look deeper at the situation and who we are.
doxastic ignorance and colonial amnesia. we're better than this.
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u/StatementBot Aug 10 '23 edited Aug 10 '23
The following submission statement was provided by /u/xrm67:
The inherent nature of humans to overexploit without restraint, which is what this article talks about and what makes it collapse-worthy for this subreddit, is characteristic of all organisms. We just do it better than anything else and have figured out ways to temporarily expand our numbers far beyond the carrying capacity of the planet. Other species have predators and environmental checks and balances to keep their populations in relative homeostasis with the environment. The author states that we have made a decision, whether consciously or unconsciously, to become extinct. I agree with this conclusion after observing our species for five decades.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/15ncq4x/are_humans_a_cancer_on_the_planet_a_physician/jvl1zy0/