I've been thinking a lot lately about the human impact on nature. Our destructive behaviour, our lust for chaos and progress at the expense of nature. Do we have an ethical responsibility to care for this planet?

I think, over time, Mother Nature can essentially handle anything we could possibly conceive of doing to hurt our ecological environment. Over tens of thousands or millions of years, assuming we stop the damage we're doing, it will eventually get "healed" over time. So our focus, inevitably must shift to the impact it can have on life as we know it, during our "time," I suppose. Are we bad at living harmoniously with nature, or do we just not care?

You are wrong about Mother Nature. She can heal some things but mankind is doing WAY more damage than she can handle.

There is another thread here about the topic called "Mankind".

Look at the PBS website and watch "Lethal Seas".

Look up "condition of world's fisheries"

Look up "India and China's contribution to Global Warming"

You will see trends that will not be stopped because making money is more important.

I agree money and religion will be the end of us, Way too much trouble that it's worth.

Agreed & Appreciated! An 'unfortunate' face of 'reality!

I just think we should give nature more credit than that, I mean. The earth has survived asteroid impacts, geographic and geological change, and many other, extremely severe natural phenomena. Even after life has existed on earth, all of this catastrophe that has happened to the planet over billions of years, life still survives.

I do agree that we're killing this planet. I'm mostly just exploring a hypothetical. If humanity went extinct tomorrow, or even 50 or 100 years from now, I'm sure that life on earth will continue as long as it would otherwise, but it wouldn't necessarily be optimal, or even life as we currently know it.

I think if we continue to do what we're doing we are done for. All of us and everything. But will the planet be completely lifeless forever? It's just an interesting thought...

I think we have about another 5 billion years before the sun decides to burst and engulf us all. If we all died tomorrow the earth would recover no doubt, Just in time for Chimpanzees to evolve and screw everything up. Most of the damage has been done by all the useless crap we go out and buy. consumerism, Supply and demand. Thats an issue. If we just had to worry about what we were having for dinner or whether we were going to eaten by Pterodactyls things would be similar but the planet would be in better shape. We're human and we would still kill each other for the last banana but sure there would be less impact on the environment.

I don't know about any "ethical" duty. I see no need to imagine one. In fact, I find that some people who proclaim that "Nature" is something that we owe fealty to, end up telling me I have to sacrifice everything and everyone I care about, in order to satisfy their particular vision of what constitutes "Nature."

What IS certainly true, is that all existence is an interactive thing. That's what too many people refuse to recognize, especially including the ones who think that "nature naturally brings itself back into balance and heals itself."

That concept is a flat out delusion.

Get this: everything that everyone does, affects what is. EVERYTHING. And whether you do something "good" for "nature" or "bad" for "nature," what you actually do, is you CHANGE EVERYTHING.

Nature doesn't "clean itself up," or do anything even vaguely approaching that imaginary activity. After you mess something up, or "change it for the better," whatever was already going on, continues to go on, but in a different way, because of what you did.

Take pollution run off from farms for example. Fertilizers get washed into the river system. They aren't POISONOUS, per se, they are more like extravagant food. The river's creatures don't all die off because of it, but the ones that benefit the most from the food, have a population explosion. And just as a population explosion of people can mean less resources for everyone else, such that one group of people benefit while another suffers and dies out, that happens to the rivers' creatures.

After the fertilizer run off is stopped, the river doesn't go back to being how it was before the change that was made. Instead, it continues to evolve ever forward. The part of it's life which had a population explosion, will now suffer a big die off, because you took that extra food away. That die off will cause some OTHER creature to get a bonus of "food," in the form of the rotting carcasses of the stuff that dies after you took away the fertilizer. Eventually, a new balance will come about, but it wont be what was there before the fertilizer, it will be whatever was able to make do in the post pollution river.

As for Human kind on Earth, if we screw it up enough, we will indeed make our own planet bad for us. After we all die off, the Earth wont "go back to the land of wonder it was before Man's Evil," it will turn into some NEW version of itself.

Anyway, all this means is that I think we need to start by recognizing that we DO have choices to make. We CAN NOT assume that whatever "Nature" does in reaction to what we do, will be for the "best." "Nature" isn't a creature with a mind, that either likes us or not. It's especially dumb to use the old "Mather Nature" image, since the "mother" part of it implies that we are beloved children of a world who wants us to flourish.

You have a very good point, and I'm inclined to agree for the most part. What people do is what people do and everything that we do affects everything that is to come. That's the very nature of causality itself. No matter what we do now, we've already drastically changed the landscape and ecosystem, and all of the damage we've done is irreversible. I don't think we necessarily "owe fealty" to anything or anyone either, whether it be nature or otherwise.

But I can't help but wonder is we're capable of a better, more sustainable way of life that's not just beneficial to us as human beings, but for nature as a whole. Actually, I have no doubt that something like that was probably possible in the past, and we simply chose to gorge ourselves on resources and useless crap to the point that it's having an adverse effect on life as we know it.

I'd like to think that there is consciousness beyond what we perceive "consciousness" to be. We tend to think of it as a human quality that's generated from our brains and provides us with the sense of reality that we do.

It's not necessarily wrong, but what if (hypothetically) every living organism on earth is conscious and capable of making decisions based on the context of their environment. What if these organisms are simply a part of a greater organism we call Earth, which is part of a greater organism we call the cosmos. If that were the case, with us being the apex of evolution as we know it, what purpose would this greater organism have for us? Or are we smart enough, and powerful enough to define purpose for ourselves?

I'm not saying this is an absolute fact or "truth" of any kind, like I said, just entertaining an idea.

If everything had a consciousness that can act with free will...and we are the apex in this concept of evolution you are referring to....im sure we would still, in our greater united collective consciousness...will find some way to exploit the entire cosmos...to what extent, i do not know, but judging on the current situation...it looks bleak for the cosmos.

As for what you might be referring to as something greater than what we perceive consciousness to be... There is a God...but for others...they might just chalk it up to karma...destiny...fate... Some things we cannot control...neither our consciousness can perceive...

The nature of Nature is change. It's not inherently good or evil; there is no consciousness involved. It's simply trial and error mutations that occur constantly. As with any mutation, some are beneficial and others, less so.

I don't think that as a species, regardless of the influence of folks that seek to rein in natural order, we're suddenly going to have that 'A-Ha' moment short of a globally catastrophic event. We've mutated beyond the point where man can be reliably altruistic.

Alright, assuming that it's true that all life is conscious, and not just us, and every aspect of nature is in equilibrium with its surrounding environment, than what makes us so different? If free will is a requisite of consciousness, and all things are conscious, we must assume all living beings have free will, to some extent at least. Why does every being on earth other than humanity adapt to it's environment while we constantly force the environment to "adapt" to us? Are we just an anomaly? Or does the fact that we even have the option to do so make us more conscious, or superior to other life?

Does the fact that we're conscious invalidate the idea of other life being conscious as well, at least to our level of understanding?

Just some food for thought

Because it is a choice we made to make our environment adapt to us, and not vice versa...Most others adapt to the environment because of instinct.
Altho intelligence and creativity may also be part of certain other animal species, that make them able to get the environment to adapt also.....human have the ability to judge right and wrong and to justify our actions...and we also have certain failings such as greed and pride that makes us want to conquer our surroundings...on the other hand, we are also capable of great acts of sacrifices and understanding that goes beyond what other species and the environment are capable of....so in that sense...i suppose you can consider us anomalous... If that is the term youd like to use

Perhaps you ought to define consciousness, first.

I don't see anything that suggests even rudimentary consciousness in Nature with the exception of Homo Sapiens.

In my mind, consciousness is defined as recognizing 'I.' The cogito ergo sum bit, 'I think, therefore I am,' coupled with the ability to think (if not act) rationally. That's also why I believe we have developed into the single most adaptive creature on the planet. We change things because we can and Nature demands it of us.

You have some things right (meaning you agree with me, of course).

For one thing, consciousness isn't just in humans, no matter what someone above said. It's questionable how many humans possess it, for one thing. Every iteration of consciousness is different. Lots of people assume that anyone and anything who doesn't do as they would in a given situation, is either mindless, or slow witted, or "not conscious." It never crosses their self-limited minds, that someone or something else, could have an entirely different agenda, or goal set.

You're wrong about everything being in equilibrium. Everything is almost NEVER in equilibrium, and when it is, it isn't that way for very long. The rain falls, because the air in the sky is OUT of equilibrium. The wet ground dries out, because the air is OUT of equilibrium with the moisture in the ground. Creatures that eat, do so because their bodies are OUT of equilibrium.

As for "free will," that's a very misunderstood concept for pretty much anyone who brings it up. If you ARE subject to hunger, to the need for rest and so on, do you really have free will? If your physical being limits what you can and cannot do, do you really have free will? The answer is probably most accurately "only sometimes, and sort of."

A very important small thing to realize, and I do mean REALLY realize, is that the only creatures on this planet who can talk, and who most people are willing to listen to, are other humans. Most people assume that if something, or someONE, doesn't talk, it means that they don't think, and don't decide. The reason most people don't care when a non-human gets hurt, is that they can't tell the animal is screaming in pain, or is terrified, because they don't express themselves the same way humans do.

"Why does every being on earth other than humanity adapt to it's environment while we constantly force the environment to "adapt" to us? " this is false. Because of the same assumption people make because they don't understand non-human language, lots of people aren't aware that most creatures DO try to force the environment to adjust to them. They don't do it using machines, so everyone thinks they don't do it at all.

But ants don't give birth, grow up, and spend their lives running around on the surface of the ground. They build housing for themselves, by manipulating the environment and adjusting it to themselves. Bees and wasps build a different kind of housing. Lots of other creatures do things other than building structures to "adjust" the environment to themselves. Humans just do a lot more of it. That's why we spread out over more of the planet than most other creatures.

When it comes to what to do about it all, I don't think it's the fact of consciousness that should decide how humans comport themselves. Or maybe, in a way, it's entirely about that, too. I think that a creature who does have the ability to both change it's environment, and to destroy it, and to REALIZE that it can do so, is run by complete idiots, if it fails to take action to make sure that it's environment continues to be supportive and healthy.

No special morality required, just the desire to have life continue and feel good. Like any semi-conscious creature should surely do.

If we each helped others, reuse or recycled, became more friendly and tolerant; stop robbing, smoking, misusing drugs, being unfriendly, it could be a better world.
In my philosophy everything has a psychological aspect. It may be higher in most humans and less in solid objects. We do not know about many things between. We do not know about most of our universe. Other universes may be different. Make love not intolerance, love Michael o00o.

I'm familiar with the Gaia hopothesis, and happen to agree with it, based on personal experiences that I've had.

As far as the mushroom theory, is more popularly known as the stoned ape theory, created by terence mckenna. I won't go into detail but here's a link to a lecture he did on the topic. He was quite the orator.

http://youtu.be/z5xfjjJJ-_I

I could be totaly wrong, but
I would say that anyone can have the experiences that he talks about in the lecture, and once you do, it seems pretty plausible that the earth isn't simply a living being, but is quite aware and has it's own intentionality as well. There's intelligence there ime.

Unfortunately, it depends how compassionate each human being is. I live in a block of flats, not everyone living there will respect the rules of the housing company. You can tell, by the way some tear down posters, throw exit signs onto the floor in
the hallway, some shout abuse at others, it's just stupid. And it's a housing company that is designed for mentally ill people. It's not shocking. It's just all very immature. I wasn't ever expecting anyone to consider my peace of mind anyway. These are neighbours who don't even like each other. Because I don't get involved in their arguments, I'm always having to listen to their complaints. The tenancies are only short-term though, so it won't be long til we get more well-behaved people, hopefully. . I absolutely refuse to involve myself in their scuffles. Humanity is good at ruining neighborhoods. It makes me feel
ddisgusted to be human. Humans may never get it, until it's too late. It may take a very overwhelming event, to shock them into caring more. I REALLY hate admitting this, and I don't want sympathy, not at all. I was once suicidal, and I'd took an overdose. My mum was very suddenly scared into listening to me more. Not saying she cared less, before it happened. It's just painful that some things have to end up tragic, before people begin to see life the way they could have done, before the tragic stuff happened.

I think you're correct in comparing humans as a whole / the planet with you / your mother. You're right, people won't care until our actions have a direct impact on them.
And I feel like the problems you mention about your neighborhood, go back to how people choose to raise (or to not raise) their children. I see this in my city as well, lots of kids raise themselves, it's pretty messed up. I may be criticized for saying this but, some people just aren't fit to have kids. They're should be some sort of requirement, prove you're worthy of being a parent, for the sake of everyone.

There also seems to be a lack of empathy in the world, the ego has run amuck basically.

the earth will always win, no matter what damage we do to it, life will flourish again in the future... we are just killing ourselves and most of the other life right now...