Potemkin wrote:So humans are a uniquely selfish species, are we? As opposed to, say, lions, who selflessly maintain the genetic health of gazelle herds by virtuously running down and mauling to death the weaker and slower gazelles and then nobly ripping out and devouring their internal organs while they are still alive? Humans are no more selfish than any other apex predator.
You are depressed because humans don’t live up to your high moral standards. But the only reason you have such high moral standards is precisely because you are human. Lions or chimpanzees or wolves don’t give a flying fuck about moral standards. Bears don’t fall into a state of depression when they contemplate the appalling treatment their fellow bears mete out to migrating salmon. Because they don’t give a fuck what their food feels about being eaten alive.
Potemkin, animals are instinct-driven creatures and as such they serve a function in the ecological system. They have to adapt to it. Because they are about survival. Human beings are about survival as well. But like all mammalian primates such as gorillas, bonobos and chimps we get depressed when we lose loved ones, and we fight for our food and survival. Nothing unique about us there. What is unforgivable is that we take more than what we need from the natural environment and we exploit the natural environment and create artificial needs that are totally unnecessarily created to consume and create a system of infinite expansion. It has made us parasitical and unbalanced.
Do we truly need all this space, and resources when there are millions of homes and houses and apartments that lie vacant, and unoccupied. Commercial spaces that are totally going to waste, and we do not recycle, and we keep saying we need more. Never satisfied. One part of human society lives too crowded and poor, and other parts are about a rich wealthy family with ten homes and vacation winter homes, summer homes, and urban apartments and mansions in the burbs, and it wasted space but they have the right. While the others can barely get enough to eat. It is totally unbalanced. A system that is not wrought by nature that only copes with creating instincts in animals.
It has allowed that tiny percentage points that differ from the other primates that defines our species, and it is incredible that people do not recognize that we are a
part of that system. And always will be. We have to realize there are enough resources for everyone to live a dignified life. But it requires setting limits on what we think is possible in this world. You can't allow thoughtless waste, and uncaring infinite consumption. It all requires that all human societies start realizing that if they want a future, they need to set limits on what can be acquired, produced, distributed and invested in....if it is about waste, and some having 1000 times more than others? Time for a total overhaul of the unbalanced consumer realities. It is a false consciousness and it is making us have to realize that unless we put limits on it? Nature will take the decision off our hands. No doubt about it.