Humanity: Living with nature and not causing global ecosystem crisis for thousands of years. Capitalism: Starts the industrial revolution and the need for eternal Exponential growth, resulting in massive environmental destruction over the last ~250 years. “Clearly, the humans are the problem.”
The good old slavery and crusade days.
I think you vastly underestimate exactly how much impact humans had on the enrollment environment all the way back to the stone age.
Any animal causes changes to an ecosystem. The bigger the numbers, the bigger the changes. In general, it never reaches crisis because something else comes along and shifts things into balance.
But the current crisis wasn’t, and isn’t, solely caused by the industrial revolution. We caused issues with megafauna waaaaaaay back. We shifted waterways and changed ecosystems during the earliest agricultural development. Everything today is stacked up on top of that, not some kind of distinct thing.
Our distant ancestors weren’t some kind of noble and mystical race, perfectly balanced with all around them.
Capitalism wasn’t even around as a distinct system back when we first started dumping pollutants and waste into the world. Money wasn’t always in place.
The industrial revolution changed the scale, but it would have happened without capitalism because us monkeys have always refined our tools and technology over generations. Stone, bronze, iron, steam, petroleum, silicon, it’s a progression that was damn near inevitable.
I just don’t buy the idea that human ingenuity and technological progress would have just stopped when factories were imagined and built. Best case, maybe it would have been slower, more careful under something like an anarchist structure (or lack thereof). But there’s nothing saying it wouldn’t have been worse either. It’s a big game of what if, and there’s no current way to test technological progression theories. We can’t just set up an experiment somehow on mars and let it play out while preventing capitalism to see what happens.
Shit, there were non capitalist systems in place during the industrial revolution, and they didn’t exactly reject it all.
Ok, I’ll say that I’m being too myopic. But I do believe the scale is definitely different from back before technology was a major concern. Humans caused destruction to the environment, but I don’t believe we had the capacity to make it a global existential crisis for our species until modern production and infinite consumption was considered the best practice for humanity. I don’t think nixing capitalism will solve the problems overnight, but reigning it in with reasonable expectations isn’t a bad idea.
Gotta hand it to China. They’re a few years away from being coal free. A decade at most if they stay on course.
Unfortunately they don’t seem to be on course at all, with coal production and new coal power plants rising in 2024 to an all-time high.
While they have been implementing green energy, which is laudable, they aren’t phasing out coal at all. China seems to crave energy and has no bias about where it comes from.
Yep, those are all capitalist states.
Also kings, gods, holocaust, slavery asf. So, we have to remind ourselves that we can take back anything we thought up. If humans are the problem it’s those that say we can’t do that.
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Big “and yet you participate in the system” energy.
No?
What the fuck gave you that impression?
I’m saying the comic is shit because they are just multiplying causes, not that they’re being hypocrites.
Everyone just makes up shit to hear their own voices
You need to chill the fuck out dude.
No one has to suffer your existence but you.
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If you can’t chill out then you maybe need to not be on social media.
I find it hilarious that you have zero clue how much of a fragile bigot that makes you
are you just randomly putting words together now
Wat
Holy shit dude… stop trying to be a victim all of the time.
I’m not being a bigot, you dweeb. I’m saying social media isn’t exactly known to improve one’s mental health and it seems, judging by you tirade through this post’s comment section, you could stand for a break.
Oh wait the comic was earnest? I literally thought it was making fun of people who say things like this. Goddamn.
remove the comic drawings and just read the text as if it were a passage in a book about a conversation between two people. You are being manipulated by the chosen context
Plenty of bacteria and viruses are beneficial, and contribute to the overall health of their hosts.
If humans are diseases, then it is because through learned behaviors that we act in a deleterious manner towards the overall ecosystem. We are entirely capable of shifting those behaviors, of creating social structures that select for behaviors that promote co-existence and symbiosis with that ecosystem.
There are some symbiotic bacteria, but I’m unaware of any beneficial viruses. Their entire nature is to hijack cells to replicate themselves, typically resulting in the eventual death of the host cell.
Researchers are looking into bacteriophage that infect gut bacteria. It seems that over time, the viruses select for and introduce genes to bacteria that play nice with our intestinal health, rather than run amok.
I’ve been called eco-fascist for suggesting anything that might help the environment, no matter how small. I’m not impressed by this buzzword.
I feel like you can’t blame the corpos 100% and then proceed to do nothing to help the environment. Like I get that capitalism and unnecessary waste driven by it are by and large the problem, but it feels like people just use that as an excuse to put in zero effort personally and continue to live their lifestyle of overconsumption. It’s very defeatist imo.
“Humans are the virus” is related to the racist “overpopulation” myth which leads straight to eugenics. Sure, many words are overused, but “political ideology that combines environmentalism with fascist principles, often advocating for authoritarian measures to address ecological issues” is a bad thing.
If humans weren’t greedy dicks then capitalism or any other form of government would work perfectly. You can’t force humans to not be greedy dicks. No matter what system is being instituted it is susceptible to greedy dicks.
Our entire schtick is co operation, it’s literally why we’re the dominant life form
Your generalization is false
The majority of humanity are not greedy or obsessed with profit
The problem is that the few ridiculously greedy sociopaths that do arise per-capita are just so FUCKDAMN good at amassing power and wealth that we assume it’s the natural lot of all people
So we just test and dispose of sociopaths at birth, problem solved. We already have the tests for it.
Don’t look at me like that
and thankfully those sociopaths have enough money to get rid of idiots with those ideas that get too close to power.
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It’s still objectively eugenics to target people based on genetic conditions, especially if the genetic condition has a not wholly undesirable result.
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There are human societies were greed is not accepted.
Which ones? Which ones don’t damage their land or steal children from enemies or rape or steal? Please don’t try to say any indigenous tribes because they are all guilty of one or more these.
Proof that lemmy is a failed experiment already, this asshole has five upvotes
Any indigenous tribe. But seriously it was not long ago that no professional fishermen anywhere would ever overfish.
this is only true to the smallest of extents, there were plenty that had those behaviors, survivorship bias is not a good footing for an argument.
Survivorship bias is so important to remember when talking about human societies. Even our perceptions and knowledge of indigenous tribes is limited by survivorship bias. Consider that there may have been many more “peaceful” or “non-greedy” tribes, but they were conquered by groups of people that were more violent and selfish. There must be so many tribes that have been wiped away without a trace, tribes we know nothing about.
But the real barrier to this hypothetical “non-greedy population” idea is the matter of scale. A peaceful village of 100 people is easier to create and maintain than a peaceful global population of 8+ billion. Even if indigenous villages managed to build such utopias where greed doesn’t exist, their models wouldn’t easily scale to the world we live in now.
Amish
The Amish are highly discouraged from getting an education of the high school level and beyond.
Members are shunned by the community and family of they decide to leave the faith.
Only because they weren’t capable of it lmao.
There’s at least some evidence supporting human driven extinctions as far back as some of the earliest ‘modern’ (ie Homo sapien) hominid populations.
I welcome you to inform us of this utopia you speak of.
duck chasing meme Which human societies?
We can regulate greedy dick behaviour
Madame Guillotine can help with that
capitalism or any other form of government
But capitalism isn’t a form of government tho.
Nor is communism of even feudalism.Oops you’re right I meant economic system
You’re putting the cart before the horse. Capitalism uses the threat of poverty and the profit motive to condition humans into being greedy dicks.
Yes we can, via laws & regulation (which are also laws). You have no clue about what unrestricted greed does to people especially, on the recieving end
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Yes if you don’t enforce it, but you don’t want to enforce it now, do you. You love greed until you are on the receiving end
You can’t even understand your own mother and here you are making bold assumptions about the personal values of someone you met on the internet half an hour ago. Fucking classic reddit right there man
Greed is the source of nearly all human misery and it is not necessary for life at all, and I have personally witnessed what it has done to people
I do not love greed in any form and the fact you just stated that with such effortless confidence tells me our society really isn’t worth saving.
And now these statements, despite being only minor glimpses into my value system will of course immediately fill you with ten thousand assumptions as to who I am or what I think.
That’s mental illness friend
Are you familiar with anti-trust laws ? Anti-corruption laws ?
According to you they shouldn’t exist, because a crafty psychopath will get in anyway & yes you do love being greedy as long as it benefits you, why else would you be defending capitalism.
Socialism HAS been tried & it works. You see I want everyone to get welfare, because with it you can have a safety net against the abusive owner-class. BTW, I’ve never been on reddit (I don’t even have a twitter account)
So I’ll be upfront and say i don’t know shit about socialism as a concept.
Do you have any examples of socialism that has worked (or is currently working) at modern nation scales ?
I’m genuinely not picking a fight, just looking for examples to read up on.
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Cuba, Laos, Vietnam & the state of Kerala in India. China too (but they shifted to state-capitalism). Most of Latin America were electing socialist leaders as well. (Until some coup came along)
<Complaint about bold assumptions of individuals values>
< Bold assumption about all of humanity >
<Assertion of personal perspective>
<Further complaints about assumptions>
<Name calling/Labelling>
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I mean, nobody has to reply on a public internet forum.
Unless you are being forced to reply…wait…that would explain a lot.
Ok, if you are being forced to reply to internet messages against your will, try and add some sort of code in the replies so we can try get you out of that environment, it sounds awful.
Also electrons don’t die, don’t be silly.
There is, of course, the electron cycle of transmigration of states.
It’s like they don’t even teach basic electrotheism in school anymore, smh.
They’re coming out with some really weird blazor libraries these days.
Dammit, missed the code tags
@page "/lemmy-reply" @using HypocrisyManifest <p>Complaint about bold assumptions of individuals values</p> <p style="font-weight:bold">Bold assumption about all of humanity</p> <p>Assertion of personal perspective</p> <p>Further complaints about assumptions</p> <p>Name calling/Labelling</p>
They are the same piece of generic rhetorical label you slap on or argue you can’t slap on whenever it conveniences you. If your solution is just a sentence long, you are an over-simplifying things.
So what happened to the ancient civilizations that collapsed before capitalism existed? Ducks. It’s the ducks that need to be shot.
Easter Island comes to mind. They showed up, took every tree on the island, then the vegetation went away and the island had nothing left to give.
A bunch of people thinking they outsmarted the meme by asking “who made capitalism”.
A better question is “when you say humans are a virus, which humans exactly do you propose to exterminate in the name of saving the planet?” Because the bunker-state ethnonationalist, the trumpists, the Peter Thiels and the Mark Andreesens, the Dark Enlightenment and Network State and Tech Zionism neofascists, they know exactly what they mean.
The earth is big enough to support modest human life. It’s not big enough to support billionaires’ delusions of singularity. So they imagine to purge the parts of humanity that are not their particular version of white.
Don’t fall for their fascist propaganda.
I’m sure the rhetoric stems from propaganda, I won’t disagree there. But I don’t think that trying to logic the analogy itself is the way to outline the problem with it.
Calling humans a ‘virus’ may not mean an extermination is the intention of the person regurgitating it. You can control a virus instead of just exterminating it, for example. It’s just a term people are familiar with that they associate with abusing resources and multiplying beyond a sustainable level, thus creating a toxic environment around them.
It’s easy, mulch all the sociopaths. Problem solved
When I said “humans are the virus,” I think people heard “so we should kill the people I don’t like,” and missed the part where I don’t like all humans.
I don’t say it anymore, because I don’t want to be overlapped with fascists who apparently say the same thing.
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Can I achieve something by exterminating myself? It should do something, right?
Maybe not having to live in depressing world itself would be a great achievement.
A better question is “when you say humans are a virus, which humans exactly do you propose to exterminate in the name of saving the planet?”
I don’t propose to exterminate anyone. I think it’s inevitable that the human virus will eventually kill its host.
If you think we are getting out of this worldwide authoritarianism surge without violence, you are a shitty student of history
Ah, so just exterminate the correct people. Got it.
Nobody has to die if we just make billionnaires millionnaires again.
Good that you clarified that :D
Sorry no, some billionaires have to die
I disagree, there are some psychotic people in power and they don’t care one iota about anyone but themselves and maybe a small handful of like minded people. To me they should be wiped from the earth.
You are correct that the planet can support a certain number (whatever that number is), but not with these people in power.
Now will we be able to truly figure which ones are the correct ones, probably not but we need to keep looking and root them out, expose them to the world and then let nature take its role once they are all hanging from the highest most visible place for all to see what happens when you are the virus that is continuously trying to destroy the world.
There’s no chance in hell that would happen non-violently.
humans invented capitalism, soooo…
humans also invented socialism, communism, fascism, monarchy, democracy so on and so fourth.
like, you can’t just take the worst and be like “you see this is why we need to get rid of them!”. its literally the point of the post. thats what is going on right now in the US with literally any person below the top square on the family guy race card. Would you say just because less than 1% of immigrants that are in the US have committed violent crimes, that all of them are violent criminals? If you do, I have bad news for you.
on the other hand when a virus like flu or covid replicates, it produces thousands of its variants but it is only defined by the one that causes the most damage
Right… so less than 1% of immigrants being violent criminals, makes them equivalent to a virus?
I mean sure. yeah. You have an opinion. I won’t be continuing this conversation.
nope I am talking about the top billionaire class, %1 immigrant criminals are nothing compared to the damages caused by these people. you are forcing a racism twist to the topic to win the argument but local level criminals are unfortunately irrelevant in this conversation.
That metaphor doesn’t work. It be more accurate to compare humans to in general bacteria and most bacteria are not harmful, there are even some know useful viruses
good point on the usefulness, I agree the analogy is not an exact one between humans and viruses as an individual per se but the fact that in both populations damages caused takes precedent over damages not caused (and in the case of humans also takes precedent over the good things humans try to do)
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That’s ok, we are not all born to fight, let alone see the enemy.
As we all know, communist countries would never harm the environment for productivity.
Ah yes, the only two systems. Capitalism and communism. There is nothing else or any form of nuance out there.
Of course, thanks for admitting it
Destruction of nature & unwise use of resources, or even just multiplying to a point where even the most prudent resource management & minimal environmental impact per capita is the absolute goal could still destiny biodiversity.
This has to do with economical tendencies of living beings, not a particular socioeconomic system.
(Yes, capitalism is accelerating the process by taking away freedoms from the masses - but even a commune can decide to chop up the whole forest for wood. World is a fuck.)“Virus” might not be the best word for it tho (infestation maybe? Fits the capita growth statistics), but successful animals that oversaturate their environment (eg lots of food, no predators, longevity after procreation, tech) cause biodiversity loss (anything from local collapse to a global extinction event with cofactors like climate change or air structure change - what is novel with humans is how rapidly we are developing in our last 0.5% of existence, and how rapid the global impact we case is, it won’t take us 10s of thousands of years, we can speedrun in less than a millennia).
The lack of empathy and true understanding of reverence is the issue.
People do not respect the meat that befalls their plate, the bacteria that ferments their beers, the trees that warms their homes.
Capitalism has two routes, horde through meekness or horde through exploitation. When you horde through meekness, any worth is solely yours - you submit and embrace this moment of life wholely separate from you. You cannot control the world.
Humans are a virus, because we reach for the stars as we eviscerate our host. Lest we learn compassion and empathy, we will consume this earth. The flooding isn’t biblical this time, it’s predicted by science as man decays.
hoard
Thanks!
If there are no more humans than no one will care about the environment.
Sometimes I get frustrated with people and I think this. But then I quickly snap my mindset out of this because I know really what’s the problem. Capitalism.
