Abundance for what?
Life on earth (we don’t know elsewhere) is founded on an incredible quantity of knowhow. But all this knowhow, or biological wisdom, is aimed at the perpetuation of life itself. Diversity of life forms is aimed at exploiting all the existing habitats. It’s perpetuation of life through experimentation. Life doesn’t’ know in advance which habitats will last forever or anyway for the longest time. And we have some general principles: besides differentiation there is abundance, abundance of élan vital, abundance in self reproducing of animal forms and plants. So one tree in Norway produces billions of pollen grains, which will fecundate seeds in Africa or Asia. My little dog (three Kgs) has ten little breasts, in the presumption of having to feed ten little cubs. Don’t mince means! Existence will take care of reduction.
In this logic of abundance there is the élan vital, made of will to survive, of joy and of dread of creatural death. This is in proviso of extreme difficulties in surviving. But what if surviving has become generally easy, like in the case of humans. More food than needed (even if someone still starves), no cold, no epidemics. Well then you have a population explosion.
But is people in these condition really alive? Do the generals and CEOs and men of power have integrity? That is knowledge and understanding of life’s ends (if there are some), not of mechanical of indiscriminate production-destruction.
Abundance means that we go on without any idea of what abundance is for.
Fuzzy, explanations required.
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Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.
--Samuel Beckett
hmmm. Good point. We're made to struggle, to fight for the right to survive. Having, thus far, unequivocially won, do we have a purpose. Course OP is going more towards an individual level... Too tired right now to give it much thought, but I'll be checking on this thread later.
We might go on piecemeal.
1) I am convinced that humans are an animal gone astray. In the history of the species many animals have gone astray. Some may have perished via an asteroid. But many have perished, for example because they were were too big. They overexploited their advantage of being big (no predators capable of feeding on them except of course humans). All big animals (whales, elephants, hyppos) are in danger of extinction. Not so little animals: cockroachs and ants will probably survive anything that may happen in the planet.
2) Humans are not the top result of evolution. The idea that humans are what approaches the most important result of evolutionary life is very difficult to eradicate. We are in these times all conservationsts. We must save specieses in danger of extinction; but why? and how? building reserves like for the indians? Nonsense.
To follow later, I have to go out. Inputs appreciated.
No, this is still on topic. Most large animal species have no chance of survival unless they live with humans who care for them. There is not a lot of danger to the human species in the practice of keeping animals. In fact, the closer we live to them the less dangerous they become, individually. The risks of keeping them are far outweighed by the benefits, and by doing so we stop the wave of destruction of other animals.
from the BBC news service:
"Pygmy hippos - which look like miniature versions of the common hippopotamus - are one of the most secretive species of mammal on earth, and are rarely seen in the wild.
Less than 3,000 of them remain in their natural habitat, the Upper Guinean forest which covers parts of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea."
Stay there, don't move pygmi hippos.
When I was a child (5 years old?) I was brought to the zoo of Rome (I don't know if it still exists): The only thing I remember of this visit to Rome were the hippos huge mouths being fed with red (?) apples.