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Comment by Shitty-kitty | Hacker News Reader

Australia was burnt into a desert. Europe was deforested and the whales were nearly made extinct. 30-70 million Buffalo were slaughtered, largely by Native American's who had worshiped them for thousands of years and were suddenly all to happy, to wipe them out for trade with the white man. A few of our many historic sins without mentioning any of the ongoing ones. Humanity is hopeless!

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We're not gonna make it, are we? People, I mean.

It's in your nature to destroy yourselves.

I often wonder if whatever it is we currently experience as consciousness or self-awareness was a major contributor to species-wide problems such as climate change.

Having come across Zapffe's "existential elk" theory in the last year, it's hard to not see consciousness as a design flaw rather than an upgrade that sits at the root of the things driving climate change, e.g. hyperconsumerism, rampant use of non-renewable materials, and all the other things we choose into for personal satisfaction despite the negative impacts to the whole.

Might we have been better off without consciousness, or at least not as detrimental to the planet? I don't know.

Perhaps we survive, perhaps we don't. Frankly I don't believe it matters. We are no more intelligent then heard's of lemmings eating themselves into famine.

It was not the Natives who nearly exterminated the American bison.

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