The World Without Us
worldwithoutus.com
worldwithoutus.com
at first the statements seem random, or rather i didn't find any emotional meaning to them.
then i felt warmth and comfort. the trees and forests grow back. maybe humans haven't damaged the earth beyond repair.
finally, the timeline expands beyond human significance. that's beautiful.
nicely done with the mouseovers, too.
Right, but is there inherent value in the world outside of the subjective human standard? Like, is the world valuable beyond what people judge it to be valuable?
That's not such an easy question. Like, is turning a tree into some books a good thing? Trees are natural, books are not. Pumping oil out of the ground, burning it for electricity? This destroys the world, but enriches minds and saves human lives, and advances pursuits we deem valuable.
How about viruses - they're natural. Should we leave malaria and dysentery alone because they're natural? I say wipe them out, but you could carry that same logic into suggesting that we should chop down trees to build houses and print books, that we should burn fossil fuels for electricity and to create composites, that we should level areas of nature for the building of cities...
And mind you, I love nature. I spend a lot of time in it, and really love it. I consider myself a conservationist and hate wasting stuff. But that's because the world is good to us, and serves us. The parts of the world that are hostile to us - rabid animals, parasites, diseases - wipe all that stuff out. And the resources that can be converted into wonderful things we use - electricity, composites, circuits, computers, houses, transportation, and so on - well, convert it. I'll happily turn a gallon of oil into a few hours of electricity and some CO2.
Everything we judge "good" about the natural world is judged so because of our human standards, and because of how it relates and interacts with humanity. Without humanity, nature would not be good or bad by human standards. Trees and tapeworms and oil and rocks and water and ice are all of the exact same value to humanity if humanity doesn't exist, and if humanity does exist, those things are all of quite different values to us.
You can say what you want about us and how beautiful nature is, but in the end there are thousand of species that can fly but only one that can play the guitar, thousands of species that can walk, but only one that invented the car, a million species that breath but only one that build a ship to sail under the waters...
The point of all this is that the human species really is something special.
For now. Personally, I hope that, if (and only if) we humans do destroy ourselves, enough life remains for something else to evolve and have a shot.
What about animals used in farming, plants used in agriculture, pets, useful bacteria etc.? I'm quite sure they will not be left behind.
"Immediately: None of these events would be judged positively or negatively based on human ethics."
All plants would have 'burned or melted down'? Sure, apart from the 100% of plants that weren't in the middle of a dangerous test with all the safety systems turned off at the exact moment that the operators disappeared.
The rest would just go cold and sit there (pretty safely, baring an earthquake) until erosion broke down the concrete containment building.
1) The thinking behind this is essentially religious in nature.
2) While growing up, many of us were bombarded with similar messages in school starting from a very young age. Very little, if any, attention was given to the idea that humans on Earth might be more than a corrupting influence on nature.
Who knows, maybe they could even be right. But the manner in which the message is disseminated makes me very suspicious.
Humans will be able to carry on through whatever epic tragedies we organize or in whatever nightmarish environments we concoct.
Our defining characteristic is adaptability. We are like massively clever cockroaches.
The world may be too much with us, but it'll have to make do.