mcclurg luke e wrote:
> There are those of us who think the Earth IS ours. Ours to care for, ours
> to look after, ours to "keep and tend" like a garden. And I am one of
> those people who think the Earth WAS made for man. So, I would recommend
> a discontinuance of this topic as it is getting "philosophical" and not
> "scientific" since I have been bashed for such things in the past. Hmmmmm?
>
> Luke
>
> On Thu, 26 Oct 2000, Jay DeLong wrote:
>
> > > Jeffers' observation is contrary to most people's assessment of the
> > > relationship of the human race to the rest of the planet. Does/should
> > > everything revolve around us as the crown of creation on the
> > > planet, or are we more of an accident who now consume half of the
> > > photosynthetic product on the planet? Since I'm not running for
> > > election I'll support the latter.
> > > Thanks, Sajjad!
> > >
> > > --Bruce Stallsmith
> >
> > Well, Bruce, you're going to get some people to nod their heads, and at the
> > same time piss lots of others off :-) Personally I look forward to the day
> > when ideas like these provide us with a common focus-- a sign of
> > intellectual maturity-- or morality-- rather than some philosophical
> > viewpoint. But it won't happen in our lifetimes and like I said before,
> > we're going to go backwards before we go forward. Species and their
> > ecosystems will continue to disappear forever, and though we may become smug
> > and think ourselves prosperous if we judge prosperity by human development
> > and resource use and the Dow Jones Index, our quality of life and that of
> > our descendants will decline until we realize we need to take steps now to
> > conserve what we have. Here's another quote along the same lines of
> > Jeffers':
> >
> > "The oldest, easiest-to-swallow idea was that the
> > earth was man's personal property, a combination of
> > garden, zoo, bank vault, and energy source, placed
> > at our disposal to be consumed, ornamented, or pulled
> > apart as we wished. The betterment of mankind was, as
> > we understood it, the whole point of the thing. Mastery
> > over nature, mystery and all, was a moral duty and
> > social obligation.
> >
> > In the last few years we were wrenched from this way
> > of looking at it, and arrived at a general understanding
> > that we had it wrong. We still argue the details, but
> > it is conceded almost everywhere that we are not the
> > masters of nature that we thought ourselves; we are as
> > dependent on the rest of the system as are the leaves or
> > midges or fish. We are part of the system. One way to
> > put it is that the earth is a loosely formed, spherical
> > organism, with all its working parts linked in symbiosis."
> >
> > --Lewis Thomas (1974),
> > from "The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher"
> >
> > --
> > Jay DeLong
> > Olympia, WA
> >
> >
> >
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/ For more information about NANFA, visit our web page, http://www.nanfa.org