@monsterbater Oh, I see what you mean.

Well, when you cherry-pick facts from history you can make it look like it's going for the best or worst without much effort, and in both cases it would be so simplified to be just wrong.

That doesn't answer your question: I'm not sure that I want to take a position of whether humans beings should be encouraged to survive.
But it would be a bit arrogant to put the human at the center of everything.

What I do feel is that we are taking the rest of the biosphere with us, and we have immense power that, if they went in the right direction, could at least amend much of our past 2000 years destruction.
At the end of the day, is either that or keep going in this path, killing more species, creating more instability, eventually making a hell even for tardigrades.

So, as a human being, I'd like to roll my sleeves and see what I can do to make it better.

Just my position though.

@arteteco
1. It is not cherry picking if you only have to pick cherries at random to see the same pattern. Holocaust, Pol Pot, Persecution of gays, persecution of pedophiles, (which is a subset of persecution of males).... Do you want to try another historical line: Japan's actions in China, Then Mao's Cultural Revolution, Modeled on Stalin's Cultural Revolution. Tuskegee University project, MK-Ultra...
2. The survival of the human species is the whole point of your project, so not taking a position on that is an absurdity for you
3. If humans do not survive, it makes no difference about the rest of the biosphere. Other living things will survive or new ones will evolve in the same way the old ones did.

4. So as a human being you have conceded that making it better is impossible, you just want to make it so that the same psychotics can continue their dysfunctional existence, and in fact you have just come full circle to restate the same faulty.

5. If you really want to make things better you would have to pick up the biggest most letheal weapon you could find and aim it at our rulers and insist that when they say they give us the rule of law including equality under that law, they really do.  You can't make things better without getting your hands dirty.

@monsterbater Hi,

1. It is. I can say "slavery was abolished" and "women can vote" and "we get to say more or less what we want without being executed", and so on. And in both your and my example, it wouldn't tell us much: there are a lot of explanations, backgrounds and case-by-case analysis to be done that don't resolve in a single, simple, univocally true pattern.

2. I said it in my previous message, it is not. Slowing down the exploitation of natural environments, trying to save diversity, try to save freshwater, planting forests, those are not just useful for our survival

3. Sure it makes a difference. If we are here, we interact with the rest of the biosphere, if we are not here, we don't. That makes a difference for every single being we come in contact with, directly or indirectly. In any ecosystem if you take a species out it makes a difference.

4. I didn't say it is impossible, quite the opposite. It is doable, we have quite some means to make things better, and that was kind of my point.

5. Don't you think that's a bit simplicistic? "give us the rule of law", "taking all the rulers and pointing the most lethal weapon there is in their face", that's not a plan, that's not an analysis, sorry, that's a fantasy. I'm not saying involving higher powers is something that should be ruled out, each one has his/her line of action, that is at the moment not mine.

Hope that makes it clearer =)

@arteteco

1. No it is not cherry picking, it is taking a plane up to 5000 feet and seeing that the peaceful Disneyland resort you thought you lived in is really a raging hellhole.

Let's just take one single point, the darling of politico-academic types.

"Slavery was abolished" No it was not and still is quite prevalent. Check GM Trevalyan's remarks on wage slavery in his shorter history of England.

Or take note: US prisons are the only place where slavery is still officially legal in the US (2018). Now you see the real reason why the US has the highest prison population in the world. The same reason Stalin made 25 years the mandatory minimum sentence to the gulags after 1949.

Let's take your second point. Sure women can vote, blacks can vote, but how come with the enlargement of the franchisement, things just don't seem to get better? That is after all the ultimate rationale for democracy. Drug addiction? Gang membership? A better society?

And please stop using the typical dilution argument of the professional classes:

"there are a lot of explanations, backgrounds and case-by-case analysis to be done that don't resolve in a single, simple, univocally true pattern...."

This is always the argument they use to evade responsibility for the condition of society. The excuse goes that since these social problems are so complex in their causes, we the professionals tasked with solving them cannot be held responsible.

@monsterbater I don't feel this discussion is going anywhere.

You make the world a better place with your criteria, points of view and analysis, I'll do the same.

Peace.

@arteteco I understand. Your action in life requires a raison d'etre, however illusory.

When I demolish that, you have no project/goal to motivate you when you wake up in the morning. So in order to retain your reason for living, you must cut off discussion that threatens it.

One could ponder the merits of nurturing a false hope if it keeps you alive, kind of like that O Henry story about the flower on a snow night.