At 06:00 PM 1/14/00 -0500, MIkeBGene wrote:
>One could
>argue that if we destroy the environment, many animals
>will go extinct. So? Isn't this common in evolutionary
>history? Will not other life forms simply adapt to fill
>the new niches? One could argue that if we destroy the
>environment, we will destroy ourselves. Well, since
>there is nothing special about humans, this is hardly
>any more tragic than the extinction of the mammoth.
>Instead, we would have to simply appeal to raw
>self-interest. But ironically, it is this same raw
>self-interest that is harming the environment.
Nihilism isn't evolutionarily sound. It literally can't be a feature of
"fitness." If our species is to survive we must be fit to surivive and
taking a "so what" attitude to our own destruction is counter-productive.
Since "so-what-ness" doesn't confer fitness it generally isn't passed on
either culturally or physiologically.
It is my contention that environmentalism is "raw self-interest." By saving
the whales (or whatever) we are saving ourselves. Life is a web. We don't
know which or how many strands can be plucked out of it before it collapses
taking us with it.
Susan
--------
Peace is not the absence of conflict--it is the presence of justice.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
Please visit my website:
http://www.telepath.com/susanb
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