What do humans bring to the table?

[GreyCarpet]

Just a musing. Would be interesred ro hear others thoughts. What am I missing?

I was thinking this morning about a man I met a few years ago who was brought up in a small village near Chernobyl. He had been back to visit with his wife the previous year. The village had obviously been evacuated after the disaster in 1986 and the photos he showed me were really eerie. Abandoned houses with picnic tables set up outside almost untouched by the passing of time without human interference with one exception. Nature had returned and was thriving. The area was filled with lush green plants. Animals had returned.

Anyway, it just got me thinking about what humans actually bring to the table.

We know that every other creature interacts and operates within a delicate ecosystem. They manage and control their own populations when left to their own devices, land is fertile and plants grow etc

What do we bring to the table? As a species, everything we do is for our own benefit. The world would thrive without us here.

Why do we assume such authority when, we deliver so little?

We did, but it was a planet where we were all hunter-gatherers, lived to 50, killed animals for food, died in childbirth or from cutting a leg on a rock etc etc. People saying this are saying it from.a position where their children will in all likelihood live to adulthood, sitting in a centrally heated home with maybe a nice roast dinner on the after a trip to Sainsburys to buy food. People who still live like that don't want to. They want medicines and contraception and food, water, and money to buy nice things- and for their children not to die. This can happen if they are taken out of poverty (easily the best way of doing this is through girls education, which is the best way of reducing the birthrate), but will also mean more people living longer and wanting more stuff. China's carbon emissions in just 8 years is higher than ours since the Industrial Revolution. Partly because of the plastic crap we keep buying from them but also because there are more people who can afford meat and other ' luxuries'. It's classic middle class posteuring to say ' Oh humans are so terrible I would gladly die for the planet' when there is little chance that they or their children will be subjected to euthanasia for the greater good. As always, eugenics would apply to the world's poor for ' the greater good of the planet'.

Please read my previous post where all that was covered.

If Aliens do turn up with a score card, you can be sure they will have got here by being top of the food chain on their own planet and through exploiting their own natural resources.

You don't think a lion means to kill its prey?? It just does it accidentally and then eats it to not be wasteful??

And they will kill over women and access to land.

And yet you hope we all, which by extension includes you, die ASAP. I'm not sure that does suggest a typical approach to wanting to live / die

What do humans bring to the table?

As a species, we are not in the same level as the other species, thanks to our developed prefrontal cortex.

Social species are based in cooperation as a survival response to evolutionary pressures, but the highly complex and variable human prefrontal cortex means that we will never be a fully cooperative species.

In ecological terms we are a plague, reproducing uncontrollably because we're not being challenged by predators.

We have all the tools necessary to live in harmony with nature and the planet, not that it's all going to be rosy and cozy. Life is tough.

I'm afraid not all humans will agree so that is the essence of the problem. We are a highly individualistic social species.

There are all sorts of humans, it's up to the more conscientious ones to try to educate their narrow minded peers. This is a different sort of evolution, not under the same rules as natural evolution.

Maybe an extraterrestrial intelligence or even a human creation, artificial Intelligence, will bring something entirely different and new to the table that could mean an evolutionary leap.

I would like to be alive to be part of it.

Well, if we didn't 'thin out' woods from time to time, there would be less biodiversity, some species are more dominant than others so brambles whilst providing berries, also prevent other plants from growing, by keeping the brambles back, other plants spring up and provide food for the pollinators. Pollination is essential for ecosystems to thrive.
In the far east there are a group of fishermen that have developed a 'symbiotic' relationship with cranes. They work together as a team, it's extraordinary and humbling to watch.
Humans can coexist and it's in our interest to co-exist with all life on this planet, of course there are many humans who would rather destroy than protect, but ''twas ever thus.