To be fine with the human race becoming extinct

[Designless]

I mean ideally not while I'm around to see it but I assume it will happen eventually and I don't care at all.

I ask this became some people do seem to care and say things Iike "if we don't have more children our species will come to an end!"

...ok and?

My point is that humans, perhaps uniquely, do appreciate the beauty of a flower. Bees are attracted to the nectar within them, purely as a means to survival, but they don't appreciate the beauty and wider wonder of the natural world.

Sure, some humans are tossers, some insects sting us, and some artwork genuinely is rubbish, but that isn't a reason to want to destroy it all.

But humans are destroying it all, that's the point.

I don’t care either. I’ll more than likely e dead when it happens, so why care.

I find it fascinating to think how long humans survived before electricity was invented. Today, we would survive for about 4 weeks without electricity.

We would starve to death or die of thirst within those 4 weeks. That's not progress.

Well, before us there was no intelligent life observing and appreciating the beauty of life on earth. (Unless aliens were watching). My point is that intelligent life is better able to appreciate beauty than non-intelligent life.

Taking a work of art and locking it in a box with a spider is a waste of the work of art. The spider lacks the intelligence to appreciate it.

Same thing applies to planet earth if intelligent life cannot appreciate it.

I don't think humans are more intelligent. A creature that, despite being able to appreciate beauty, destroys the beautiful natural world. How dim is that.

This is true.
Also, humans measure intelligence as they see it. There are different types of intelligence but we only value our own intelligence. I don't suppose an elephant could put a plane in the sky but perhaps they just know they shouldn't.

I think it’s weird to say you don’t care. Humans becoming extinct would mean great suffering of billions of people. It might be inevitable but surely it’s not ok to say we don’t care about that?

I don’t have to know people to care about their suffering. I absolutely care that extinction will mean billions of people will suffer

Billions of people are suffering now because of what humans are doing to each other. How is that any better?

An asteroid would also wipe out animals so probably best for a virus that's just for us .

I disagree.

Any pet owner will be able to explain to you how their pet enjoys the natural world.

The ending of human life would lead to an improvement in that beauty, not the destruction of it.

This planet existed for millions of years in all its beauty without a human eye seeing it and probably will do again when we are gone. Unless we manage to completely smash it to smithereens.

Many species are destructive to their environment, but I think humans are unique in the scale and success of their destruction. Which will very likely be what causes our extinction. That or a massive natural disaster of course!

I care about the billions of people suffering now.

They won’t be if humanity is extinct.

What makes you so sure that very intelligent life won’t spring into being at some future point, long after we are gone?

And animals are intelligent. They are happy, sad. They celebrate and they grieve.

And they are generally far less harmful to the planet than humans.

Agree.👍

Capitalism (and it's twin brother consumerism) is destroying the planet's natural resources. If we had cooperatives and social enterprises instead of capitalism and consumerism, humans could more easily learn to coexist with nature.

As long as people keep buying 20p plastic tablecloths on temu the world is being destroyed - even if the world population drastically reduced.

I agree.

Exactly. It’s like all the environmental awareness raised in the late 80s and early 90s never happened. Disposable everything. And if your bin is full - fly tip it in the countryside or out of your car window.

I think what may happen is humans use up most of the Earth's resources and there is a resulting rapid population decline, but a pockets of the Earth have people who learn to survive with that resources are left.

Or we find another Earth like planet to move to.

I understand your point. But how can we say we care about people suffering now but don’t care that everyone will suffer and die if we become extinct?

Or we come to our senses and stop consuming pointless crap and vote out the capitalists. Vote in the good scientists, put our tax's into research instead of funding wars, explore the universe.

Humans (the cooperative ones) need to live. We are just too amazing to disappear.

Even without all the damage we do, we would still become extinct. Even if we were co-operative world wide and there were no wars or famine, we would still become extinct. It's just the natural way of the world.

Yes I agree with you.

I'm on the fence on this one.
I don't think that humanity has some inherent 'right' to dominion. In that sense, I agree; if we greed our way to decline and extinction, I'll accept it.
What I absolutely can't stand is the arrogance which couples a statement like this with an assertion such as "so for that reason, I'm not going to bother moderating my carbon footprint -we're fucked anyway."