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II2II 15 hours ago

Yet that human complexity was often created to help us deal with natural complexity.

Nature is indifferent. One year may produce an overabundance that the hunter/gatherer may take advantage of, yet the next year may be opposite and people will die from famine. So we learned how to preserve food as best we could. Yet that would result in a growth of population, an over population based on the resources available, so we learned how to grow our own food and manage livestock in order to avoid famine. That encourages the development of settlements. With denser populations disease is able to thrive, and, with trade, it is able to spread. So we learned how to manage waste. Each new development brings new pitfalls since we are meddling with the balance of nature. Or perhaps it is better to say that things are being balanced in new ways, so we must learn how to adapt to that. (We are, after all, a part of nature.)

Sometimes we adapt to those changes in balance in ignorant and extraordinarily damaging ways. I am not denying that. On the other hand, not trying would have hindered the development of intelligence -- or, perhaps, resulted in our extinction.

bitwize 15 hours ago | parent [-]

Maybe natural complexity is not supposed to be something we deal with, just something we live with. Adapt ourselves to, move in harmony with, rather than trying to adapt nature to our whims. The trees and rocks and rivers really do have things to say to us; maybe our duty here is just to shut up and listen.

Terr_ 8 hours ago | parent [-]

> Maybe natural complexity is not supposed to be something we deal with, just something we live with.

Your ancestors did that, and invented unknowable gods and spirits to explain/blame everything on, so that people can give up trying to understand or manage the unmanageable.

XorNot 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Although it's worth noting theres evidence the earliest civilizations like the Sumerians did this at least in part as a "fill in the blanks" exercise. The gods were their dark matter - a stand in for the problem that they were trying to predict the rains, rather then invent a suitably large father/mother to take responsibility away from them.

Terr_ 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Agreed, it wasn't necessarily from a place of laziness. I'm just frustrated with this narrative of "Our Ancestors Were One With Nature", since:

1. It is imaginary nostalgia for a golden-age that didn't exist.

2. It is its own covert form of human hubris/egotism, suggesting we had something uniquely different from what all other species struggle with. Closely related to the inverted-snobbery of claiming only humans do $EVIL_THING.

bitwize 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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