I find it to be a little curious that three major diseases US officials have done their best to keep out of the country out of fear of an epidemic have been Mad Cow Disease, Bird Flu and Swine Flu. These three diseases find their origin in three animals we farm for food: cows, chickens and pigs.
Oh, the wonders of nature. Diseases try to grind down the overpopulation of our livestock while also trying to grind down our own overpopulation. Now that's multitasking!
We're going to ignore this sign, like every other one, and continue on our merry way to extinction. Might not be the next one, or even the one after that... eventually we're going to get fucked.
Einstein said something about doing something over and over and expecting the same results as being insane... You get lucky a bunch of times, modern medicine cures the epidemics nature hands you. You don't learn a lesson and overpopulation persists.
Next time it could be a strain of the AIDS virus that spreads like a cold. Or worse, if you can even imagine that.
Personally, I'm excited to see what happens.
Fascinating
21 hours ago
18 comments:
Nice terrible misquotation of Einstein. Fucking anti-Semite.
But yeah seriously are you actually implying that humans should be implementing some sort of population control on themselves, or that science has solid enough limitations to be unable to cope with disease?
You do realize that a good bit of first world countries are reproducing at under 2.1 average children per couple?
No. I'm not trying to dictate policy. Are you seriously implying the species can not only safely reproduce into higher numbers but that medicine will be able to generate a speedy response to every epidemic?
It's absurd, you know. The idea that this game we're playing has clearly defined rules.
You know, I've got to say it annoys me a great deal to constantly hear you go on and on about the extinction of the human race.
Equality brings up a good point with regards to the birthrates of first world countries. Could it be that it's a natural tendency of populations to produce fewer offspring once high standards of educational and economic stability have been achieved? In such a way, political imperatives such as global justice, higher living-standards, better education, and other positive goals can be thought of as natural ways in which populations can be maintained at reasonably sustainable levels. Although I don't want to invoke any notion of "evolutionary design," it seems that, evolutionarily speaking, the ethics which guide us in our politics, and our politics itself, is an aspect of human evolution, and nature uses those institutions as tools to further its "designs" (of sustainability of populations, etc.). Political institutions, in this light, can be viewed as somewhat similar to the "design" of diseases: to cut down a population's size and undermine its growth so as not to become too taxing on the ecosystem. (I am fully aware of the pitfalls of such a comparison--political institutions can also help spread populations in both size and in area. However, I am talking about those features of politics that promote those causes that I've listed above. It is moreover ethics that I speak of in an evolutionary light than politics).
Is anyone going to actually talk about what I said or are you going to continue to toot your own horns? Seriously, you have your own blogs.
I'm talking about the inevitability of a global epidemic because its causes, while obvious, are not addressed. I'm not sitting here talking about the United States and its politics. I'm talking about the fact that pigs, cows and chickens are kept in squalid conditions, and diseases are born out of these places and get into the human population.
I'm not dictating what should be done. It's inevitable. I was just sitting there, thinking about how every effort to the contrary will ultimately be for nothing because of the inordinate amount of circumstances contributing to the appearances of diseases like Swine Flu.
So you can go on with the absurd idea that ethics somehow are a form of evolution that drives the species forward all you want, or that there is some sort of universal ethical code, but it has nothing to do with what I typed.
By the way? I didn't directly quote him. I paraphrased. It was close enough. Eat it.
Hey I'm Alex. I totally miss Equality's point, reference him, go off on an unrelated tangent, and try to convince you that I'm smarter than you.
And Jim, I wouldn't have mentioned the quotation except when you say expecting the same results, instead of expecting different ones, you totally change the meaning of the quote and make Einstein look like a silly stupid head.
Mother Nature is a vicious adversary. The fact that we've managed to prevent all of these diseases from becoming pandemics should make you sad though Jim.
Yet another reason not to go to New Jersey or Texas: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&t=p&msa=0&msid=106484775090296685271.0004681a37b713f6b5950&ll=32.639375,-110.390625&spn=15.738151,25.488281&z=5);
Tinyurl version: http://tinyurl.com/d4lknq
I feel like I was pretty clear.
I'm also pretty sure I didn't dance around anything there, I pretty much said how I felt.
I agree that Jim's posts don't leave much room for response\debate... that's why he puts them on a blog and not an open discussion forum.
Also, "what you meant doesn't matter as much as what you said"... I don't even want to begin to list the reasons why that's horribly wrong.
Haha, let's just say, yesterday I was feeling a bit too cocky and very asshole-y. Sorry, everyone!
Post a Comment