But I think LaFille's question targets a more imminent, and interestingly less foreseeable or predictable, future <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />
You can always try to push it up to the geological time scale if you want (or more: if you feel able to). <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />
@janggut
All your suppositions are right. I'm into biology and ecology; these are questions of philosophy and ethics related to concepts of my field. So yes I went through pretty much material related to that (and still do, and will continue to), and think of it since a little while. It is also an issue touching a young woman just stepping into this world and who has everything to build. Athough the answers are probably out of reach, thinking about it forces to see things differently, from other points of view; wich is good, imho. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/evilgrin1.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />
What an arrogant presumption - so very human!
The 'laws of nature' are universal and fundamental. Assuming a million years of human life on this planet Sol 3, that is roughly 0.02% of this (young!) planet's life span to date. The dinosaurs had 250 times that much. [...]
Obedience is acceptance of a higher authority - so for me the answer is: It is not a choice we really have. We are part of a natural selection process, which is pragmatic, emotionless, functional, merciless - and extremely long (I hate to state 'eternal')
*LaFille’s philo teacher pops up in her head...* <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/devil.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/evilgrin1.gif" alt="" />
Let’s bounce to rectify the shot here, and begin with the “laws of life” or “mecanisms of evolution” in how it uses to be for the other forms of life (except the case of domesticated ones, of course).
The principle of natural selection in biology (one of the evolution mecanisms) is based on the differential reproductive success:
1- Every population has several variations of hereditary characters.
2- Every population has the potential to reproduce too much towards the ressources aviable, what brings a competion for survival into the population.
That brings the differential reproductive success: individuals having the characters adapted best to their “milieu de vie” have generally more fertile progeny than the others, what increases the frequency of these hereditary characters in the next generation; and so on. That results, after several generations, in the “modified descent” (adaptation).
In the case of humans, in industrialised societies especially, there are points related to that that don’t work much the same anymore: the competition for survival (the essential needs, related to survival such as feeding, sheltering, etc. are filled for quite everyone) and the way we reproduce (people much have kids by choice; progresses in techniques, medicine allow people to survive and reproduce with physical limitations that would probably much prevent them to in a context of fight for survival as it is for the other life forms; contraception and birth control means & politics change much things too; etc.).
You see where I’m going? And the possibilities that can lead to? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/think.gif" alt="" />
I have always seen our Tech advancements to ultimately enable us to go to and populate other planets.
It is an idea that I share; that is, if we don’t get extincted because of whatever may happen/may we do and if we come to get the techniques that allow us to do so. It’s a very interesting (and complex) idea. I want to read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars serie (It's exactly on that context) when I'll get back into reading. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
