Originally Posted by
Bruno
We cannot get the natural occurring medicine in the amounts that we need.
Incidentally, my grandmother told me of the days before modern medicine was available. Every week there was at least 1 funeral for a kid who died of pneumonia or a staph infection. She told me that there was nothing particularly good about 'the old days'
Ah, I think we can. I think we need a lot less than we would like. Maybe that's how it's supposed to be. Children dieing happens still today you know.
If I have to choose between this or going back to living in earth cottages and plowing the fields, and having to produce a dozen kids in the hopes of beating the motality rate: YES.
It worked out for a long time you know. A very long time.
If noone else is using something, we might as well put it to use.
If we take what we need and nothing more, sure. Using it just for the sake of it is pointless.
Suppose humanity ends today and the earth is left lone. What is the good of that? What's the point? The earth doesn't care. It's not alive. It's a ball of hot mud with a teeny tiny thin atmosphere. Nothing we do will hurt it as a whole. We are not even scratching the surface. We're just a mild skin rash.
What bad would it do? The Earth doesn't care, it is not alive. We wouldn't care either, we'd all be dead. We would no longer be a mild skin rash.
My point is not about energy. I am all in favor of using renewable sources like solar. I wish it were viable today. But even with an abundance of energy, we still need oil to make plastics, or rare earth metals to make electronics.
This is not a matter of scale: either we use those things to allow progress, or we do not, in which case we go back to hunting and gathering.
We do not need to make plastics though, or electronics. We don't NEED those things, we like them. Perhaps going back to hunting and gathering would be progress? I think it would.
Well then by all means, don't have kids.
Individual people should not live forever, but I don't see why our species needs to go extinct. And it will if we don't get off this mudball.
I don't think it will. We can be here for ever, but we can not do that if we live like we do today. Taking everything. I'm not sure why I wouldn't have kids? Life is just as important as death.
Maybe not for survival here right here right now, but if we go to the moon then we'll be using it nonetheless. Because there is no reason not to.
Really this is what it boils down to: why should we NOT use it, if it is there in abundance.
We should not use it because we don't need to. It will provide us with nothing we do not already have in abundance. It's foolish, very foolish, to start using a resource you know will run out just because you can.
