wirelessguru1 Wrote:
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> > > It is called natural selection...
> >
> > Only in the sense that genocide & invasion is as well.
> > Once we become sapient, the rules change.... we're held to a higher standard, by
> > ourselves if no other.
>
> Keep on dreaming, the laws and rules of Nature do
> not change! What evidence do you have that they
> do change!?

Uh, the fact that YOU (a human) are citing HUMAN conceptions of "the laws and rules of Nature?" You're anthropomorphizing.... and you have the ability to ACT on this anthropomorphization, and impact the world accordingly.

Simply by existing, by being consious of our existance & impact, we have changed the "rules" that existed before..... we have human motivations sometimes acting counter to strictly "natural" processes such as exist in the "natural" world.

> > And in this case, such things as colonialism, mass enslavement, genocide, careless
> > introduction of invasive species, sudden introduction of (looted) crop species of
> > the "major improvement" variety, and widespread disease dissemination HAVE done quite
> > a bit to mess up peoples' ability to live in a reasonable balance with the land.
>
> Well, it is all part of the natural food chain.
> The strong survive and you either evolve or you
> die...

Nope, see my other reply to you in this thread. PARASITES evolve as well, even parasites on their own species..... it's NOT always the strong or superior types that survive. There is a strong countercurrent to this, in fact, in that superior types often end up reproducing at lower levels (too busy being superior), while socially parasitic inferior types reproduce at higher levels. Our species level of biological fitness has gone downhill over the last 30,000+ years.

Heh, 90% or better of the Native American population died because it wasn't immune to Old World diseases AND was being massively invaded by Europeans at the time. These people were as "strong" or stronger than Europeans, as "smart" or smarter, and Europeans were similarly NOT immune to various "foreign" diseases (ebola, marbourg, etc).... & hadn't always been immune to most of what they were sorta immune to (smallpox, cholera, chickenpox, etc) at the time of contact.

This wasn't a case of strong surviving, nor of evolving, it was largely random happenstance... of a combination of factors that just happened to work out a certain way. I can name dozens or hundreds of trivial points of history that could easily have gone another way, which would have resulted in radically different historical outcomes... including ones in which you ended up speaking Muskogee Creek, or Nahuatl, or Quechua..... or Bantu.

> > Eh.... to take a European example, as proof I'm not implicitly Euro bashing, bringing
> > the potato to Ireland was a bad thing. It allowed the local population to increase
> > dramatically DESPITE English exploitation....at the cost of a near fatal reliance on a
> > very limited genetic base of a single crop.
>
> Not really! That is all part of the natural food
> chain and how energy is processed. Isn't that you
> call the "survival of the fittest"? But now it
> seems to me that you want to "change" the
> rules!!!

No, it's what YOU want to call survival of the fittest.... it's what *I* call human action, oftimes flying in the face of common sense reality.

> > As inevitable, a disease hit that wiped out virtually the entire potato crop (&
> > English exploitation KEPT mandating the export of grain to England, despite millions
> > of starving Irish)..... leaving the land unable to support even it's previous
> > populace.
>
> That is exactly how Nature will re-balance itself...The viruses attack...

So nature decides this? So viruses act IN ORDER TO REBALANCE? You are anthropomorphizing, & seeing things in human terms.

Besides, it WASN'T a virus that hit the potatoes... it was a fungus (Phytophthora infestans).

And just how do viruses act to recreate or replace extinct species? To repair ecosystems ruined by pollution and invasive exotics? To clean up stockpiles of highly toxic chemicals (herbicides, pesticides, industrial solvents, chemical intermediaries used in synthesis of this or that, etc)?

Neh, Nature "might" rebalance itself.... but not unless humans are removed from the equation and only AFTER something like a million years or so (better hope that chimps don't evolve intelligence meanwhile)..... OR unless humans are actively involved in the rebalancing process.

> > The convienience of the potato crop had allowed the English to get away with grain
> > exports & foreign landlords using much of the best land for commercial or even
> > frivolous (like raising race horses) usages, without overmuch protest from the
> > subjugated Irish, who could still "get by" via potatoes. But eliminate potatoes,
> > and you had massive famine.
>
> Indeed, you are stuck between a rock and a hard
> place...

No me. I wasn't there, nor were any of my ancestors.

And.... I'm a landowner, with other landowning family members to fall back on (all gun owners). And I have a LARGE heirloom seed collection encompassing many hundreds of traditional cultivars (& many dozens of species), and an even larger reference library. And my land has a large wildlife population, fertile soil, a good water table, enough rainfall that even a drought year allows decent crops, AND a location relatively unaffected by such conditions as global warming (or even another ice age) might bring on.

And.... I'm conscious of the dangers of situations such as represented by the Irish potato monoculture.

Even the Irish & the English were not really "stuck".... they both mismanaged the crisis.

> > This same thing happened elsewhere, sudden European introduction of New World crops
> > & medicines & European technologies allowed massive population increases....
>
> Where?

All over Europe, most of Africa, large parts of Asia, etc. (Crops such as maize, phaseolus beans, squash, peanuts, manioc, potatoes, sweet potatoes, etc. etc.)

> > shorcircuiting social checks & balances (what did European overlords care...
> > or know.... given their OWN unchecked population increase & king of the hill
> > status?).
> > Introduction of new diseases (plant, animal, human) made systems more unstable.
>
> Well, Nature knows how to re-balance it-self.
> Humans have really no control over it...

Unless you're advocating some metaphysical conciousness controlling life on earth (not an ID proponant, are you?)..... no.

Nature doesn't "know" how to do any such thing, or we'd not have ecological collapse & massive extinctions even on unpopulated (by humans) islands.... after visiting sailors introduced rats & goats & the like.

What usually happens is simply a systemic meltdown, that "eventually" stabilizes (after a period of hundreds of years or more).... at a lower level of productivity & diversity. Oh, it'll "eventually" recover (after a period ranging from tens of thousands to tens of millions of years, depending on the degree of damage).... but only if it's left alone long enough to do so.

> > So no, after all the UNNATURAL interference in local "natural" systems, we can't
> > simply write off the consequences as "natural selection"....
>
> Well, that makes absolutely no sense to me!!!
>
> Natural systems will always take over during
> unbalance situations or in times or great Earth
> changes. Why do you want to suggest that human
> being are not part of Nature?

I'm doing no such thing. Humans ARE part of nature.... but a concious part, that supercedes Darwinian style interactions in favor of everything our fertile imaginations can devise. Suddenly, instead of "wolves, a natural part of the food chain that MAINTAINS species fitness & diversity", we get "wolves, influenced by satan, to be killed on sight". And so on.

> The consequences of natural selection are just
> very much basic to natural reality and directly
> reflect all the various and combined
> action/reaction from all things...Man plays its
> role but so do other things and species...
>
> -wirelessguru1

Kenuchelover.