A little crude don't you think; I find the average intelligence level on this forum to be quitte above the "Moron" level.
Maybe you were merely implying yourself since you feel the need to generalize a entire community as beeing below your intelligence level ?
Sir, I will respectfully address this one first to accommodate to your impatience when it comes to reading. I was addressing another member's reference to poachers.
Keith, while I agree with some of your sentiments, I think you hate humans, and you hate them far too much.
Seriously, why is your version of a "real tragedy" supposed to be "more moving" than two humans killing eachother? Why? How can you ever say that? Those people, they are living things, organisms too.
So why are they less valuable? Why is their death, and their reason for death, a matter of mocking humor whereas you treat the death of another organism as tragic?
Yes, I will confront that issue. My grudge is not with the “value” of life. I value it far more than many people I do know. It is with vanity that seems to be all too pervasive with our psyche. I was referring to a work of fiction written by a playwright which is presented to us with the grand header of a “Tragedy”. I believe it is one of the epics, among other lessers, some of which are pretty cotidian and shabby parodies of it, that has been the inspiration for promoting the vanity that leads some weak minded people to terminate their own existences in the name of that chemically unbalanced, obsessive state of the brain they miss name as “love”. As far as I am concerned, if that's what it has lead them to, then they are where they belong. It is, after all, by their own hand, with the object of vainly attempting to “teach someone a lesson” by their demise. Showing some backbone would have got them over it, and possibly turned them into positively constructive individuals who could have used some of the newly acquired introspection of the lesson learned and applied it proactively to some more useful end. Apologies, maybe, but I am unfortunately with Nietzsche and his references to the “superfluous” on this one. I am not into sugaring the pill.
However, you do misinterpret me. I have the highest respect and regard for people of all ages who can use their minds to further the quest for knowledge and solutions. The seven years I enjoyed most were when I used to teach, as there is nothing I admire more than seeing the light of realization in someone's face when they take on a subject they were initially unsure of and succeed in beginning to comprehend it.
What irks me with (some) people is indiscriminate reproduction. Here where I am, I see far too much of it. I don't mean for any of the reasons proposed already in this thread, such as where lower income, possibly agricultural working families attempt to guarantee their futures by having a larger stock of offspring. I mean the rising trend of single mother's between the ages of 14 and 17, and not necessarily of “poor” families. In fact, here in Ecuador at least, these are “children” that have at their disposal all the means and the education to prevent these unwanted pregnancies, if they really must dabble. And what happens? A year later they are having another one. Just with the one example of the relatives of the family in the house next door, four girls in this age group and situation have produced six children in the space of three years. One of them is only just reaching the age where she might possibly be considering (note; “considering”) the possibility of having her first. Indeed, there are factors in this; conditioning circumstances I might say, which have permitted this to happen, but at this point they are irrelevant.
And I am not targeting only girls with this criticism. It takes two to tango. For another example, there is one fellow I know, now in his early forties, who comes from the Chota valley (where most of Ecuador's football selection for the World Cup comes from). He has procreated 27 offspring in eight different women. This sort of behaviour is actually commonplace in that community, and a recent exhortation by the Republic's President to “plan families with some thought and help to avoid overpopulation” was meet with great derision by them in particular.
I am sorry, you may have your opinions, but they are wrong.
No, they are not “wrong”. They don't coincide 100% with yours, and therefore you categorize them as wrong. Coming from someone who is as erudite and perceptive as yourself, that sweeping generalization appears to emanate from some pretty blinkered perspective. But all that aside, everyone's opinions are going to have flaws in the eyes of others, as our perspectives are as diverse as the places we live. Let's draw an easy analogy here to cover both themes in one fell swoop. Are my opinions actively harming anything or anyone? Are those of the people whose opinion is that rhino horns cure them of diseases pharmaceutical medicines can not?
Perhaps I have seen too much. What I expose here is just the tip of the iceberg. Maybe I am severely warped in my perspectives as a result of my experiences. And, yes, though on a completely different level to the accusation of my being in error as defined on this thread, I might well be wrong.
Our problem is not that people "believe they have the 'right' to procreate", or that trees get cut down, or even that our population is growing (yet). It is because we have not yet learnt to integrate our infrastructure to the ecology, and integrate the ecology to our infrastructure in a meaningful way.
Deforestation does not occur because there are "too many humans". It occurs because in certain environments there are certain situations that lead to deforestation (such in Madagascar, where soil is poor, forcing farmers to move their crop fields and thus destroy natural environments in the process).
In some cases, yes. Then there's this...
http://www.mongabay.com/brazil.html
As far as farming goes, the loss of soil fertility is often the fault of the farmers themselves. Methods for fast turn around in climates where seasonal change is not a major factor in the sowing / harvest cycle, such as slash and burn, nutrients are not allowed to be reabsorbed into the soil before it is used again. Why is such quick turn around so necessary that the risk of turning the soil into desert be taken?
But, I have no idea who would kill a sloth just for crawling around the trees on their property. I just don't understand that. That is surely the last animal you would not want to have on your property, it isn't like they're any kind of threat or nuisance.
Your reaction to this was as mine.
All of that said, I lived for five years on your continent, in Ethiopia. A part of my family still lives in Kenya. I missed it so much when I left that in my craving to still have some form of remaining contact with it, I watched a documentary (on Betamax, to date when I saw it) that maybe you have seen, too. It was years ago, but the images are still pretty vivid; Africa Addio.
