The two are related of course; in the modern world, as has been through out the entirety of human history... the exploitation and control of natural resources and their derived products have been the primary driving force behind cultures, empires and civilizations.
There are of course other points to been human... but more than anything in this world, exploiting resources has become the largest driving force through an almost darwinian mechanism of positive feedback.
The more resources that are exploited, the more efficiently one is able to exploit more resources, and so on and so forth.
But extrapolating that thought; is humanity really only here to exploit resources? Consume and destroy? Or is the act of doing that a side effect of what is necessary to achieve other goals?
If not the exploitation of the world, then what else is it that humans aim to do? We don't aim to do anything as a collective whole, so the entire world defaults to the emergent behaviour of what occurs when the sum actions of all individuals become a collective.
I suppose the charitable way to spin this basic exploitation is the desire and drive for humans to improve human welfare, progress, exploration and discovery.
But realistically, is that what we'd really do? Skip past the difficult problem of resource distribution; say that we've finally invented technology that allows post materialism, through compelling virtual reality and nano-replication devices.
What do you think people would do in this scenario? What would you do in this scenario?
Or do you perhaps disagree with the premise that we're here to exploit? Do you believe there's a point to humanity outside of survival, something that we can realistically galvanize humanity towards prior to discovering post-materialism technologies (which may after all, never actually occur).
There are of course other points to been human... but more than anything in this world, exploiting resources has become the largest driving force through an almost darwinian mechanism of positive feedback.
The more resources that are exploited, the more efficiently one is able to exploit more resources, and so on and so forth.
But extrapolating that thought; is humanity really only here to exploit resources? Consume and destroy? Or is the act of doing that a side effect of what is necessary to achieve other goals?
If not the exploitation of the world, then what else is it that humans aim to do? We don't aim to do anything as a collective whole, so the entire world defaults to the emergent behaviour of what occurs when the sum actions of all individuals become a collective.
I suppose the charitable way to spin this basic exploitation is the desire and drive for humans to improve human welfare, progress, exploration and discovery.
But realistically, is that what we'd really do? Skip past the difficult problem of resource distribution; say that we've finally invented technology that allows post materialism, through compelling virtual reality and nano-replication devices.
What do you think people would do in this scenario? What would you do in this scenario?
Or do you perhaps disagree with the premise that we're here to exploit? Do you believe there's a point to humanity outside of survival, something that we can realistically galvanize humanity towards prior to discovering post-materialism technologies (which may after all, never actually occur).
