What Has Happened to Our Beautiful World?

[Pandora]

Humans are the most destructive creatures, aren't they? It is painful to watch the Earth succumb to her children's abuse of her beautiful gifts. It saddens me at times as the amphibians die off from the change in their atmosphere, majestic creatures are poached for what little things the poachers want from the corpse, tens of thousands of the beautiful trees in the Amazon fall for poor cattle farmers taking advantage of a misleading government policy, etc. One thing that watching Avatar reminded me of was that Earth was and still is beautiful in her own way, but our destructive habits have masked that beauty beneath a wake of smoke and stone. I notice there are fewer and fewer natural places that humans haven't destroyed or modified in some manner or another. There used to be a small forest behind my house when I was little. I loved playing back there and watching the deer and rabbits scurry about with the birds. But after a few years, someone bought the land and cut down a good section of the wood to build a modular home in its place. The rest of the forest beyond that area is still there, but it is even smaller than before now. Avatar reminded me of how I felt as a child when I lost that patch of forest. It was never our land that we owned, but the previous owner had let me venture about it regardless. I still miss it, even now, but people told me that I was an irrational child who was only attatched to trees because I used to pretend they were individuals (when I was little I named trees and talked to them at times, I was a little eccentric, but I still believe in some of it XD). Would anyone else like to share any stories of nature experiences or their views on the issues with people's treatment towards the Earth?
As I grow I seem to notice a growing ingnorance in a great number of people, things that should be passed down from one generation to the next are not and as teachings and memories are lost, so is our connection to our world. It saddens me to see children intentially find anthills with no better purpose than to stomp on them all and not even out of fear of the ants, but for fun. Also when people peel the bark off of living trees out of boredom and the fact that they happen to be standing next to the tree anyway...oh...why? Is ignorance and stupidity the fastest spreading disease we know of and is curing it really taht much of a chore? You can't change the way people think or see, until their own world itself has been impacted, and by then, they still may not get it. If people only knew the exact number of total species that are extinct that did not come from the prehistoric ages. I've seen the lists and I always lose count...If you search you should be able to find the number if you choose to pursue that knowledge. I am simply saying that there is a lot of people that feel plants and animals aren't really alive, they are more like an interactive object to abuse simply because they don't stand on two legs and speak a language understood by ignorant humans and they have no better reason to do so besides the fact that they can.
I think what bothers me the most about situations like these is that no matter how many people don't like what is happening, there are very few things they can actually do to stop it in its entity. The best we can do is what we can do with ourselves, the environment around us, and the manner in which we spread the knowledege to others.

[ecco]

really you are right when you say there is little that each individual can do about it. Small Steps. thats all there is for the most of us. for example... i live on a main road. full of polution, it gave me breathing problems for a few years when i moved here. but we have quite a big back garden. we're not talking acres, or even 1, probably barely a fraction of that - but compared to the gardens you'd find attached to most town houses, its pretty huge :P

we get a ton of wildlife. lots of different birds, mice, all the neighbours cats come here to roam about (tho my cat hates that!), sloworms (which are rare nowadays i believe), hedgehogs and my favourite, our sweet little fox that is perfectly tame

now... there is a lot of housing development going on in my town. developers came looking on our road, since the old lady that lived next door passed on - they bought that property, i think, but what they really wanted was about 2 thirds of our garden... they intended to build a small block of flats across the 2 gardens. their first offer for our garden was £100,000. now thats a hell of a lot of money. and if my parents wanted to, they could have gotten double that out of them.

but they said no. england doesnt have the most magnificent or interesting wildlife, but its life nonetheless and we enjoy sharing what is "ours" with them ^^ my mum refused to let it happen. since without that space thered be very few birds and the foxes would leave altogether, and the sloworms would certainly die out there (since they live in the bramble at the back of our garden, which would have ended up destroyed)


so.... its the little we can do. we feed the animals that live here and we protect that small bit of earth for them

[Pandora]

There is a power company that owns and maintains teh telephone lines in my town. They come through about once a year and mark various trees that need to be trimmed or removed alltogether because they get in the way of their god-fosaken power pole lines. They took two huge maple trees out of our front yard a couple years ago and now they are after the last big tree in our front yard. They already trimmed out some of the branches from the year they took the other two trees, adn now they want taht tree out alltogether. We can't stop them even though we own the trees in our yard. They have the power to remove them if they interfere with theri equipment and property. My mother is not allowing them to remove that tree, though, so we are trying to agree on trimming it a little bit more, even though trimming it makes it look horrible because you have a nice full tree in the summer and then there is a huge chunk of leaves and branches missing when you look at it. Like someone took a bite out of it. T___T I love that tree, I don't want it to go. The otehr two trees provided a lot of shade for us, and now that tree is also the only tree left for shade in the summer.

[ecco]

hmm... the trouble with trees outside houses tho, is that even if its not to do with power lines, as the tree gets older its roots will eventually grow under the houses and destroy the foundations/floors. so it is a real shame, but sort of a necessity if you dont want your house to get wrecked in the end x_x

[Chu]

The world naturally changes, so there's no sense in holding onto such aesthetics. We're currently reading 2001: A Space Odyssey in my English class and I couldn't help but to notice the sheer bigotry of man. We think we're strong, and that every little thing we do affects our world and universe. We think that our intelligence is so great that the only next step up is God himself. We think that we have control over nature in one way or another. However, when it comes down to it, we're nothing. We're a minuscule species amongst a vast group of species that all live on a small planet that floats through a colossal galaxy. We're nothing, and, as my English teacher put it, "We're nothing but a flu that the Earth will just shake off in a couple thousand years." He's right - people like to think that we're greatly affecting the earth in some great way when all we're really doing is putting a tiny dent in it.

"[T]hey possessed sufficient megatonnage to remove the entire surface crust of the planet" (Clarke, 43). Notice how this amount of explosives can only remove the crust of the planet; this would be the end of mankind as we know it. However, because we're too closed minded to even attempt to see anything beyond our current range of vision, we fail to realize that our end wouldn't mean the end of the world. The world would go on - it would recover “beautifully” - which is completely subjective; I consider cities and suburbia to be beautiful in their own respects so the “beautiful” point is moot - and there would be no trace of humans from then on. Our tiny minds are afraid to grasp this though, because without the knowledge of our superiority, we feel we're nothing, and it's true. We're nothing, so we can't ruin a planet.

Children destroying ant hills is a long lasting past time. In fact, children have become more civilized - for lack of a better term - in that they no longer shoot at small animals, cut off their limbs, or put them in pillow cases to either throw them into water or beat them against walls as much as they used to. There are still such violent children but in all honesty it's only a way of asserting authority - because we all know that humans are nothing without authority. It's a subconscious act to know that something is weaker than you are, or on a less analytical level, a cure of boredom. Peeling bark or ripping grass blades are once again cures of boredom, and doing such things truly don't do any harm to the environment nor the tree. If such a thing were true then Crepe Myrtle trees are masochists.

Extinction is another example of natural changes on Earth. Some species will die to ensure the survival of others.

Human ignorance will always exist, but to consider "people that feel plants and animals aren't really alive" ignorant is going a bit far. I consider such people realistic, because they understand that many lives must be lost in advancement, and even though such people don't consider plants to have lives anyway, these must be sacrificed as well. What’s more is that I consider you to be romantic, because I think using the term “ignorant” is politically incorrect in the first place. People that see plants as things without lives/souls/what have you are far from ignorant; they do possess basic knowledge of what I guess we should consider the environment and the nature of man.

I don't endorse the mistreatment of the environment, but I feel that environmentalists take their accusations way too far, and are too stubborn to accept the fact that without man, things would still live and die, and even go extinct. What dies doesn't matter, because other lives are exchanged for it, and whether such a thing is worth it is merely up to interpretation. The fact of the matter is that some species of plants and animals threaten our means of survival, so they must be eliminated. This once again relates back to the bigotry of man, but it's what every species does. The only difference in our case is that we have a collective and individual conscious that make us second guess what we do, merely because we can.

So is it so wrong for humans to act intrinsically, but acceptable for animals? Why? If plants, animals, and humans are on the same level as you’re suggesting, then why is it so wrong for man to do just what animals - and even plants - do in order to survive?

(Bolded for emphasis, because this is mainly what I want a response to. Of course, feel free to respond to anything else in my pose, haha. XD)

[Pandora]

I haven't had the chance to read 2001: A Space Odyssey yet, but the theory you have stated has actually made me feel a little less uneasy about the Earth. I do remember signs of the Earth healing over time and restoring things to the way they were (even with the global warming discussions, there have been signs of damaged areas of the ozone shrinking and restoring itself). The only thing that humans are aiding and mainly causing is the hand they play in the extintion of certain animal species. True, that there are species that have had their time to reign and become extinct long before humans, as extintion is sadly, a natural part of the cycle of life, but what saddens me is that humans are a main cause in some cases of this. I know that every species will have its day to go, but it is even more bitter that it be brought forth by mankind. Which ties into your bolded text: "So is it so wrong for humans to act intrinsically, but acceptable for animals? Why? If plants, animals, and humans are on the same level as you’re suggesting, then why is it so wrong for man to do just what animals - and even plants - do in order to survive? " In my opinion and theory, the only thing that makes something 'wrong' is an opinion/viewpoint of another. In order for something to be wrong it is either disliked or ineffective. Other humans and their morals are what say that somethign is right or wrong. Some people feel that humans are here as the Earth's caretaker and protector, other's believe that we are responsible for our actions simply because we are 'educated superior beings', but I believe that we are the forsaken creatures that have lost the ability to comminicate with and understand the rest of our world. O_o After typing that it sounded kinda gloomy, but I didn't mean as in I hate humans or people, lol! I just think the rest of the creatures share a gift that we no longer possess. <3

[saiyouri]

I also think we need to do something to fix our world. I make sure I recycle all the time. I recycle everything, even tiny things. My husband and I use cloth bags when we go shopping most of the time so we don't get plastic bags, but if we do get the plastic bags, we recycle those right away.

I really would like to see this world become prettier right now. In my area there really isn't much construction at all. Honestly there isn't any at all. There are a few run down homes that could be torn down because of how degraded they look but that is the only thing around here.

[Pandora]

I was checking on my garden the other day and there was a maple tree sprout in the middle of it. I moved it into a pot and am letting grow until it gets a bit bigger and tehn I'll replant it somewhere in the yard. I even feel bad when I pick weeds out of my garden, because they too are alive and are children of the Earth, but if I don't remove them, they'll harm my other plants that I've planted. Sometimes my beliefs conflict with what I must do in everyday life. I hope I don't sound nutty, I just have a strong respect for life of all things and I don't feel I have any right to take it, regardless of it being human, plant, animal, or insect. <3