> Why not?
>
> I do not subscribe to the Cult of Man. :)
Clearly not.
> It's amazing how huffy people get when you suggest
> that human beings just aren't that wonderful. They're
> just one primate species crawling over the crust of
> one little planet circling around one star among
> billions and billions of stars. They have no sense of
> modesty and an exaggerated sense of their own
> self-importance.
You could fit the Grand Canyon in the gap between realising our insignifcane on a cosmic level ('man', as the hippes used to say) and arguing that, as a result, humans are neither important nor desirable. On one, very important, level humans are all that there is. If we're not that wonderful then we might as well give up.
> I for one would go for fewer homo sapiens, and more
> bear, tigers, and elk. Hell, even rats are "smart"
> enough to limit their numbers.
Or perhaps their intelligence being merely functional is too limited to grow populations outside of what the 'natural' order allows. If there are too many rats, many will starve. Human starvation, however, is caused by inefficient distribtuion of resources. We have the knwoledge and the ability to define our own terms for living in this world. Rats do not.
> (A world without non-human mammals. Now, that is a
> horrifying thought.)
I don't think anyone's proposing that.
Jason.
-- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.