All animals in their nature exploit the resources they have access to in order to survive/multiply.
Humans however seem to have a trend of exploiting things to the max, even to our own detriment when we completely obliterate the land we’re using. Despite having the knowledge to thrive without destroying the planet, we still do it.
Is this human nature at this point, or something else? Interested to see what the science community thinks about how we go to this weird place in our species’ evolution
Money. Most rich people don’t give a shit and they make most of the decisions that lead us down this path.
Greed
I think the only thing that sets us apart from other animals is the level to which we can modify our environment and (so far) survive it.
In The Matrix, Smith says that humans are not mammals because every mammal maintains an equilibrium with their environment. But this is not something inherent in the animal, but rather the checks and balances in the environment itself. Take away the predators and deer populations grow until all the food is gone and then they starve. We’ve seen it happen.
If the deer could make food for themselves, they would just keep on breeding more deer.
We’ve been reasonably steady for 10 thousands years.
this technological explosion and endless growth is a rarity and more like cancer. so unless there’s something inherently different between modern humans and humans 500 years ago, I’ll say no
We have both capabilities - just as all other animals -, but it is mostly ideology/culture and swarm information control by psychopaths and dark-triad humans that causes these major power-dynamics - destructions.
As you said, we have all the tech and knowledge to create a kick ass world for everybody, but we have no control of our global information - psychopaths does, and we can’t break out from that information bubble, so human civilization are in an “Ant-Mill”.
We won’t progress - break out of the mill - until we have reined in our top psychopaths and finally ended the system of manufactured ideology, morals/‘values’ and information control that generate and nurture these thrash people to power - and keeps ordinary peeps from organizing our selves in more normal/intelligent structures.
A framing here is carrying capacity.
Occasionally you have a season that increases carrying capacity (say for kangaroos) and then a season with a far lower carrying capacity (say slightly lower rainfall than usual) and a result can be the environment getting stripped (say trees).
Humans keep modifying the environment so that carrying capacity is far higher than it was a few decades before.
I think though you’re looking for some sort of philosophical answer and I’ve got nothing for that, in part because I think the question is largely based on a false premise
