Will we ever beat nature?

[Don't Change Your Name]

No, I'm NOT talking about the typical discussion concerning "human nature".

The point is: will be ever destroy all those diseases that threaten us, or avoid all those harmful things that can kill us, thus beating all this things "mother nature" uses to control the size of our population?
Or will "mother nature" become smarter and start deleting us if we come close to that?

The point is, if all the germs, all those small beings that kill us, and all the natural products that are considered "toxic", dissapear, will we live "happily ever after"? Or will things become worse? Or is such a situation impossible. If we delete such threats the human being have, maybe we will be able to concentrate on ever more important things (like why the hell we are here), or this could help humans grow, keep spreading and go on to conquest the universe. But nature has always shown us that it can always bring us a new disease, or another earthquake/tornado.

[Rastafari]

nature is a regulatory system. I don't think that it can very fairly be looked at as trying to "beat nature," but humans will never have the capabilities to do so, especially when we kill ourselves at such high rates like we're doing now. In fact, I'd venture far enough out there to guess that we actually do have cures for some diseases that have a high incidence of affecting populations we deem unfit. Ailments that affect those in 3rd world areas are of no concern to us unless our policies make it so (e.g. Malaria in the Panama, Chagas today).

The State health care system is shifting towards more "lifestyle oriented" drugs anyway, and focusing less on actual "cures" for things.

[Individual]

Good topic. I've actually wondered similar things before.

The way I decided upon this was by looking back at history. If you look back at major diseases, the plague/black death for instance. Some things I believe come out of nowhere. Nobody saw the plague coming, yet it wiped out nearly 1/3 or Europe's population at the time. In modern day, look at Sars. Yes this is a cold-like virus. However it came out of nowhere. These diseases are harvested in animals/insects such as rats and mosquitos, and for all we know there could be another plague-like virus sitting in one single rat somewhere on this Earth. I believe that we have/ and will continue to find cures for many diseases, but I have to believe that mother nature can and will (in a weird sense, if you can believe in this or not) keep up with man kind. From looking back in history, all viruses have not been around since the day the Earth formed, and if they have been, they have been harvested in these animals. If either of these are the case, what is to stop another virus/bacteria from spreading that could cause world wide population decrease.

This theory is out there, however I think that no matter how far along we get in science, we will be outbeat, for nature is forever changing.

[Individual]

^comments?^

[Pete]

No we will not, for we are part of it. If we defeat nature we slit our own wrists and through ourselves in to the dark empty abandoned gutter.

We must rejoin with her (I tend to speak about nature in the femine, not as a diety but as a generative force of existance.. fertility linked ot cthonicism, to feminity in traditon) and truly be a being of this world, forgetting our current arrogant selfdefeating ways.

Sustainability can not come in growth or 'progress' but acceptance.

-Pete

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I believe all the diseases that exist today will be curable in the future.

but there will be new diseases.

I believe all today's natural disasters will be avoidable.

but there will be new disasters (Supernovas etc)

Nature will throw challenges at us all the time, but we will find solutions, eventually.

No we will not, for we are part of it. If we defeat nature we slit our own wrists and through ourselves in to the dark empty abandoned gutter.

We must rejoin with her (I tend to speak about nature in the femine, not as a diety but as a generative force of existance.. fertility linked ot cthonicism, to feminity in traditon) and truly be a being of this world, forgetting our current arrogant selfdefeating ways.

Sustainability can not come in growth or 'progress' but acceptance.

-Pete

This sounds like typical hippie rubbish.

[Pete]

You can call it hippie bullshit if you want, but that doesn't change the fact that we rely on the planet for life and if we seek to rape it more and more we will end up destroying it so we can not sustain ourselves.

I call that a fact of life, and those who deny it are just that, in denail.

[CorporationsRule]

"Will we ever beat nature?"

That question is the fundamental problem with the global monoculture currently consuming the earth.

I don't mean the fundamental problem "of" our cutlure. I mean with.

It's not something we need to answer. It's something we need never to have asked.

Only when that questions ceases to make sense will humanity have any chance at staving off extinction.

[redstar2000]

I'm not sure what a "final victory" over nature would actually mean.

But I see nothing in principle that would stop us from beating any particular threat that nature poses or might pose.

Around 130,000,000,000 years or so from now, the last stars will burn out...and that looks like a rather difficult problem to surmount.

But we have a lot of time to think about it.



The Redstar2000 Papers
A site about communist ideas

[Inti]

I dont think that we will have the cures for every new disease that approaches. I think it a miracle that mankind has been able to survive this far, because imagine all the diseases and stuff that has been around, they are always evolving, thus we will always be reacting on the new stuff that comes, we will never have anything in advance. Every time it seems that its more and more difficult to repel the new things that comes. And also because we are now able to travel around the world, we are mixing the germ pool of what they have in other parts of the world and thus, the bacterias and viruses are able to mutate and come back harder and harder..

[Felicia]

You can't "beat nature" it won't happen. Just as we develop drugs to fight off disease, the strain mutates and become resistant. It's about survival of the fittest, it's always been about that. And these viruses and bacteria were made to survive.

and we'll discover cures for diseases, but there will always be a bigger and stronger disease to take it's place. Technically humans are at the top of the food chain, but I seldom believe that.

EDIT:

Besides! Why should we even try to "beat" nature? Nature is a beautiful thing, and someday i'll be a hermit