Why I Consider the Morality of Modern Environmentalist Mindset Shared by a Majority of my Peers is Vastly Flawed Part 3: Am I a sociopath?

I thought it was only appropriate to have my first opinion-based blog post be an elaboration on my last facebook wall post, where I mentioned as an example how I am morally opposed to recycling.  Unfortunately, I soon realized that I had a lot more to say about this subject than I thought, so I'm going to break this post down into four posts to make it easier to read.  You can check back here over the next four days to read it in chunks in order to prevent you, dear reader, from looking at six pages worth of material and saying "fuck that shit".  As always, feel free to comment.

So why do I personally want to expedite the current extinction trend caused primarily by human actions?  First, I much rather allow mass extinction to occur within the next thousands of years and let new organisms evolve rather than keep our current ecosystem on life-support.  It may be a combination of nerdy/geeky desire to see crazy new species evolve to fill some sort of human blasted landscape, but it’s my desire nonetheless.  I consider wishing to save the current environment as a wish to perform an abortion on potential new species.  Secondly, it would be pretty impressive if the human species could ACTUALLY fuck up the earth at such a scale as to put cyanobacteria and natural disasters to shame.  Thirdly, I like the immediate side effects to a complete ecological disaster if it were in fact to occur relatively soon (like within a couple hundred years).  One side effect would be increased fungal growth and evolution, and as I stated before I respect fungi more than all other groups of life (maybe I’ll make a short nerdy post gushing about why I love fungus later). 

I don't care if they constantly produce deadly toxic spores, I want to live in a post-apocalyptic world
filled with huge forests of fungi as seen in Nausicaa:Valley of the Wind.  

More importantly, human technological and possibly even physical evolution would benefit greatly from a dire situation like this.  Contrary to common sense, life-threatening situations seem to do wonders for a population of any size or species.  That fight-or-flight reflex which is in all of us does wonders for getting rid of the weak and promoting the capable.  For instance, when a bacterial population is exposed to an antibacterial drug then most of the population will get killed except for that solidarity freak that is naturally immune.  That immune bacterium will be able to spread his resistance to the surviving population causing them to evolve into a newer, stronger, drug-resistant bacteria population.  To continue my ill-advised use of examples that end in outcomes that you don't want thus emotionally triggering you to disagree with me, this works in human society too.  When Germany got its ass handed to it in WWI, it was left with great shame and a big bill.  Being backed in a corner inspired the German people to develop a powerful fascist state; reenergizing their people, taking over a large part of Europe, and …killing a lot of innocents…. Errrr…. You get my point.  When stuck in a really bad situation, life knows to either put up or shut up, and those worthy will rise to the situation.  And with humans, this isn’t just limited to physical evolution but the innovation of new ideas and memes.  If humans are faced with a seemingly impossible problem (like living on an Earth with dwindling resources) then I guarantee that we will fight back with pioneering and hard work.  The genius men and women in this world that normally have their voices droned out when they’re not immediately need will be turned to in a time of panic.  They will save the human race from extinction.  And the only thing I desire more than seeing fungal evolution is human technological, scientific, and artistic advancement.  And if we can’t step up to the plate and beat our own extinction, then so be it.  We lost far and square.  So in order to create a future Earth where a massive extinction causes another fungal renaissance while our scientists become heroes saving humanity from destruction, and a far future with a fascinating new Earth and an efficient and advanced human society flung around the stars, I have to do my part to avoid “saving the environment” in the way the ascendant moral values of our society demands from us.

Why I Don't Recycle Part 2: Nature? I hardly knew her!

I thought it was only appropriate to have my first opinion-based blog post be an elaboration on my last facebook wall post, where I mentioned as an example how I am morally opposed to recycling.  Unfortunately, I soon realized that I had a lot more to say about this subject than I thought, so I'm going to break this post down into four posts to make it easier to read.  You can check back here over the next four days to read it in chunks in order to prevent you, dear reader, from looking at six pages worth of material and saying "fuck that shit".  As always, feel free to comment.

First, I feel like I should apologize for that terrible excuse for a post title joke.  In all fairness, I'm an idiot.  Anyway, now for a major point in my argument that I realized about 2 years ago; a point that no one has really countered yet seems hesitant to agree with me.  It’s the argument to end all “appeals to nature”, which in of itself is a vastly flawed argument.  In keeping up with my lazy-man style armchair philosopher, I will unabashingly quote the definition from its Wikipedia article, saving me the trouble of putting it in my own words.   “Appeal to nature is a fallacy of relevance consisting of a claim that something is good or right because it is natural, or that something is bad or wrong because it is unnatural or artificial. In this type of fallacy, nature is often implied as an ideal or desired state of being, a state of how things were, should be, or are: in this sense an appeal to nature may resemble an appeal to tradition.”  It’s a terrible argument in the first place because: “Several problems exist with this type of argument that makes it a fallacy. First, the word "natural" is often a loaded term, usually unconsciously equated with normality, and its use in many cases is simply a form of bias. Second, "nature" and "natural" have vague definitions and thus the claim that something is natural may not be correct by every definition of the term natural; a good example would be the claim of all-natural foods, such as "all-natural" wheat, the claimed wheat though is usually a hybridized plant that has been bred by artificial selection.  Lastly, the argument can quickly be invalidated by a counter-argument that demonstrates something that is natural that has undesirable properties (for example aging, illness, and death are natural), or something that is unnatural that has desirable properties (for example, many modern medicines are not found in nature, yet have saved countless lives).”  Yet people will still use this argument to justify their opinions regardless, whether it is an argument for “natural” foods by hippies or for “natural” marriage by the religious.  So to make this already flawed argument even more useless, I posit a question to those who make statements about what is natural or not: What the fuck is unnatural?

The term unnatural usually applies to three things: artificially made objects and outcomes like a building or a drought caused by a man-made dam; the supernatural like ghosts; and things that are the opposite of the norm like homosexuality.  First off, let’s get the irrelevant supernatural point out of this discussion because it’s mostly used in reference to things that are either natural laws yet to be discovered by man or the rantings of crazy people.   As for the other two- what exactly is unnatural?  An ax?  It’s made out of wood and stone from “nature”.  The White House?  Stone, wood, mortar, glass (made from sand, and totally found in “nature” sometimes too), etc.  The computer you’re reading this on?  Minerals, metals, plastic, electricity, all found in or harvested from “natural” products.  Ok, fine, how about the fact that they were made by humans, and not just created for “natural” reasons like survival and reproduction but stupid shit like Snuggies and plush Pikachu dolls?  Oh, you mean the humans that evolved from the same puddle of lipids and RNA molecules like every other living thing on this earth?  The tool use that plenty of animals and arguably plants have exhibited?  Or the complicated desires that humans have built up over the thousands of years of Homo sapiens evolution?  

"Complicated" would be a good way to describe
my own Snuggie-related desires.

What part of that is unnatural?  It’s not like a dimensional rift opened up one day and granted us extra-dimensional materials, knowledge, or ideas.  Some biblical god or gods didn’t one day bless us with extra-natural powers.  Our continued survival, technical knowledge, and need to paint ourselves arbitrary colors to support a group of men throwing a ball of swine skin around a field of painted grass are the outcomes of the natural processes of evolution, time, and luck.  Our needs, no matter how complex, are simply instincts made unusual over time and evolution.  And even the things that may not be the norm, or majority, in a collected population sample, like homosexuality, is not caused by anything not already found in nature.  Tools, human thought, and society are all natural.  And unless you’ve had personal contact with extra-dimensional beings, I challenge you to think of anything unnatural.  There is no unnatural.  There is only nature.  The appeal to nature is irrelevant.

So without the appeal to nature, the question of whether or not to protect “nature” is neutralized.  The loggers cutting down a forest are a natural occurrence, as is the protestors chaining themselves to the tree to save its life.   Which side you stand depends entirely on your personal choice, and shouldn’t be beholden to anyone else’s moral standpoint.