I was watching Deep Jungle on tv the other day. And for once, a tv show actually made a point.
They were simply pointing out what caused the end to great empires and cities, like Angkor Wat. I mean back in the day, that place was booming. At 1000 square kilometers, you can imagine. That's bigger than NYC. But what could cause the fall of such an empire?
Unsustainable expansion.
But development is inevitable, you shout. Wrong. We don't have to develop, aka continuing to destroy nature. It's just required to uphold the Ponsey(?) schemes we call economies. It eats growth - once there is no more capacity for growth, it collapses. Same exact concept here. They continued to cut down forest, farm and use the wood. They didn't know that there wasn't an endless supply of forest. They honestly didn't know any better when they decimated their landscape, and then Nature said 'You went too far' and the jungle reclaimed everything until about 400 years ago. I guess that's one point for the jungle.
See, my problem with this here is that in this 'information age' we know exactly what we are doing to the environment. We've known for years - it's not something new. We're not living thousands of years ago in the jungle without any thought of long-term consequences.
Yet we have the gall to call things like the manufacturing of endless cheapo goods in China, or the development of coastlines in south east asia 'progress'. But in our minds, we have not progressed from thousands of years ago. At least not all of us.
And in the end, this show points out, that us people...we think we're all just so different from the creatures that live around us. And we are, I guess. Just not in the way we thought. We're the only species on this earth with the capacity to save other species.
The question is, will we?
...by the looks of things, I think not. We're just heading toward being one big giant Angkor Wat. We're all gonna starve to death. :|
They were simply pointing out what caused the end to great empires and cities, like Angkor Wat. I mean back in the day, that place was booming. At 1000 square kilometers, you can imagine. That's bigger than NYC. But what could cause the fall of such an empire?
Unsustainable expansion.
But development is inevitable, you shout. Wrong. We don't have to develop, aka continuing to destroy nature. It's just required to uphold the Ponsey(?) schemes we call economies. It eats growth - once there is no more capacity for growth, it collapses. Same exact concept here. They continued to cut down forest, farm and use the wood. They didn't know that there wasn't an endless supply of forest. They honestly didn't know any better when they decimated their landscape, and then Nature said 'You went too far' and the jungle reclaimed everything until about 400 years ago. I guess that's one point for the jungle.
See, my problem with this here is that in this 'information age' we know exactly what we are doing to the environment. We've known for years - it's not something new. We're not living thousands of years ago in the jungle without any thought of long-term consequences.
Yet we have the gall to call things like the manufacturing of endless cheapo goods in China, or the development of coastlines in south east asia 'progress'. But in our minds, we have not progressed from thousands of years ago. At least not all of us.
And in the end, this show points out, that us people...we think we're all just so different from the creatures that live around us. And we are, I guess. Just not in the way we thought. We're the only species on this earth with the capacity to save other species.
The question is, will we?
...by the looks of things, I think not. We're just heading toward being one big giant Angkor Wat. We're all gonna starve to death. :|
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