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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch
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To: elpolvo who wrote (49263)6/17/2004 11:27:42 AM
From: Crocodile  Read Replies (1) of 89467
 
pick one.

after you've chosen your door, you will know your
purpose for being here on this thread... and being
on earth in this incarnation.

Hmmm.. let's see.

Is anything in the universe basically evil and dangerous
and so evil that it requires human or
humanlike-divine intervention to be forcibly
re-directed onto its proper course?"

Good thing the question wasn't directed to me.
But let's give this a try just for the heck of it.

Let me offer a personal "short list" of evil things.

Croc's Evil Short List:

* Orconectes rusticus -- an unusually prolific and inherently aggressive crayfish, once widely distributed by fish bait sellers, and dispersed into creeks across North America by fisherman who dump their bait into the river rather than properly disposing of the nasty little blighters. They rapidly take over and destroy any
other crayfish when introduced to a new location.

* Aedes albopictus (the Asian tiger mosquito) and Ochlerotatus japonicus -- both introduced species of disease-carrying mosquitoes transported around the world in water trapped in shipments of old tires. Both are capable of dispersing a wide range of diseases such as West Nile, dengue, etc..

* Benacus griseus -- the Eastern Toe-biter Water Beetle.
Just because I greatly fear his bite when I walk in
his native marshes in my bare feet while doing
habitat surveys.

Are each of the above evil in themselves?
No, probably not.
The stupidity of mankind has just made them seem to be so --

The first two on the list for the stupidity
behind their dispersal and proliferation...
and the last one for my determination to venture into
another creature's "home" habitat where I might
well be regarded as either a dangerous foe
or a tasty bit of flesh worthy of sampling.

So, what is mankind's role in the Universe?

Should we go around correcting our stupid errors?

Do we heroically rip out a few rare plants to "save" them
from that new housing development, and move them to
a new location, believing we are doing the "right thing"
in our efforts to preserve them?

Darned if "saving" them from destruction
didn't make us all feel good about ourselves.

But no. What's that pesky little twinge of uncertainty
in the back of our minds?
Perhaps we would have done better to have tried to
stop that development that ripped through that
one of a kind ravine to put up luxury condos?

I know! We shall weigh these out on our set
of Universal Scales!

Here we go.

Luxury condos ---- vs ---- a few dozen rare plants
in a ravine that took thousands of years to become
just that very micro-habitat.

$$$$$$ --- vs --- NATURE

Now, wasn't that easy?

I think we did the right thing, no?

Uhm...well.. we would like to think so....
... as we try (somewhat desperately)
to overlook the high probability that
these plants won't survive more than a year or two
in the "new home" that we've selected for them....
the one that we made by artificially irrigating it
and putting up some netting to keep the damned
birds and bugs from coming in and scratching up
or biting the hell out of everything...
the habitat that we had to boot a bunch of other
plants out of to make way for our salvaged endangered plants.

Getting bloody complicated, isn't it?

How do we figure out which of the above is evil?

Which shall we eradicate or reform or relocate
to stamp out in order to "right" the Balance of the Universe?

-croc
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