Category Archives: Discussion and Philosophy

The World Would NOT Be Better Without Us

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Every so often someone–sometimes someone I know–tosses out a line that boils down to something like, “Well, the world would be better off without us.”

I understand that we humans have had an outsized effect on our environment and that this has been hard on many other species (and the end of some), but really? Let’s discuss this.

First, what do people mean when they say, “The world would be better off without us?” The world is not a being. In what sense could the world itself be better or worse off? What are the standards of welfare for a planet?

I think by “the world” people must mean “the animals of the world” or perhaps even “the living beings of the world.” I did once read an article where the author spoke anthropomorphically about glaciers, saying something like, “Is X a problem? Just ask the glaciers,” as though they had an opinion, but I can’t see how one would evaluate the welfare of geological formations, or why.

So let’s assume that in this context, people are thinking about the living organisms in the world rather than the world itself. In that case, how can we interpret “The world would be better off without us?”

Some people probably mean that there would be a greater number of different species in the world if we weren’t around to destroy habitats and drive some species to extinction. In this case, “better off” means “more varied” or “more diverse.” Other people probably mean that without us, there would be more tigers and polar bears, for instance. Many species would be more populous without us around, so those species would be “better off.”

Let’s consider the first interpretation. Without humans, there probably would be a greater number of species in the world. After all, we (as a species) take up an enormous amount of space and resources. We build cities, devote large tracts of land to single species crops, and we have hunted some animals to extinction.

Furthermore, ecosystems do need a great variety of species. There are so many niches to be filled: predators, prey, photosynthesizers, decomposers, and many versions of each of these to suit all the varied environments that exist. But why suppose the world would be better if it had the greatest possible number of species in it? Doesn’t it just need enough?

Moving to the second interpretation, yes, there would likely be more tigers and polar bears (and orangutans and so on) if humans weren’t around. (Of course, there would probably be fewer rats and cockroaches.) But “better for tigers” is not the same as “better for the world.” Just ask the deer and wild pigs in their habitats. And “Tigers would be better off without us” doesn’t have the same ring as “The world would be better off without us.”

To be clear, I do care what happens to other species. One really special feature of humans is our ability to care about members of species not our own–and not just as a means to our own survival. We genuinely value polar bears and tigers, as well as many smaller, less visually impressive species. We do think the world is a better place when it includes such species (as long as they aren’t eating us or giving us zoonotic diseases.)

We value a lot of other things as well, though. Songs, sunsets, and Marvel Avengers movies. Chocolate cake, cool outfits, and the Taj Mahal. Intricate clockwork devices, roller coasters, and glaciers. Of these, only the sunsets and glaciers would exist without us.

From whose perspective would the world be better without us? We are the only species whose members care whether other species flourish. Hawks care about mice only insofar as they need to eat them, but have no interest in the welfare of koalas. Koalas have no interest in mice, and neither of them care about polar bears.

In any case, I am human and my evaluations are inevitably from a human perspective. I value human beings, their capacity to care, and their capacity to create. I cannot agree that the world would be better without us. I can agree that the world would be better if we did not mess up the existing natural balance–and not just because it is going to come back to hurt us. The way nature is organized is a beautifully intricate web that took several billion years to develop, and it is fascinating in its own right, as well as essential to our survival.

So why do people–people who presumably value other humans-sometimes say the world would be better off without us? I have even heard people suggest that if we drive ourselves into extinction, we will have deserved it, as though humans as a species were morally evil. What’s that about?

I think the answer is misplaced guilt. If tigers are worse off because of us, if passenger pigeons are extinct because of us, then, the reasoning apparently goes, we must have done wrong. And if we as a species have done wrong to so many other species, surely we deserve some sort of punishment. Perhaps we deserve to go extinct ourselves?

No! Absolutely not. I’m not saying we haven’t done any wrong to specific individual animals, or that we don’t owe animals any consideration. But in the main, all we’ve done is consume and multiply, just like every other species in existence. That we have been so wildly, incredibly successful at this is what creates our current problems. But it doesn’t make us an evil species.

All species consume and multiply, up to and often beyond their available resources. If they outstrip their resources, the result is famine, often disease, and ultimately a population crash. Thus nature reduces their numbers to something more sustainable. We humans have been very inventive in finding ways to extend our available resources and find new resources to exploit, but we can only carry this so far. Unlike other species, we can foresee the eventual consequences, and we have the ability to change our behavior in response.

Hopefully we actually will change our behavior. Nature doesn’t care whether seven billion humans gets reduced to six billion, or five billion, or even one billion. Nature doesn’t care whether there are any humans at all. But we care. We care a lot.

The world wouldn’t be better off without us. So let’s keep that from happening.

Till next post.

Games as practice for life–losing

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Two games we have been playing recently, and a tray for rolling dice.

These past few weeks, we’ve been playing a new game, Fantastic Factories, as well as the old favorite, Ark Nova.* I always find learning new rules difficult at first, and maybe that’s why my mind went back to games as practice for life. In this case, as practice for losing (though I’ve been doing pretty well with Fantastic Factories so far.)

Let’s face it–losing is disappointing. It’s more fun to win. And yet, unless you are playing a cooperative game, someone is bound to lose and it may be you. So you have to be able to lose well. You need to be able to lose without either acting out (like a petulant child) or giving up on the game altogether.

Acting out is particularly bad. No one likes a sore loser. This is one of the more obvious lessons kids learn from playing games, along with taking turns, following rules, and being a gracious winner. If you are known for upsetting the board when things don’t go your way, other kids won’t want to play with you. (Talking to you, Ali B.!) This is clearly true in life as well. (And now I’m looking at some politicians…)

Only a bit less obviously, you need to be able to lose and not give up on the game. If every loss is so upsetting that you refuse to play again, you miss out on the fun you can have in playing. You also miss out on the opportunity to get better at playing and so start winning some games.

Similarly, in life every skill you learn starts off with you doing very poorly. For example, if you’re trying to get published, well… how many agent-rejections am I up to now? Sixty? Eighty? More than one hundred? (It’s still early days.)

So what helps a person lose well? Here I’m going to digress a bit. In games where you are focused on building things or completing projects, and where winning is mostly about being more successful in your projects than your opponent, it is perhaps easier to deal with losing because you can still feel you were very successful. It’s just that the other guy was even more successful. In games where the competition is more direct–you can’t both take the same trick in a card game, for instance–your current status if you are losing feels more sharply obvious.

One thing that helps is perspective. It’s just a game. There will be other games.Obviously this is not true of life, but in life, particular episodes of loss are just that–episodes. There is more to your life than this one loss.

Hope also matters. It’s hard to have fun when things are clearly going badly for you, when all your plans and stratagems are being frustrated. So long as you feel, “But I can still win!”, you have hope. At some point, depending on the game, it may become obvious that you are going to lose. But if you can reasonably think, “Well, next time I will do this differently…” then you still have hope, even if it is no longer focused on the game at hand.

So losing in games is practice for losing in life. I’m not suggesting that this is why people should play games. That would be like suggesting people should eat broccoli because it is nutritious, instead of because it is (when properly prepared) delicious. No, you should play games because they are fun. And like anything else in life, some games will appeal to you more than others. So my point, I suppose, is that you should seek out games that appeal to you and those you play with, and play them.

And practice losing well.

Till next post.

*Because sometimes you don’t have time for a three hour game.

Hope–in poetry, fiction, and life

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Let me start by sending you to a poem, “Hope” by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.

Now that you’ve read what it says, so nicely and concisely, I’m going to talk about hope at more length.

Hope leads us from where we are, a place where we can’t see how things are going to work out, to that unknown future where, quite possibly, things really do work out. We can’t know in advance what that future will look like and there are no guarantees–except perhaps that if we don‘t keep moving, we will never get there.

There are two things I want to say about hope. The first is that sometimes we despair because we think we know more than we do. We think we know what is required to save the day, and also that we are unequal to the task. So we lose hope.

In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo is faced with a nearly impossible task. Go to Mordor? “One does not simply walk into Mordor”, as the popular quotation from the movie goes. Much less does one walk in while carrying the One Ring and hope to escape detection long enough to drop it in Mount Doom.

But Frodo accepts the task anyway, “though I do not know the way.”

You know how the story goes. There are others who can show him the way, even the way into Mordor. Help comes from unexpected sources, and in very unexpected ways. Frodo can anticipate none of this. And as he plods forward through the hostile wasteland that is Mordor, he has no way to know that in the White City, Aragorn has learned Frodo is alive and is planning desperate measures to keep Sauron from looking his way.

The day always needs saving, from one threat or another, but you aren’t responsible for saving it. Only for doing your bit.

The second thing I want to say about hope is that it is amazing what we can accomplish together when we have a clear, urgent goal.

Here I’ll move into real examples. Remember the Tham Luang cave rescue? (If not, there are documentaries you can watch.) Twelve kids and their soccer coach were stranded in a cave in Thailand. The Royal Thai Navy Seals and expert divers and rescue workers from all over the world put their skills to work to get them out. The route was long and incredibly difficult, and one diver died in the process. But they did get the kids out.

And then there are the Covid vaccines. People all over the world poured knowledge, skills, and funding into the effort, and the vaccines were developed faster than we had any reason to expect. Death rates dropped, and family gatherings recommenced.

Working together is harder when the goal isn’t as clear as “get the kids out of the cave” or as urgent as “because huge numbers of people are dying daily right now and all our lives have been turned upside down.” But hard isn’t impossible. And again, it isn’t all on your shoulders. Other people are also at work.

To be clear, these examples could have gone very differently. The kids could have died in the cave or on the way out. We could still be waiting for a vaccine for Covid. The point is not that we always succeed when we devote ourselves to a task–we don’t–but that we sometimes do manage incredible feats. Therein lies hope.

I’m going to end with a couple of lines from a song. I like these lines because they seem counterintuitive at first. So, from “Trip Around the Sun”, (I prefer Jimmy Buffet, but here’s Stephen Bruton as well)

“I’m just hanging on while this old world keeps spinning.

And it’s good to know it’s out of my control…”

Can you imagine being responsible for keeping the earth spinning?

Till next post.

P.S. I want to thank the neighbor around the block who periodically inscribes poems on the sidewalk in chalk. I think this started during the pandemic, and I have enjoyed both the poems I recognized and the opportunity to discover some new favorites. “Hope” is a new favorite.