Antenora
Detriment Deleter
Fiendish Philologist
Put down that harpoon gun, in the name of these wonderful birds!
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Post by Antenora on Aug 16, 2004 9:51:11 GMT -5
Just some philosophical ramblings....
I have been asking myself: How significant is one human life, the life of an average person? The answer: It depends on what scale you measure significance on.
If I were to suddenly vanish, my disappearance would effect thousands of people, not just those living near me. The internet and other forms of communication connect people from opposite sides of the globe; we are all connected and thus events in one person's life can influence many, many others.
But one person's death could hardly effect the planet or the solar system as a whole. We are insignificant on a cosmic scale. In fact, if Earth were to blow up, the rest of the solar system and the galaxy would remain pretty much the same. And if our galaxy exploded the universe as a whole would be unaffected. So in conclusion, we are significant to each other, but insignificant to the universe. Um, discuss.
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Post by Soidanae on Aug 16, 2004 10:45:01 GMT -5
Quite right.
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Post by sonicflood on Aug 16, 2004 10:49:58 GMT -5
no cuz god made us so that we are important in his eye more than anyone else and the universe is made by god who loves us, so we r significant to the universe
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Post by Soidanae on Aug 16, 2004 11:02:03 GMT -5
Goddamn that's arrogance. Who made God, hmmm? Where does og dexist if not in the universe which he created? Why the hell do we need a damn God? Why can't humanity accept that we're insignificant dust specks?
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Antenora
Detriment Deleter
Fiendish Philologist
Put down that harpoon gun, in the name of these wonderful birds!
Posts: 15,891
Likes: 113
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Post by Antenora on Aug 16, 2004 11:04:37 GMT -5
There is a way we could be special in the universe: We could be the most intelligent life forms, or even the only ones, but I doubt that. There are bound to be habitable planets somewhere, even if they're rare. As of now we have no way to find Earthlike planets.
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Luigi
Bewildered Beginner
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Post by Luigi on Aug 16, 2004 13:53:48 GMT -5
J: Thanks to Soidanae and Fowl Devotee for saying all I would've said. C: Saved us a lot of time and suffering. And you a lot of time and suffering, because J would've made it sound stupid and incomprehensible.
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Post by Soidanae on Aug 16, 2004 14:23:25 GMT -5
Sorry, swans, it was a bit late at night, I was rambling. The arrogance was the anthropomorphicness of the statement, not the mention of God.
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Post by Celinra on Aug 16, 2004 14:44:52 GMT -5
Let's see... on a cosmic scale, are we significant? At this point, no. But who is to say this will never happen? It used to be that what happened on one continent would have no effect on other continents. But then with advanced travel (i.e. airplanes) and communications (i.e. phone, internet), a person can easily reach all the way around the world. A vaccine which may have been hard to send to all who needed it a few hundred years ago can easily be distributed now. What I'm trying to say is, with the advancements we've made already, we're each more significant to more people. That could happen with our galaxy someday, if technology becomes great enough. And until then, people now still affect the future galaxy, in a way... astronauts, for example, are paving the way to the new advancements needed to bridge the universe, so even if they seem insignificant on a cosmic scale now, it may one day be realized that they were highly significant in the long run.
I really hope that made sense to somebody.
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Antenora
Detriment Deleter
Fiendish Philologist
Put down that harpoon gun, in the name of these wonderful birds!
Posts: 15,891
Likes: 113
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Post by Antenora on Aug 16, 2004 15:01:01 GMT -5
Interesting thoughts, Celinra. It's true that if we spread out to other planets and gain more technology, we'll have more of an effect on the universe. We're already affecting our own planet with our technology, but we have to be more careful not to disrupt ecosystems. The universe is interconnected, like Swans said. Have you heard of the butterfly effect? A butterfly flapping its wings in China can cause a storm in New York weeks later by initiating small changes in air currents. However, events on our planet would be unlikely to affect the galaxy or universe as a whole. I hope that was coherent; I'm rambling a lot today.
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Post by MelonB1088 on Aug 16, 2004 15:14:30 GMT -5
M: We're not significant, except to other humans. Endy: And the other humans are only significant to other humans. M: We're significant to each other, but to nothing else. Endy: And there is no God to make us significant to anything or anyone else. M: We're on our own on this earth.
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Post by Celinra on Aug 16, 2004 17:51:43 GMT -5
M: We're not significant, except to other humans. Endy: And the other humans are only significant to other humans. M: We're significant to each other, but to nothing else. Endy: And there is no God to make us significant to anything or anyone else. M: We're on our own on this earth. I disagree... we affect a lot more than just other humans on this planet. If animals are kept as pets, their people are significant to them, because they provide food and such. For animals in the wild, they're also affected by humans, either by hunters who try to decrease their numbers, or conservationists who try to raise their numbers, or by people who don't mean to affect them at all, but are becoming more and more populated, causing the animals to lose land. Same with plants and such, those are affected heavily by people as well, for basically the same reason (people want land, rainforests are cut down). Not to mention the ozone hole... I'd say that humans have affected their world quite a bit. And, if we affect other humans, I don't see why we wouldn't be able to affect extraterrestrials if we ever had the technology to meet them. Another thing... people can have a greater effect than they seem to have while they're living. For example, a person steps on an insect, which would have been the ancestor to hundreds of it's kind, which birds would eat... due to this, a bird isn't able to eat, so it dies, so it has no descendants... it's descendants would have been food for a wolf, so it dies.... and so on. Every little thing we do affects something, whether we know it or not, whether it's recognized as a result of something we did or not.
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Antenora
Detriment Deleter
Fiendish Philologist
Put down that harpoon gun, in the name of these wonderful birds!
Posts: 15,891
Likes: 113
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Post by Antenora on Aug 16, 2004 17:56:27 GMT -5
Another good point you have there. Although everything on this planet can affect anything else here, it would be (nearly)impossible for a small event on Earth to have cosmic consequences. You can think of our planet as a closed system: All objects within the system is connected to each other, but none are connected to anything beyond it(although that may change as we explore space more). It's sort of a paradoxical situation--an event can be both significant(to Earth) and insignificant(to the universe).
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Post by MelonB1088 on Aug 16, 2004 18:03:48 GMT -5
I disagree... we affect a lot more than just other humans on this planet. If animals are kept as pets, their people are significant to them, because they provide food and such. For animals in the wild, they're also affected by humans, either by hunters who try to decrease their numbers, or conservationists who try to raise their numbers, or by people who don't mean to affect them at all, but are becoming more and more populated, causing the animals to lose land. Same with plants and such, those are affected heavily by people as well, for basically the same reason (people want land, rainforests are cut down). Not to mention the ozone hole... I'd say that humans have affected their world quite a bit. And, if we affect other humans, I don't see why we wouldn't be able to affect extraterrestrials if we ever had the technology to meet them. Another thing... people can have a greater effect than they seem to have while they're living. For example, a person steps on an insect, which would have been the ancestor to hundreds of it's kind, which birds would eat... due to this, a bird isn't able to eat, so it dies, so it has no descendants... it's descendants would have been food for a wolf, so it dies.... and so on. Every little thing we do affects something, whether we know it or not, whether it's recognized as a result of something we did or not. M: Ok, so we're important to more than just humans. Endy: We're important to everything on this earth. It's a web of...inter-connectedness. M: But on a larger scale, a real scale, a cosmic scale, we're nothing.
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Post by Addieor on Aug 16, 2004 19:21:33 GMT -5
Sam! Gah.........whatever.........I'm in no mood or with any energy to lecture.
Of course, the significance of a human life matters on what you compare it to. What scale you use. It's about comparison. But, what confuses me is that, there have been wars in which 50,000 people die, YET someone talked about 15 people dying as a big thing. And, of course, not compared to the 50,000, it might be a big thing. I compare things to the largest/most extreme thing I've seen and ask myself if comapred, is it a big thing? AND, things like, WHO you are and how important someothers find you are important as well.
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Post by Soidanae on Aug 16, 2004 19:23:27 GMT -5
6 people dead is a tragedy. 6 million is a statistic.
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