Continuous devastation Essay Example for Free

Continuous devastation EssayThe story of a jellyfish in Quinns book encounters quite an original psycho-philosophical get down to the problem of evolution. The story is do up in a form of a dialogue. A person, telling a story argues, that adult male is a highpoint of evolution, and the hostile applies something like a doctrine of relativity, explaining, that the populace has non always been made for macrocosm and it can be ascertained, that once the realism will be made for someone else once more. For the speaker, evolution has finished as public appe ared, because there is no more way to evolve, thusly, he advocates a theory of extremity of evolution.And while man is a final product of evolution, he can be mentioned as ultimate and supreme creature and the whole world is made for him. To contest much(prenominal) a conclusion the opponent turns to a relativistic approach, trying to concretize the concerned time. A jellyfish serves as example of such relativity, becau se in oddball a researcher appeared on the shore of an ocean 500 million years ago, he would find null more perfect, than a jellyfish on earth. Therefore, a jellyfish could reasonably believe, that it is a supreme creature, because man was effective to appear and has not yet become factual.The evolution ended with jellyfish and the world was made for jellyfish. For Quinn, the core difference between jellyfish and man in the matter of evolution is that a jellyfish does not tell stories, and a man does. Therefore, he invented a religious dogma to justify his superiority and to prove, that the evolution indeed ended with man. Nevertheless, religions remain human inventions and can serve as exculpation simply for other humans. The conclusion is quite pessimistic for humanity once there can appear a creature, which flyoveres man just as we overpass a jellyfish.Question 2 It should first be pointed, that Ishmael sees agriculture as violation of natural laws. Humans do not listen to t he vowel system of mother-nature which tells take what you need and leave the rest. In spite of doing so, man starts producing surpluses, taking more, than he needs. Production of surpluses leas to expansion of community in proportion to fodder supplies and is not limited by any cultural or technological barriers, in conclusion resulting in environmental and natural phenomena, which limit creation fatherth. Quinn compares such processes to a system of checks and balances.Womens fertility in the regions with high surpluses production lessens year after year, until it falls below reproduction rate. Quinn suggests, that population still continues to grow globally, although population may fall locally, and this depends on the type of society. Industrial societies are much less reproductive, since people have less incentive for reproduction. Agrarian societies and their members need a lot of children, often just of economic reasons, because children are future working force. For Qu inn there is one positive effect from present model of population growth.This is unsustainable public press on nature and biosphere, take to the woodsing to extension of about 200 species daily. The situation is especially dramatic in non-European countries, where industrialization, combined with traditionally high birth rates, would lead to catastrophic increase of pressure on nature. Question 3 The next link between fodder supplies and population growth, which is proposed by Quinn is embodied in enclosure food race. He compares such a race with the arms race during the Cold war. For him, human population is determined by food supplies just as with any other animals.In case food supplies grow population and civilization grow. Sometimes the inverse relationship is possible and food supplies grow as the population grows. Consequently, there are two variables population and food supplies, which are mutually dependant. The primary difference with the Malthusian catastrophe concept is that fro Quinn, population can never exceed its food supplies. It will just not grow big enough to consume more food, than it produces. Quinn himself explained, that the problem of Malthus is that How are we going to feed those people? , and his problem is How are we going to stop producing all those people?. So, Quinn saw population growth as function of food supplies with locate correlation between them. Under his concept, a population merely can not overgrow its food supplies, because more people are going to produce more food. Nevertheless, it can be pointed, that Quinn does not consider secondary factors, for example, ability of the Planet itself to produce enough food. Quinn believes, that there can be two endings for food race either abandonment, or catastrophe. It is therefore up to human discretion whether to sensually stop reproduction or face overpopulation and finally decline.Question 4 Quinn defined two major types of humans dependently on their attitude to nature Takers and Peacekeepers. Takers are those, who are usually referred as civilized. Their culture came to the world with the beginning of agricultural revolution 10 000 years ago. Takers considered themselves the masters of nature, for whom the world has been created, and so man has a right to conquer the world. They think, that the world belongs to man. The reverse of their ideas is a belief, that there is something fundamentally wrong with people.Man does not know how to live properly because that knowledge is unobtainable and related to some divine revelation. Peacekeepers, named Leavers by Quinn represent a pretty different approach. They consider themselves just a opus of Nature and try to limit their influence on it by taking nothing more than they need from their environment. They think, that a man belongs to world. Quinn uses an example of Cain and Abel. Cain symbolizes ancient tribes of farmers, who already acted as takers, and Abel presents prehistoric tribes of Semite he rders.Undoubtedly, herders have much smaller influence on nature, since they do nothing to change it. Killing Able by Cain, therefore, is s Symbol of Takers victory over Leavers. Takers indeed easily overcome the Leavers in the process of evolution, because they enjoy much greater opportunities to increase their food supplies and consequently the population. However, in the remote prospective, their way leads to disaster due to overpressure on nature. The Leavers approach is more respective to nature and allows to retain it for longer time, so prospectively the Leavers idea seems to be preferential.Question 5 Quinn uses a come in of a pedaling airman and an aircraft as a civilization metaphor. He speaks, that humans in the last several thousands of years are Takers, who are in the air, provided not in the flight. He compares a modern taking man to a person, who has brought some flying machine to a top of a cliff and attempts to fly. For some time he could really think, that he is able to fly, because his apparatus does not longer stand on the top of a cliff, and a man finds himself in the air. However, only a little time later a man discovers, that he flies down towards his death.Under Quinn, this happens, because man is not familiar with natural laws. He looks like an inventor, who attempts to fly without knowledge of laws of aerodynamics. Similarly, humanity, which is not aware of natural laws is probably to fall down. The basic mistake of a man is that he believes, that it is he, who pilots the aircraft, although it is piloted only by natural laws. Not having a sufficient instrument to make his machine fly, man looks like a pedaling pilot, who tries to move his plane by means of bicycle pedals.It is obvious, that pedals are not good enough to bring an aircraft into motion, so man falls down. Such fall is a direct result of Taker conviction, that the world is made for man. Many humans just ca not believe, that their effort to pilot such a strange aircraft would lead them only to death and annihilation. Question 6 The poster, which is observed by the character of a story puts forth one of the key questions of Quinns book. Gorilla here is likely to represent those other creations of nature, which share our planet with us, humans.It is impossible to say whether they should be reviewed separately from nature, Separation is human feature, and gorillas never tried to discriminate natural processes. So, they can both be regarded as nature itself and as inhabitants of that nature. The first part of a slogan With Gorilla gone, will there be hope for man is more or less clear. Quinn points, that continuous devastation of nature would lead to devastation of man, who can not survive without nature. The second part With man gone, will there be hope for Gorilla is less obvious.It can seem, that in case humanity died out, natural balance would be restored. In other words, gorilla does not need man to survive. To answer the question we should cons ider, that finally a man is also a part of nature, same as gorilla is, so distinguishing of man would also violate natural balance. Therefore, destroying humanity to save nature appears to be an extreme, same as extreme of humans supreme power over nature. So, humans need to find a third way a way of clever cooperation with nature. They need to once again become part of the world and be in a way similar to gorillas.