Are human beings a virus?

[BreakfastSurreal]

A virus is a disease that infects a host. The earth is our host...all we do is multiply and destroy natural resources....my friends told me an interesting story the other day that made me think.
They said that what if one day we travelled into deep space, and encountered an alien. We would try and make contact, and then what if when we told them we were from earth they said "Everything on your planet is a virus. We have wiped out life on your planet several times, but it just keeps coming back....by the way, everything coming from your planet is Kill on sight..."

this little story brought an interesting perspective to my thoughts on this.

 

[memento_mori]

sure, we could be a virus. we cant really live with out the earth or some kind of planet. so until we live in spaceships outside of the earth, and we cant live with out the earth, then you can claim us to be a virus.

 

[Keight]

Its an interesting way of looking at it thats for sure, the human race does destroy things always looking for a better everything, life and its necessities are limitless and more and more is being discovered every day, making the planet suffer. I sure as hell don't want to be the one that stands in front of a population of people and says "oops im sorry our planet has been destroyed"

 

[BreakfastSurreal]

I think our problem is that we are too busy fighting about stupid things like religion, and just petty arguments that will never go anywhere, and that is slowing the progress of our advancements down...If the entire human race was threatened by a non human source...then I can bet you we would forget about all of our stupid differences and learn to work together for a common goal...if Everyone was unified and all our resources were pulled together, I bet you we could be off of this planet in 10 years. The Earth is dying...we already know we cant "fix" shit like that, because no one cares enough and no one will until it's too late. Space is the new frontier, and we need to find a new planet to suck the life out of.

 

[IntruderLS1]

The earth is our host...all we do is multiply and destroy natural resources.

Agent Smith says "Yes."

"It's the smell"

 

[IntruderLS1]

I think our problem is that we are too busy fighting about stupid things like religion, and just petty arguments that will never go anywhere, and that is slowing the progress of our advancements down...If the entire human race was threatened by a non human source...then I can bet you we would forget about all of our stupid differences and learn to work together for a common goal...if Everyone was unified and all our resources were pulled together, I bet you we could be off of this planet in 10 years. The Earth is dying...we already know we cant "fix" shit like that, because no one cares enough and no one will until it's too late. Space is the new frontier, and we need to find a new planet to suck the life out of.

I don't think I would give up on Earth quite yet, but I do agree with you, we need to figure our crap out down here.

In the next 10 - 20 years or so, we're going to be living on the moon IMO. There's a bunch of Helium-3 up there, and if we ever figure out how to keep a fusion reactor together, we could use it to power Earth without the need for dino-blood.

 

[Reaver]

I think our problem is that we are too busy fighting about stupid things like religion, and just petty arguments that will never go anywhere, and that is slowing the progress of our advancements down...If the entire human race was threatened by a non human source...then I can bet you we would forget about all of our stupid differences and learn to work together for a common goal...if Everyone was unified and all our resources were pulled together, I bet you we could be off of this planet in 10 years. The Earth is dying...we already know we cant "fix" shit like that, because no one cares enough and no one will until it's too late. Space is the new frontier, and we need to find a new planet to suck the life out of.

lol. you really think so? *obvious sarcasm*

I agree though, if all the people on Earth would just work together, we could accomplish SO much more than we could probably even imagine. Keeping secrets, fighting wars... amazing what world peace can do for a civilization, in theory. Unfortunately, it would appear that humans are incapable of sharing the Earth with one another. But its something to strive for, that's for sure.

 

[BreakfastSurreal]

well. we can start with offtopicz...then next..the WORLD! Who's with me?! VIVA LA REVOLUCIONNNN! ok im jk. haha. For real though, who wants to start working on some major scientific advancements with me? I'm gonna figure out how we can transmute any element into any other element. That would kick ass.

 

[UncleBacon]

Agent Smith says "Yes."

"It's the smell"

haha beat me to it

 

[Peter Parka]

I think our problem is that we are too busy fighting about stupid things like religion, and just petty arguments that will never go anywhere, and that is slowing the progress of our advancements down...If the entire human race was threatened by a non human source...then I can bet you we would forget about all of our stupid differences and learn to work together for a common goal...if Everyone was unified and all our resources were pulled together, I bet you we could be off of this planet in 10 years. The Earth is dying...we already know we cant "fix" shit like that, because no one cares enough and no one will until it's too late. Space is the new frontier, and we need to find a new planet to suck the life out of.

Most people would probably not pull together, just blame the goverment!

 

[All Else Failed]

Well one thing is for certain, we are really good at destroying things around us, each other and ourselves. We are worse than viruses in some respects.

 

[sharpies]

I don't think that we are a virus, although much of our behaviour could be interpreted that way, but I do think that humans have lost sight of one very important point.

The Earth does not need us to survive, we need it.

It's always been my belief that as a species we are doomed, there are quite a few reasons for that.

Humans are not exactly great guests - we have a tendency to overuse everything. I think that we have become too reliant on our own creations & nature has shown us many times that these things can be taken away very easily. Just watch the number of deaths when you lose electricity for a couple of days in winter or a city floods.

Don't worry, once we are all gone it will only take a couple of hundred thousand years for Earth to recover completely.

Allan

 

[Tegan]

Well, we know we are doomed at some point anyway because there WILL be another mass extinction event on this planet. It's not a matter of if, but when. So as a race, we either need to pull in the same direction and colonize space, or we can consider the Human race to be walking dead.

 

[Magic P]

well. we can start with offtopicz...then next..the WORLD! Who's with me?! VIVA LA REVOLUCIONNNN! ok im jk. haha. For real though, who wants to start working on some major scientific advancements with me? I'm gonna figure out how we can transmute any element into any other element. That would kick ass.

I am with ya.

 

[Magic P]

Most people would probably not pull together, just blame the goverment!

That's what I thought! But actually government is in charge of those things so yeah.

 

[icecuban]

i think to say people are, would be a generalization. you can look at some people and say, wow, virus, no way. they keep down the breeding, they actually help animals (which other animals dont, or if they can, not as many as we choose to, even if it is against "natural selection" we have heart to do it), people who choose to help anyone under the sun. since these are people, you cant say "people" are a virus, or mankind, just a large majority of them i guess. and if we did go into space, its like i always say...damn i hope we fix shit here before we go out there, or else we will infect more then just the earth....

 

[GraceAbounds]

A virus is a disease that infects a host. The earth is our host...all we do is multiply and destroy natural resources....my friends told me an interesting story the other day that made me think.
They said that what if one day we travelled into deep space, and encountered an alien. We would try and make contact, and then what if when we told them we were from earth they said "Everything on your planet is a virus. We have wiped out life on your planet several times, but it just keeps coming back....by the way, everything coming from your planet is Kill on sight..."

this little story brought an interesting perspective to my thoughts on this.

Parasites yes, viruses no. heh!

 

[Maritxu]

I'm too much of a humanitarian to think so bad about us humans. I really have hope for the human race and I hope to never lose it (even though it's hard) till I die.

 

[Kyryahn]

Well imo the problem is we're all in our everyday consumerist behavior destroying our planet. When was the last time you checked the package of products before you'd bought them to see whether it was easily recycled?
It's because you don't have the feeling you're really impacting the environment, you're saying to yourself "bah there are billions of people like me doing the same, what would it change if I stopped?". So the billions people don't stop.
If manking was faced with a sudden situation and a choice between consumerism and our planet, I'm sure we would take the good one for our planet. But the problem is, it's a very slow degradation, and individuals don't think it's worthy to lose their confort and luxury to reduce by 0,0000000001% the pollution and degration of the Earth. So no one (except a few called hippies and seen as strange) is willing to really do it seriously.
It's like voting... if you have the choice between a leisure day (like non stop sex!) and going to vote, you'll chose the 1st (and I'd do too) because you don't think your irresponsability would really impact the result (just one voice among millions, after all). But when everyone begins to act this way, then it becomes really problematic.

I really think the solution, if there's ever one, will come from the governments who are the only ones able to enforce a behavior individuals wouldn't naturally adopt.

 

[Maritxu]

I think the goverment does have to enforce enviromental policies, at least for people to make it part of their rutine to recycle, and learn that as part of what we could call the culture. In countries like Germany, they are very advance when it comes to this.