Is it true though? Do we really feel that way? Or do we think we are put on this planet to rule it as we see fit? The way I see us collectively behaving I'd say the latter. We really act as if we own the planet, much more than as if we're part of the living planet; we extract from it whatever we need to fulfill our wants, and reinforce this blatant disrespect by letting the Earth deal with all the waste we produce while getting and enjoying the things we want. And we somehow seem to think this is alright, that it somehow has to be this way...
This seems a very self-defeating, and self-destructive mindset to have, yet we persist in it. I'm going to use some wisdom from the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams, who once tried to explain how we, homo sapiens, got to that mindset of being rulers of the planet. He used this narrative in several lectures, speeches and television appearances, so I'll give you the essence of it.
Everybody knows how evolution works, but here's a simple example. Let's say that a group of a particular species of mammal gets forced out of the main population, maybe through a food shortage or some cataclysm. And let's say that group had to migrate to some place where it's a bit colder than what they were used to, then natural selection would, over several generations, "prefer" the genetic mutations that resulted in thicker fur. So if you'd see them generations later, that subspecies would have gotten thicker fur next to other possible adaptions to the lower temperatures.
source: PxHere
We humans don't do that anymore. Evolution in a biological sense has stopped for homo sapiens because we don't wait anymore to adapt to the environment; we adapt the environment to us. So, when we get into a colder area, we see several animals that already have the thicker fur, take it from them, and make nice warm clothes out of them. We've pretty much mastered our environment through cooperation, especially since we've also learned how to make and use tools. Tools, and building things with those tools are an important ingredient for the modern humans' mindset.
The ability to reason, to combine what we've learned from observations in the past, build from that abstract models for achieving an imagined future, has made us conclude some rather important things very early on in our cultural evolution. With greater understanding come greater questions, so when early man looked at the beautiful world around him, he naturally asked "who made all this?" Since we make things, we create things, it must mean that "things" big and small are made. The Maker must therefore be somewhat like us, a builder. Obviously MUCH BIGGER because the world is rather large. And He must be invisible too...
Since builders build things for a reason the next natural question to pop up, is "why did He build all this?" Since early man found everything in nature to survive and prosper, he quickly came to the conclusion that all of this must have been made by Him for us. Watch and listen to Douglas Adam finish this story by comparing it to the mindset of a puddle of rainwater in the video below this post. No, really, watch it.
Let's try to not end like that puddle! In the description of video is a link to "Parrots, The Universe, and Everything", a book-tour talk by Douglas Adams given in early 2001 at the University of California just one month prior to his passing; it's more than an hour long, but I highly recommend you all watch it. We're always talking about "saving the planet", but that's wrong. The planet will be fine, with or without us. It is our self we need to save by changing our relationship with nature to a more respectful one.
The above is a slightly redacted version of a post I originally published on Steemit in September 2018.
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