02-13-2011, 05:53 AM
Dugger:
In my opinion mdd7000 has paid you a compliment by placing you at the opposite end of the spectrum from Syd Singer. At the same time there is some truth to his implication that you should know who Syd Singer is if you care so much about the threat of invasive species in Puna.
Of course humans are invasive and are pests. Lets get right to the meat of the matter. Lots of us should go. While we're at it there are a few racial and ethnic groups that I don't like so let's kill two birds with one stone. Sooo, for starters I didn't mean "us" so much as "them" so that rules me out. Well, I can see this could get a little complicated. Some irresponsible people will insist on being uncooperative and selfish.
So yes people are invasive but there is absolutely nowhere to go with this argument. Not picking on you dugger I don't think you were one of the many on these and other web pages who trot out the "humans are the problem" song and dance. It just makes me so sick to hear such a useless statement since it only inflames controversy and yet is completely off the table unless we are willing to contemplate some kind of "final solution" for others or suicide for ourselves. It is an issue we have to work with through education. Personally I would include family planning as part of education.
My own views:
1. I don't think any one species is all that innately special and worthy, but it says something about the quality of the system as a whole when individual species either decline or proliferate unnaturally and to the harm of other species native to that ecosystem.
2. I think it is too easy to say the floodgates have always been open. The real situation is more gray. There are species in Hawaii that are unique and are truly native, having changed over the eons till they exist here and nowhere else. At the same time the wave of extinctions started with the arrival of the ancient hawaiians. They brought rats and pigs which started the process. Their cultivation of taro brought them in close contact with some species of waterfowl that were driven to extinction in native times. Out of necessity they developed a great understanding for their environment the likes of which is probably unknown in the world today except for maybe for some relatively undiscovered tribes in what's left of the Amazon, but like anything humans do it was somewhat self serving, and it didn't stop them from driving some species to extinction (80,000 birds for a feather cloak?).
3. Interesting question and I don't know the answer to this myself but would you kill the last cockroach? The last rat? The last fire ant or brown tree snake? Sure, an apapane is prettier but is it really better? Yes it is rare but if you got down to the last rat rats would be rare too.
4. I guess it is obvious from my previous posts that I don't think native hawaiians are any different than any other flavor of human and since I know how sleazy white people can be (I'm one) I now know how sleazy ancient hawaiians probably were. I would have to be racist and proud of it to suggest otherwise.
5. All that being said, I think it is true that the culture of the military, being composed largely of young people with no investment in the locations they are posted to, often sent to places they don't like and often treated with hostility when they get there, makes it more likely that as a group they may not work hard to live up to standards of the community that they feel don't benefit them.
In my opinion mdd7000 has paid you a compliment by placing you at the opposite end of the spectrum from Syd Singer. At the same time there is some truth to his implication that you should know who Syd Singer is if you care so much about the threat of invasive species in Puna.
Of course humans are invasive and are pests. Lets get right to the meat of the matter. Lots of us should go. While we're at it there are a few racial and ethnic groups that I don't like so let's kill two birds with one stone. Sooo, for starters I didn't mean "us" so much as "them" so that rules me out. Well, I can see this could get a little complicated. Some irresponsible people will insist on being uncooperative and selfish.
So yes people are invasive but there is absolutely nowhere to go with this argument. Not picking on you dugger I don't think you were one of the many on these and other web pages who trot out the "humans are the problem" song and dance. It just makes me so sick to hear such a useless statement since it only inflames controversy and yet is completely off the table unless we are willing to contemplate some kind of "final solution" for others or suicide for ourselves. It is an issue we have to work with through education. Personally I would include family planning as part of education.
My own views:
1. I don't think any one species is all that innately special and worthy, but it says something about the quality of the system as a whole when individual species either decline or proliferate unnaturally and to the harm of other species native to that ecosystem.
2. I think it is too easy to say the floodgates have always been open. The real situation is more gray. There are species in Hawaii that are unique and are truly native, having changed over the eons till they exist here and nowhere else. At the same time the wave of extinctions started with the arrival of the ancient hawaiians. They brought rats and pigs which started the process. Their cultivation of taro brought them in close contact with some species of waterfowl that were driven to extinction in native times. Out of necessity they developed a great understanding for their environment the likes of which is probably unknown in the world today except for maybe for some relatively undiscovered tribes in what's left of the Amazon, but like anything humans do it was somewhat self serving, and it didn't stop them from driving some species to extinction (80,000 birds for a feather cloak?).
3. Interesting question and I don't know the answer to this myself but would you kill the last cockroach? The last rat? The last fire ant or brown tree snake? Sure, an apapane is prettier but is it really better? Yes it is rare but if you got down to the last rat rats would be rare too.
4. I guess it is obvious from my previous posts that I don't think native hawaiians are any different than any other flavor of human and since I know how sleazy white people can be (I'm one) I now know how sleazy ancient hawaiians probably were. I would have to be racist and proud of it to suggest otherwise.
5. All that being said, I think it is true that the culture of the military, being composed largely of young people with no investment in the locations they are posted to, often sent to places they don't like and often treated with hostility when they get there, makes it more likely that as a group they may not work hard to live up to standards of the community that they feel don't benefit them.