Comment on billionaires are a cancer on society [literally]
confusedwiseman@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days agoLet’s take the original comment at face value and in earnest for a moment.
Wouldn’t the human race be more like a parasite?
In all honesty, I don’t think the earth needs us, nor would we qualify for a symbiotic relationship. Earth really doesn’t need most of its inhabitants.
That would move to a more existential question of what it means for earth to survive or be “alive”? Support any life?
MaggiWuerze@feddit.org 5 days ago
If we take “Earth” as the biosphere, because honestly the naked rock isn’t that interesting, then the cancer analogy is fitting. After all, we grew as part of that Earth and have developed to a size and growth that now threatens to kill our host/the rest of the body
sxan@midwest.social 4 days ago
Yup! Of the things we could be, we’re most like a virus, but parasite might work. Most parasites don’t kill their hosts, and if they do it’s a secondary action - it usually isn’t the parasite itself that kills the host, but some virus or bacteria the parasite transmits. There are some really nasty parasitic worms that will kill you, or make you wish you were dead.
We’re definitely not symbiotic, like most macro and many micro organisms are.
If we consider the the ecosystem as the host, we’re killing it; and individually, we’re micro-sized to the Earth, so I think virus is the most accurate model.
AppleTea@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
Currently, our collective behavior is parasitic and destructive to the environment, yes. But it’s important to draw a distinction here - a virus or bacterial infection or a parasite are locked into their respective strategies. They cannot help being what they are.
We don’t get that excuse. Humans are the ultimate generalists; we specialized into learning and communicating new behaviors between ourselves. Unlike the flu or a ringworm, we have the capacity to change how we interact with the environment.