[astrospective]

There’s no upward development of life. We think we’re super clever and advanced for building cars and lightbulbs and such, but there’s nothing beyond us saying that’s good or praiseworthy. Looking at our impact on biodiversity, the atmosphere, and the oceans, and throw in a huge dose of micro plastics and rogue hormones in the water supply and we don’t look so clever. Evolution improves fitness for reproduction, there’s not a handy chart or whatever that shows markers for more or less evolved.

[anthropodie]

> There’s no upward development of life.

Disagree. Look at our solar system or any other planet. There is no life anywhere. This beautiful blue planet is brimming with life.

Yes we are screwing our planet but that is because we as collective have not become fully conscious about it. There were horrific things done in past by humanity but once a sufficient amount of population reached that point of consciousness where we recognise something is bad we shutdown those things.

I know we are screwing this planet bad but life on this planet continues and it's been this way for millions of years.

[kelnos]

I don't think that's the point the parent was trying to make. We've evolved intelligence presumably because it was selected for as a trait that made it more likely we'd survive and reproduce. That doesn't mean we're any more "upward" than any other species on the planet that does an equally good job surviving and reproducing.

Yes, we've defined human evolution as "upward" as opposed to other life on Earth, but that's purely our self-description, not anything inherently true about the universe.