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by msla 1178 days ago
And that normative sense succeeds in separating humanity from nature, creating an "Us vs It" narrative that makes pollution easier to ignore.

After all, if everything humanity does is pollution, why single any specific acts out?

1 comments

Pollution goes on because it's the convenient path of least resistance, has short term benefits (e.g. we keep indulging in consumptiona as usual) and there are huge profit interests. That simple.

How we see nature plays little role, in after-the-fact justifications or condemnations. In fact pollution could be justified under either view:

Humanity is different than nature: all we do is pollution, in the sense that is outside of nature. So why single any specific act out? Or other potential arguments: "We are better than nature, and we'll eventually just sort pollution out with our technology".

Humanitity is "just" nature: so what we do is natural, including pollution. No need to do something else, we just keep doing what comes natural to us, including polluting. Why consider huge heaps of human garbage any worse that we consider other animals creating their own waste?

> Humanity is different than nature

This is a dogmatic statement influenced by religions that put humanity as a separate creation.

Humanity is part of nature. Fixing the world requires accepting that.