Don’t get me wrong: I certainly don’t wish for corporations to destroy the environment for their own benefit, but primarily because I believe that if the environment is to be exploited for industry the rewards of that should be shared equitably amongst the workers in a worker-owner cooperative structure, and the spoils of it should be shared equitably across mankind, and not only those alive today, but also those in the future, hence we need sustainability.

Insofar as actually wanting to preserve it for its own sake though - I think it’s meaningless, in a vacuum I would in fact prefer less biodiversity, especially when it comes to insects, and I would really like it if we could exterminate all species of fungi, mosses, lichen as well.

Where others see untouched ecosystems I see unused land that could be a nice city.

I’m an anarchist but I am firmly anti-degrowth, I would genuinely side with neolibs against anprims because they made a far better world even for all it’s flaws. Doesn’t help that neolibs have actual arguments and all anprims have is the “noble savage” and “appeal to nature” fallacies. Superficially I’m more on the side of soviet tech optimism if that makes sense.

Beyond the political, I don’t really have any affinity for it, there are people who say various nonsense like “green spaces improve our mental health” whereas I find them mostly depressing and kind of out of place.

I am okay with parks in cities as long as they’re empty and within reach of civilization, but green spaces like parks in cities aren’t nature, they’re a well curated almost entirely artificial human creation, an expressionist pastiche of green.

Actual nature is wildfires, cancer, floods, earthquakes, predation, parasitism, prions, wasps, itching, pain, burning, poisons, toxins, spores, fungi, spores, lichen, moss, mosquitoes, wasps, bacteria, sun overly bright, needing to pee, being itchy, negative emotions, reptiles, spiders, no amenities, dirt, dirty water (swamps), viruses, bacteria, thorns, stinging nettles, mites, ticks, lyssavirus, people turning to religion etc.

Flowers smell okay, but really air freshener smells better.

I find it all absolutely disgusting, and what’s even more disgusting is that these things can affect my unfortunate meat flesh prison, it could make me sick with some COVID-over9000 - another of mother nature’s little treats, and then ruin my plans for the day, or even my life.

Nature is pain and agony, and when it’s not trying to kill you, it’ll damn well do it’s best to make you uncomfortable 24/7, it makes me long for the eternal sanctity of steel in lieu of flesh, and the safety of concrete paved city roads lit under a warm orange glow of an artificial street lights. Some nice brutalist architecture, flat colours, sharp geometric shapes - urban and industrial environments feel like home.

As long as there isn’t crowds though - people are nature too and pretty disgusting as well, they are as irrational as any frightened animal and a vector for disease.

I never understood what the big deal was with staying inside during the pandemic. It’s one thing if you have a shit place and you have to house share or live with parents, if you rent a semi-modern apartment for yourself, I don’t see the issue. As long as you’re comfortable and have plenty of space, what else is there? All the things one could want are on the internet anyway.

I much prefer the internet tbh, here I have control, if there’s something I don’t like, I don’t have to ever see it again, but I can also engage with it freely without the interaction ever escaping my control, my agency is never impeded. The digital space is much more liberating.

Outside I can’t really use an adblocker, or a waspblocker, or a sporeblocker, or a people-blocker.

I’ve read a number of posts like this on Reddit before and to get ahead of the usual replies:

You have allergies!

No. I don’t have any as far as I know.

You just need to do shrooms

I have several times, though I kinda hated it, I much prefer acid myself, and it didn’t change my opinion in the slightest. Best place to trip is at home, I can’t imagine the panic attack I’d have tripping outside. Actually I can because I have. Would not do that again. At least it was in a business district and not in some ugly forest so I could duck into a Starbucks.

You hate animals

No, I’ve actually had pets. That said while I value the companionship I would prefer an artificial companion instead.

You just need to spend more time in nature

I’ve already spent way more time in nature than I’d ever want.

You should read about nature more

Yeah I have. I actually quite like reading about ancient creatures and whatnot, especially from the Cambrian period.

You’re just born after 2000!

Idk how that one is relevant but I’m from 1998.

But you’re part of nature

Yeah, I hate that. The bits about myself that I love are all that I managed in spite of it, not because of it. I will hate growing old as my meat prison rots and breaks down and I will hate having to confront mortality knowing there is so much to do.

You just haven’t visited [x]

I’ve visited the French Alps as a kid and it smelled like pig shit and made me exhausted, I’ve visited farms and it smelled like horseshit and was dirty, I’ve visited Times Square and it was the happiest memory I had as a kid. As an adult I’ve visited all up and down the UK and Russia (the Baikal and Ural) and idk about the nature there, it’s all just whatever and blends in.

At one time a field in the UK offered me peace when I needed it due to material struggles and I enjoyed it, (despite the unfortunate fact it was a reminder of wealth inequality because it was all privately owned by some aristocrat) or at least I thought I enjoyed it, now that I fixed it by improving my material circumstances and have no need for it.

EDIT: Because people cannot read, I’ve highlighted that I do not in fact think we should destroy mosses and lichen etc. and I am in fact aware that destroying any natural ecosystems has has serious negative cascading effects on everything else including human life and I do not wish for it because I’m not a moron

That’s why I said “in a vacuum”, as in -isolated from other factors. I’m glad this post has encouraged discussion but please just actually read it before engaging. The lack of reading comprehension on Lemmy is genuinely worrying.

  • LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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    10 hours ago

    the only thing you owe your existence to?

    That out of the gate is an incorrect assumption. I owe my existence to nature to some degree for sure, but also to a significant degree - technology. An even larger part of why that existence is tolerable is exclusively technology. Were it not for science, medicine and again - technology, I wouldn’t be glad I even exist at all.

    view it as a kind of ideological laziness, an unwillingness to accept that which come before you and will be after you

    I don’t see how I don’t accept it? Besides I would argue it’s the opposite that is “ideological laziness”, we as human beings are defined by our defiance of nature, we evolved brains so we could outsmart it and build our own environments so we could be better off.

    Of course that doesn’t mean humans are that awesome either, we escaped the wolves only to create new wolves just to throw people to them. There’s probably an actually good argument there about evolution creating a cruel sort of balance, but nonetheless - a balance, and perhaps civilization is just a trick for the worst of us to gain the most power, and a monopoly on power is a monopoly on violence - a truly unnatural concept, and then they could impose the kinds of suffering on others that’d make one long for nature’s cold dispassionate cruelty.

    But to worship nature as something to preserve simply unto itself and not out of factors for how it would impact human beings, or at least not consider it a canvas for us is a bit lazy when our very existence is defined by molding it to our preferred shape and image for ourselves.

    An insufferance of compromise with the forces of nature.

    Which is what led to y’know - civilization?

    stresses you out and you feel like you caj’tcdo anything about it,

    Huh? I’ve never said anything of the sort. This is just an idea that’s been bouncing around my head. I don’t actually feel strongly about this at all. Plus I can and do do things about it lol as do we all every day.

    and that usually turns into extractive, oppressive thought.

    I’m sorry to hear that but I can’t say I’ve ever experienced anything of the sort.

    think your problems lie elsewhere, and nature is your scapegoat.

    I don’t have any problems at all really, this is just a discussion, and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

    You refer to your body as a meat flesh prison but that’s an incredibly shallow way of perceiving the greatest vessel for existence that we know of.

    Eh, it’s become okay after some modifications to fix nature’s fuck ups, but ofc I’m not downplaying the various interesting complexities and their evolutionary journey throughout time of the human body, it’s complex stuff, and we don’t even know it all yet. But that also doesn’t mean there aren’t issues with them either that could be fixed, they are in fact already being fixed everyday.

    It is the way for the Cosmos to know itself. It’s typical human hubris to dismiss it as “flesh prison” while actually it’s the vehicle of our freedom.

    Eh, I think that is hubris. I’m not sure the cosmos desires to know itself, and I think our meat bodies are prisons we will one day escape in better, more well suited shells just like we did with our environment.

    In many ways, we already do cheat death and agony daily thanks to man-made wonders and that’s just directly, ignoring the decreased risk we have from the start thanks to our civilizations and whatnot.

    I love my body - but I would not do so without the man-made components that make it whole, before that, existence was pain, so I’m not so sure about this “marvel of engineering”, seems more like something interesting that was bound to happen given geological time scales, like a donut shaped cloud, or something.

    I’m just a random on the internet so i don’t pretendente i am right abt you, another random on the internet, but i just don’t think it’s an healthy outlook and you should challenge it

    I don’t think there’s anything unhealthy about it but yes, clearly I am willing to challenge it because I wouldn’t make a post if I didn’t want to hear any counterarguments.

    Maybe this is weird but given solid enough reasons it would be intellectually dishonest for me to maintain the same views even if someone roasted me while at it, in fact in many ways my current beliefs were forged through the fire of debate in that vein.

    I constantly challenge myself in this way, to if not change my own mind, at least sharpen my own viewpoints and make them specific and get to the core of things and understand my ideas and myself better. I steelman even the worst of takes just to see where I stand.

    Sadly the quality of arguments made this far ITT has been absolutely terrible, yours being probably one of the best ones so far in that you at least seem coherent unlike the other people who either cannot read, are responding to a strawman in their head instead of what was written and/or complain about having to engage with an unpopular opinion on /c/UnpopularOpinions or resort to truly psychotic levels of intellectual laziness by responding with ad-hominem sometimes followed by some variation of “that’s just like, your opinion man”.

    The only thing I’ve really learned is that debate classes, critical thinking including critiques of ideas in art and literature and basic civics should be fucking mandatory in school alongside reading or else democracy can’t survive the onslaught of an electorate of retards.