Are humans a disease to the planet?

human disease
Octavius

Are we parasites to the earth just like mosquitos are to humans. Do you think droughts, Ice ages and the like are a kind of antibody to kill us off when we get too many in number.

Fit Yummy Mummy

18 Comments so far

  1. scruffy on April 6th, 2009

    I don’t think the Earth is able to get rid of us in that way, it doesn’t decide to create antibodies. Ice ages are normal in the life cycle of the planet and life will always find a way to go on – but the massive changes to the ecosystem we have caused could very possibly make it impossible for us specifically to survive in the long term.

    Life will go on but maybe we won’t.

  2. blindflacker on April 8th, 2009

    There is no better or worse, just action-reaction. Thats science.

  3. daftks on April 11th, 2009

    In some ways humans can be said to be a disease to the planet, the fact that they are gradually destroying the earth by demolishing forests to create paper for office usage only to waste about 60% or more of them because their handwriting was disgusting or something.
    Computers and any other man-made chemicals are also harming the environment in the way that earth cannot be saved; the effect is irreversible.
    Humans killing animals to fend for themselves is like Darwin’s “Survival Of the Fittest” theory. If one is too weak then another will simply take over to continue leading.

    One question for you though: Without humans would you even be asking this question?

  4. kyala c on April 12th, 2009

    yes. It is like a cancer. It spreads non-stoppably. Human nature augments the perils faced by our planet.

  5. memere on April 12th, 2009

    You can’t stereotype all humans as parasites. You have those who destroy our planet through their selfish act all for the love of money, then you have those who are doing everything in their power to save our planet from those who are slowly destroying it. I think the latter will win. I hope!

  6. Brian M on April 14th, 2009

    Earth is just a big hunk of rock that happens to have evolved into a life-sustaining enitity. If, in a fit of greed and stupidity, we humans destroy its ability to sustain life, we will merely eliminate ourselves and the other living creatures; but the lifeless planet will continue to circle the sun just as do the lifeless planets of Venus and Mars. Life is not a requirement for the continuation of Earth.

  7. Keratin S on April 15th, 2009

    We aren’t a disease even though we cause its symptoms.

  8. thomas f on April 15th, 2009

    Of course we are – we eat everything in site and mate with each other at an extreme rate to populate this tiny planet as much as we can and then when we destroy one place we move on to the next so in comparison we are the locusts of the earth.

  9. RED NIGHT on April 18th, 2009

    i don’t think that way because I’m a human being. i guess there are some people out there that don’t appreciated the beauty of this word.

  10. Siddhartha on April 18th, 2009

    Many are, other than Indigenous people…….nature will someday reclaim the earth.

  11. karu_malar on April 20th, 2009

    Definitely not. Humans are part of earth. All organisms on earth are part of it, as life has been evolving on earth. Nature does has its own ways to keep the balance. That does not mean humans try to destroy earth and earth tries to destroy them in self-defence. It is more like – you eat more get stomach upset, the number of humans increase beyond some point environmental balance gets affected.

  12. wizebloke on April 22nd, 2009

    You got your philosophical training from Agent Smith in “The Matrix”? That bad guy called us a cancer.

    If humankind is a cancer, I say it is more similar to Leukaemia (cancer of the white blood cells).
    The White blood cells travel everywhere in the body, can identify the different body parts and protects organs from disease and non-natural attacks.

    Because we can use our conscience to study, understand and assist species, we should be the harmonizing factor for the animal kingdom, plant kingdom and beyond.

  13. Sissy on April 23rd, 2009

    We are I believe devastating to our planet, but those thing’s are not to “get rid of us”, it’s because what we do to our planet without caring or realizing what our consequences really are. We’ll find out eventually and it won’t be pretty.

  14. F C on April 26th, 2009

    If you think that we are an organism within a greater organism, then that idea could fit. But then, that kind of thinking makes everything a disease to the thing it inhabits. Fact is though, droughts and ice ages and the like existed long before man appeared on the scene. Watch out for the media influence that wants to blame mankind for everything and worship nature and mother earth. Oh, mother earth went out in the 70s. The trendy word now is “the planet.”

  15. jimi h-b on April 29th, 2009

    Humans definately effected the somewhat previous stable environment, but the Earth doesn’t react like a creature does. I do believe humans will eventually effect the lifespan of this planet in comparison if they didn’t evolve to power such intelligence.

  16. masterchief on May 1st, 2009

    No. Matter is a disease to the planet.

  17. HBP22 on May 2nd, 2009

    The opposite – the platnet is a disease to humans. Imagine if we were just ‘mind’. Our entire existence consisted of cogitation of the deepest questions: ‘Is there a god?’ ‘what do I know?’ ‘do I exist?’.

    Imagine an existence free from the distractions of human life, free from the mundane. No war, no problems of what was happening to the environment.

    [I am aware that such an existance would be contradictory; we could not know language or wonder whether there was a god if we had no experience of the world.]

  18. Dr. Snake on May 4th, 2009

    On the relative time scale of the Universe (x-trillion years), in the near future (x-billion years), the sun will expand and engulf the inner planets, including the Earth. At that point, worrying about our influence on the planet, and worrying about the “ozone level in the atmosphere” will mean about as much as worrying about how many licks it takes to the center of a Tootsi-Pop.

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