We think intelligent life is so gosh darn important because we happen to be intelligent life. We think tool using and technological advancement is so great because it's something we do. Objectively there's nothing that makes these things somehow more important than anything else. There's nothing that makes being a thinking, introspective, inventive species any better than being a protein shell with a simple ring of DNA. In the end they're both just chunks of replicating carbon with greater or lesser degrees of arrogance about that fact. We think we're better because we're subject to our own delusions of grandeur. So we're technologically advanced. So what?
"So what?" We're proteins that realized what we are, and yearned for more. More information, more proteins, more land - more frontiers. When you place an amoeba under a lamp and let it shrivel up and die it has no awareness of its own futile existence beyond instinct whereas sapient proteins? They're all fuck that, let's get out of dodge. Let's do more. We are akin to conscious flagellates laughing at the directionless slimes. You can get all philosophically nihilist and say, so what? How are the Pyramids of Giza any more impressive than a deer licking its own balls? How is a Michelangelo any better than the green husk of a dried algae pond? How are a bunch of city building, bread making and plant brewing humans better than a botulinum vomiting bacteria hiding in a curry?
These things are only "objectively equal" in the sense that objectively all things must end and there is no reason for the Universe to exist. For as long as we exist? Such musings are utterly useless in a discussion, because a fly having sex on dog shit will never surmount to anything more than maggots in offal, whilst humans try to leave their mark on the world and worlds beyond - we shall be the most successful proteins or die trying.
Again, you're defining "Success" as "What humans do".
Building big monuments is a show of success because it's something humans did.
Painting pretty pictures is success because it's what humans did.
I'm not trying to merely be Nihilistic, I'm trying to get you to understand that you're judging the worth and success of something based on a set of preconceived notions that inherently place you, yourself, as the most successful. Which isn't just shallow and self centered but completely masturbatory! It's the Rational that imperialists used to slaughter anyone who didn't conform to their particular ideas of what an "Advanced" society is.
I mean, you may dismiss Bacterium but they've created (Proportionally) bigger and more complex structures than anything humans have ever made. Not to mention the fact that they've been alive far longer than us, they evolve and reproduce far faster and far more effectively, and they have no need to paint pictures and build monuments out of some broken and run amok self preservation drive making them existentially fearful of death. They don't waste time doing things that don't increase their chance of survival and reproduction. We're wildly evolutionary less fit than them. And chances are our species will die out, but that bacteria will survive. Hell, if we make it to another planet, that bacteria will be there with us. It doesn't need to waste energy or time building spaceships. We do that for it.
Claiming a life form is lesser than oneself is pure ignorance.
Objective facts
*Sigh* Let me explain this in the most asshole way possible. You are looking at yourself, saying "I am awesome" and then creating a list of ways you think you are awesome and comparing other things to that list. Allow me to do the same, but from the perspective of an alien race with different values.
"Pyramids of Giza"
These humans spent 80 years piling stones atop one another to revere a corpse of a man who was thought to be great by the sheer luck of his birth. What a positively meaningless waste of time. If anything it's a monument to their own lack of logical thought.
"The Paintings of Michelangelo"
Look, they're spending years and huge amounts of money and time to create images of themselves. And they're now painting an image of themselves and claiming it created the universe! How positively Arrogant! And Stupid.
And now they're trying to spread and colonize everything around them incessantly rather then simply controlling their population! Have they no foresight? No sense of personal responsibility?
And look at that! Look at them take in solid matter and expel lumps of waste rather then photosynthesizing like any proper species.
They are an arrogant, time wasting, disgusting bunch of animals and I recommend we wipe them out because they are clearly lesser beings than us.
See! I have used nothing but
objective facts to prove that humanity is, in fact, total shit!
Now would you like to be euthanized immediately or do you have some more solid waste to excrete before hand? I'm not sure how you lesser life forms work.
Author
Topic: Let's say Mars is inhabited. What are the results? (Read 8090 times)