The extremely self centred nature of man has proven himself capable of more destruction than mother nature herself. What do you think?

No sayings are ever completely accurate. Humans can’t do the same amount of damage that a hurricane or earthquake could do in the same amount of time. But, the humans do intentionally do damage, while natural events don’t.

I think that nature is capable of as much destruction as man, but the difference is that nature’s destruction is either random, or part of the natural life-cycle of the planet. Man’s destruction is almost always done with intent (or at least awareness).

Mother Nature in her full fury is by far the worst.

I was thinking this same thought over the weekend while driving by a beaver pond. I was thinking of all the ways we get irritated by the beaver and we destroy his dam or trap them. He’s just trying to have a home. Cut him some slack.

On a day to day basis sure humans are capable of significant devastation. And over time it seems our destructiveness is beyond the bounds of nature to correct by itself at least with life, as we’re accustomed to, continuing.

For natural disasters, heavily nuking one of the top world cities or unleashing a manmade plague is about the only way we can compare in terms of scale within an even remotely similar timeframe with things like tsunamis, hurricanes, plagues, city-centered earthquakes and the like. Also keep in mind it’s our ability to create, develop, and adapt that keeps those things from being worse than they are. (Though you could argue, for example, our coastal development that makes a tsunami so devastating in the first place. But that’s getting a little apples/oranges/whatiffy.)

For one shot events, not even close – particularly if you talk about massive asteroids colliding with the planet, supervolcano eruptions (though a nuclear winter might be on par with this), the sun swallowing (or at least incinerating) the earth in a few billion years.

On the other hand there’s something to be said for choosing destruction. Our actions may not be as fast acting or as destructive individually but we elect to take them and I think that counts for something.

Nature’s destruction is not deliberate or selfish. It may be selgish in that nature works around self preservation, but that is a remote connection. Man’s destruction is for selfish and sometimes unjustified purposes.
Mother nature wins the power game. Definitely causes more destruction than man can, but that destruction can be reversed and fixed. Man’s destruction is often permanent.

I don’t think it’s very useful to separate “human” nature from “mother” nature. In fact, making that distinction is basically another form of self-centeredness, seeing ourselves as something apart from everything else. After all, we don’t think about, say, shark nature vs. Mother nature.

Self-centeredness certainly causes lots and lots of suffering, but destruction is the eventuality that awaits absolutely everything, right? So can’t we say that it is in the nature of everything to be destroyed? Nature is one vast cycle of construction followed by destruction. Self-centeredness just tinges all of this with suffering.

ok… fluther is fucking smart baby!!!!

The idea is absurd, maybe we have more power than mother nature if we limit mother nature to just planet Earth, If we set off all our nukes at once, maybe we can compete with the earth quakes and tsunami, but when it comes to super massive black holes, gamma ray bursts, and other such things, we can even begin to imagine competing.

@poisonedantidote well yes I suppose but all we’ve got in our arsenal are nuclear weapons where as when it comes to mother nature each one of its weapons is more terrifying and destructive then the other.

Nature and animals are not capable of evil intent, amoral behavior, humans are.
I’m a Mountain Lion fan & advocate and live in lion territory.
I’d far prefer to be taken out by a lion doing it’s job as an apex predator, a quick, clean kill, vs. some sick fuck sociopath that gets off on torturing me for hours or days before putting me out of my misery.

I think it’s a silly statement, and not well written. I wouldn’t consider it for more than a couple of moments.

Man does not have more power than nature. Man can unleash more power then nature at a given time, as @poisonedantidote said, every nation can fire off all of there nukes at the same time. The only difference is that though the world would be devastated, for man, and many animals, most of those in the sea would survive. As history has shown, there will be animals on land that will survive. They might change in appearance, etc, but they will adapt and live on; man might even be one of them. However, man cannot fully ruin nature. All that tonnage that was sunk in WWII< all that fuel in ships, planes, and subs, etc, and the Earth is still kicking. Man might suffer the most, because man needs the most resources. The Earth always bounces back. It may not seem that way to man, because those who witness an even, are usually not around long enough to see the fix. Sometimes it takes a century or more for the Earth to repair itself, but so far, it always has.

Nature is way more powerful than man, and I can’t even believe anyone could consider asking this question. It just shows how involved so many people are in their own self-importance. They have completely lost track of how little they matter compared to the world. Such hubris.

We may be able to warm the planet a little over a very short period of time, but that is really nothing compared to the millions and billions of years the planet existed and went through much larger changes in the past, and to the millions and billions of years the planet will be around and will change after humanity has died off. We are nothing. We need to get over ourselves.

Societies implode when corruption gets the upper hand. It’s a process. These years I wonder if the earth isn’t giving us greedy grasping inhabitants what we deserve because we are bankrupting her harmony the way we have done with our free will put to greedy use in government, business, entertainment, sports, even family. We have not understood how inter connected we are and how choices come back to bite us decades later.

“Mother nature” selected the dinosaurs for ritual extinction, “be gone big lizardy things” she said, or words to that effect.
What did man do that can possibly compare eh?
Now mothers in law, that’s a whole new level :¬(

Because Man is so much more powerful than any other creature he has a particular responsibility for the planet which he still has not properly acknowledged. Making your home ugly, dirty and uninhabitable isn’t self centred so much as stupid.

Mankind is destructive of itself.. but I wouldn’t say more destructive than nature. Nature has proven to be more powerful and destructive than mankind’s greatest weapons could ever dream to be.

I wouldn’t go as far as saying that all of mankind is self-centered and destructive either. However, the actions of a few can affect the many.

Let’s see, mother nature blows a certain volcano, life becomes more or less nonexistent

Man in his selfish short sighted tantrum throwing behavior launches a nuclear war, life becomes more or less nonexistent.

Tie

@King_Pariah Nature doesn’t have politicians. It has a leg up from the jump.

@King_Pariah Earth cares not if plutonium has a half life of 300 so odd years, etc, it will get alone just fine.

Man, has to be concerned because used nukes and spent fuels will cause him to lose access to that area less he be gone in weeks.

Tie broken.

@sophiesword The dinosaurs would disagree. That is they would do so if the commet impact at Chicxulub hadn’t wiped them and about a great deal of all life on Earth at that time.

It’s kind of unfair to compare the potential for damage man has with the actual damage done by this woman. Ask the dinosaurs who did more harm.

There are 7 billion people on earth. Even exploding every nuclear bomb that exists will not destroy all of them. I think there will be at least 2 billion left. There might be a lot of nuclear pollution around, but man will make like a cockroach and soon be overrunning the earth again.

@wundayatta won’t know ‘til we try, now will we?

@King_Pariah Do you think I’m advocating for nuclear war????

@wundayatta extinction ain’t my problem. BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!