Submitted by thelivingphilosophy t3_yd3q1b in philosophy
Isn't seeing the world as so many resources to exploit as old as the bible?
In Genesis 1:26-28, we read how God created man, blessed him, and told him to “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Isn't this even older, embedded in the very nature of life ? I mean, any living organism spreads and exploits resources.
Eh I think this is twisting nature a bit to support exploitative views. Plus there's something additional about us that means we don't have to abide by the actions of all other living organisms.
On my first point, it can be seen that way if you consider anything beyond laying down at birth, not consuming anything, and dying, to be the true form of "no exploitation". Otherwise I'd say most animals take what they need and don't cause too much harm back to the local environment. Especially no where even near the scale of what we do. Even the species that do, we identify them as "invasive species" and have government funded programs to eradicate them. Even then, most invasive species are at the fault of humans.
Secondly, we are intelligent conscious beings that with the right mindset can live in harmony, or as close to it, with the rest of nature. We have science that observes nature and let's us know the standing of our actions. We currently have plenty of evidence to support that our actions are directly causing many ecological disasters and yet we make no action to improve. Rather we double down and continue to increase growth with no control. Nature he checks and balances, usually in the form of predators, to ensure that things are running smoothly. Humans have no meaningful predators except each other and planet earth.
"Dominating earth" is somewhat naturally embedded but we make conscious decisions on what natural things we support or not. Rape is a common natural occurrence yet we understand the morals of that much deeper than other animals so we try to get rid of it in society. We can make the same decision for exploiting nature and conclude it's something we should not do. Nature is amazing in so many ways, yet it's not perfect and has it's fair share of the "dark side" too.
I actually did mean it quite literally what I said and in no sensationist sense. Also I don't agree with your explanation of how nature and species behave but I do agree with some of your conclusions about humaninty. So let me explain myself in more detail:
Life in general spreads and consumes resources without any intelligent plan or design. It just spreads and consumes. I can agree with you that most living organisms and animals take what they only need but this is true only for individual creatures/entities. But when taken from the perspective of the whole species, any life form just spread until they hit a wall of what environment can sustain - in complex ecosystems there is an equilibrium of various factors and species which define these walls and balances out among each other.
I do agree however that humanity has capabilities that are unprecedented among Earth's life forms. It is this consiousness which you are talking about. It is the neocortex ability to visualize future and reason about it. So we can plan and organize the very aspect of life like the reproduction or resource consumtion. We can have intelligent plan and intelligent design instead of being mere game of life cells.
No doubt, I definitely didn't explain it the best as I've made those connections but haven't dove too deep into it yet. I think you explained it very well though!
I think it’s worth noting that the Bible has not been ethically translated across time
Possible. Do we have more accurate translations of this passage?
Is there any difference between an ethical translation and a good translation? Unless by ethical you mean sanitised.
By ethical I mean, within the spirit of the work or atleast transparent about the translators own biases. If your goal is to keep medieval Europeans subservient and illiterate, I question your ability to ethically translate the Bible.
Well, the will to power is strong, but it is not my goal.
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