Comment by beepbopboopp
6 hours ago
Serious questions, how is this destruction and not just "change?" It seems throughout time the world has experienced acute shifts, dying offs and other events. In those transition periods many animals that you know and love today finally got a shot at main character roles. Heck the reduction of o2 in the air that killed/shrunk a lot of dinosaurs is basically the opening slave for you to be able to write this Hacker News comment.
None of this is to say don't mourn or long for any of this, but the show doesnt end, the charecters just change.
Well, it is change, but that doesn't mean it's not destruction. While the world has experienced mass die-offs before, the hallmark of the planet's current situation is distinguished by its unprecedented speed and the fact that it is being driven by a single species' behavior rather than geological cycles or cosmic externalities.
To repeat myself in another comment: I have tried to really focus on and take comfort in the idea "deep time", and the sincere belief that for as much destruction as we create, there will be more and different beauty in the far, far future. Yet where the Louvre to burn, how much comfort would it be to me that over the next 1000 years other artists will create yet more great works? In the same way, how long will it take the earth to return to such complexity and diversity of life? Many, many millenia.