No, but who says we have to? Yes, we alone (probably) have a consciousness and a conscience that makes us able to recognize what impact we have on the world. However this does not necessarily make us guardians of the world. Even if it did, how should we judge the results? Of course we change the world. The world is different because of humans, granted. But is it better or worse? And for whom? That is a much more difficult question to answer. The only real problem I can see is that we, as a species, might be removing the foundations of our own existence which must be considered suicidal as a species. Then again, in the long run, that may be "better" in some sense. Besides, I doubt that even humans can destroy life enough that evolution cannot begin anew. In the long run, we might just be a parenthesis.

UU: It's true, but knowing that I am personally responsible for other people's (and animal's) suffering makes me feel icky. And I don't like feeling icky.

uggg. i've battled with this question for a while, but i don't have much of an answer for you. i just do the best i can and don't worry about the things i'm not willing/able to change. i figure there's no point in dwelling upon the bad things in the world that i am not going to work against. so i do my best to stay aware of those things, because ignorance is Bad, but i have priorities in life. since saving the children in africa isn't one of my priorities i don't really worry about their plight. sometimes i feel like an asshole, not always, but sometimes.

abrightidea: I know what you mean. Unfortunately, I'm currently having one of those "I feel like an asshole" months. I'm sure it will go away.

I kind of like the magical notion that you don't really know all the good you do (and all the bad) so you're not seeing the full picture.

Sure, as USers we have a lot of impact on the world that isn't fair. But here we are, doing what we can, and although it is limited, it's not nothing.

There is sure a lot of freeflowing angst out there lately. I've never seen so much meanness on okc, for instance, and it could be a reaction to all the proscribed feelgood of the season.

Treat yourself to something that makes you feel glad to be alive for at least a short time. You can't be an asshole, or you would be doing it all the time, in much more damaging ways than eating gelatin.

mcwho: I hope you are right! It just sometimes seems that people are more aware of the good things they do than the bad things. Everyone I talk to seems to think that they are "mostly good". And sometimes it doesn't seem like the little good things we do make up for all the the unconscious (or at least less conscious?) bad consumerism in our world.

Interesting question. But one must ask a question- what do we define as "positive impact"?

If we judge it on the highest level- well- it's all ultimately moot. One day some rock will slam into us, or a our sun will die, or the universe itself will collapse. And we will have NOTHING to do with it.

But I'm going to assume we're on a more immediate level- the wellbeing of life. In which case, no one's going to have a "positive" impact. We're mammals- our entire physiology is built around absorbing from others. Worse still, we're *predators*- we're designed to ENJOY destruction. And we're tool users- designed to enjoy creating. And we're far too good at merging those two pleasures together.

Far as I'm concerned- the only truly positive thing we can do is improve humanity. If we can get ourselves, and our favorite species, off this planet- then we'll be making a real difference. What's one puppy on earth compared to a million of them living quite cheerfully on mars, venus, or some unnamed rock under an alien star?

There is sure a lot of freeflowing angst out there lately. I've never seen so much meanness on okc, for instance, and it could be a reaction to all the proscribed feelgood of the season.

Oh, good. I was noticing that, but having been on the site less than a year, I thought I must be misunderstanding some phase we go through from time to time.

I've only been here less than a year, but it seems like we're all getting to hate each other for Xmas.

When I first came on Pumba was being driven off by a "gang" after he got to be just too much. Various people disappeared and reappeared as others, and it calmed down. It may well be a cycle, and it may well be a very human tendency of predation and digestion and search for connection gone haywire.

I suppose we all do a lot of evil without realizing it, but I like to create magical beliefs to soothe myself. I believe that humanity is growing into a greater collective unconscious which will allow us to improve our lives for a common good.

Kinda like Santa flying around giving everybody presents.

Whatever works for everyone is what they get to create. I'm not too interested in destruction.

But we all destroy. Simply by living in our rather opulent homes. By pushing out wildlife from our habitats. Unless you make no effort at all to remove "vermin" from your home, you're being destructive. But even if you take animals (including spiders) and simply put them outside (especially in the current season)- you're basically guarenteeing a death. Either of that animal, or another, as they fight for habitats instead of having free access to your own.

Of course, no one cares about bugs- they're not cute and fuzzy. We humans only feel bad for the destruction of animals we like.

It's true. No one feels bad for the bugs. For me it has more to do with levels of cognizance than fuzziness.

I feel bad for the slugs and ants and spiders I displace or kill, but I value my food and my son's emotional comfort over them.

I admit I destroy, but try to be conscious of it and limit it.

You can just tie yourself up into knots if you take this too far. I'm fighting self-hatred, not feeding it.

There is sure a lot of freeflowing angst out there lately. I've never seen so much meanness on okc, for instance, and it could be a reaction to all the proscribed feelgood of the season.

I have noticed that as well, I attributed that to finals and the holiday season. Last year around this time I received my first hate mail from OKC, but I do not recall the meanness to be so ubiquitous.

The barrier to having a net-positive impact on the world is that we have yet to figure out how.

I'm just pointing out that our destructive potential is a part of nature. Both the nature of the world, and the nature of our species. Everything in nature has the potential to outstrip its bounds, and devestate entire ecosystems. Wolves have done it, bears, every herd animal in existence, even many plants(pine trees and mints are especially good and making it near impossible for any other flora to grow).

Humans are merely the most skilled at an ancient, selfish, killing art. It's a truth. And truth, like nature, is rarely kind. Beautiful, absolutely- but not kind. We can mitigate our destructive forces- even to the point where nature's healing potential exceeds our destructive influence- but we cannot change it.

The best we can hope for is to make our presence worth it. To make our impact as a whole worthy of what it costs our world. It isn't something to despise or mourn- it's something to remember. A sacred responsibility to ourselves, our species, and our world.

In purely human terms- your son- was he worth the effort of carrying, birthing, and then caretaking? It's an apt, if somewhat incomplete, analogy.

I don't think destruction, as such, has a moral or ethical value, be it positive or negative. I do think that the suffering of sentient beings has such a value, a negative one, and that we should work to minimize it.

I'm with nahgems in that I think levels of cognizance matter. I think the degree to which something can feel its own suffering matters as much as the degree of that pain. I also think happiness has a value, and that an action's potential to cause happiness needs to be weighed against its potential to cause suffering in order to determine its moral value.

I think it's reasonable to place humans on top of that scale of suffering, with mammals being most of the creatures near enough to worry about; I also tend to treat octopi as basically sapient, because I think that their cognizance is an open question.

I try to minimize the amount of human suffering I cause, and maximize the amount that I alleviate. I do contribute to causes of suffering, but it's important to realize that my contribution is a small portion of large-scale problems, while my personal impact on other things is relatively large. Buying a shirt made in a sweatshop should be avoided as much as possible, but it's also important not to take full responsibility for the existence of every sweatshop just for the act of buying one shirt. The action is not blameless, but the blame is small, and the impact of not taking that particular action is miniscule.

nahgems, you say you subscribe to GreenDimes. That particular action has a relatively large, personal, positive impact on the environment, compared with not subscribing to GreenDimes. If you want to see things in terms of net happiness created, or net suffering alleviated, it "pays for" a lot of neglecting to check into the backgrounds of the companies that produce your clothing.

Now, it would also be easy to succumb to availability bias here. I may overestimate my positive impact merely because I can see it, and minimize my negative because I can't. I'm open to being convinced of that. What I'm not going to do is pretend that I'm Atlas, and that every time anyone in the world suffers it is partly my fault because, if I'd known, I could have done something about it.

Well, I'm not going to do that very often. Only when I'm feeling down on myself.

For me it's mostly about efficiency. All living creatures consume energy in order to survive. I think we hold plants and animals largely blameless because generally they don't consume any more than they need to survive. But people do - due to our capacity to use tools, we can consume more energy than any animal could. I'm not sure this is intrinsically a bad thing. I don't like to leave my computer on for too long without actually using it - I tend to shut it down, because the energy it's using is wasted. But if I am using it? I don't think there's anything wrong with that, energy is there to be used - it's wasted if it isn't used by some form of life. It's inefficiency that bothers me - pointless packaging, lights left on when people leave the room, that sort of thing. As long as I take steps to reduce the amount of energy I waste, I'm fairly happy with my existence.

Unless you live in a mud hut with clothes made out of your own hair, you are always going to be hurting the enviroment. As consumers in western culture, minimizing your output of waste really doesn't have that much of an effect on the grand scheme of things. It probably actually hurts things. Examples, by getting off the mailing lists and joining greendimes, you are just causing the ad companies to send even more mail to someone else or to a newly minted consumer. The mailer business is out there to make money, so you aren't having any impact to the trees actually being cut down. Being a vegetarian doesn't really help either. Pesticides, hormones, and chemicals are all used in the cultivation of vegetables, even the new and improved organic market versions. Using all the chemicals certainly isn't good for the insects and other life around the plants. If you want to get plain crazy about it, plants are living beings also just as much as a roach, a cow, or a human. Not being active politically, it's probably about the worst thing on the list. If you want to get things changed, that is your forum. Let me remind you that the forum is stacked against you. The effects of volunteer work are up in the air. If you are helping a bum by serving him soup and and giving him shelter, You are doing a compassionate deed. Yet, it is pretty worthless to the enviroment. Going out and planting trees, you can actually get paid for that in Canada, and it is good for the enviroment. It could even be considered compassionate. Trying to justify your existence based on your trash output is just silly. The average consumer can do quite a bit to make himself feel better, and it probably WILL make him/her feel good. It might even help them financially. Overall though, It isn't helping the enviroment because what they are shunning is just used by someone else. You would go insane trying to reason the value. Honestly, look what it's done to groups like peta. Jesus, they didn't start out by euthanizing animals. Now they euthanize 87 percent of what they find. I hope you find some peace. Sorry if there are mistakes and odd phrasing, I have been working and on the phone at different points in writing thisl.

The U.S. is a society poised, along with other Western societies, to make significant breakthroughs in energy sources, conservation, and waste-processing. J. Craig Venter of Human Genome fame leads a company that has just announced that they have just produced the first lifeform made by humanity, that for now is called mycoplasma labatorium. They synethesied a bacteria, which is the first successful step in a chain that they are sure that will lead to the modification and production of bacteria that be used in the process of producing energy and also for converting waste.

The fact that J. Craig Venter exists is a tribute to the unique land of which you are a citizen. He is a brilliant product of democracy and capitalism and he would be happy to personally tell you that. When he led the race to chart the human genome he inspired a coalition of scientists to join a U.S. government-sponsored effort, because people were frightened that he would patent his findings. He, of course, beat them, his small team against a massive elite squad. A compromise was made and a joint annoucement was made at Clinton's White House but observers of that race have never forgotten the brilliant innovations of Venter.

You should be proud of that American and proud to live in a democracy. The West for the last few decades has made major efforts to recycle and to find new energy sources. In the nineteenth century whales were on the point of extinction and their much needed oil was close to vanishing. What happened in America saved the day. Oil was discovered and now it appears that once again in America and in Europe new reliable energy sources will be found.

There will come a day, due to people like Venter, that we will clean up our industrial messes, and, of course, you're to be commended for being so conscientious. To answer your question: I will just point to Venter. Venter exists because America exists. You won't find a Venter in that land that used to be called Burma.

When it comes to deciding if it is worth it to have painters, sculptors, dramatists, novelists, orchestras and guitarists, pianists, violinist, you are framing the question so that you reduce everyone to the level of communism where all are of equal worthlessness. That's how you currently feel?

I am proud to be free and proud to a citizen of two democracies.

Your worth can be found in that you live in a free society and can speak your mind. What you make of that opportunity says everything about you.

This comment might not be as prolific as any of the longer replies, but I read this: Being informed is depressing: http://www.americablog.com/2007/12/being-informed-is-depressing.html And thought of your journal entry. As far as I am concerned, the best you can do is keep moving forward with the belief system you have without compromising it.

Individual action is the first set of steps. The next step is to focus on the system. The question then becomes, are you a reformist, a creator or a revolutionary? - Reformists try to change the system from the inside (political parties, executive branches of governments, lobbying) or near the inside (NGOs). - Creators (I came up with this "label") try to create systems within the freedom the current rules allow them (entrepreneurs, NGOs, community actors). - Revolutionaries focus on removing the powerful from their position of power. This can be done violently or non-violently. One person can be many of these at the same time. It's not clear cut. Some contemporary examples: - Reformists: shifting taxes away from income and towards pollution. It levels the playing field for sustainable, labor-intensive business. - Creators: creating an NGO to increase recycling, start a local/organic food co-op, create a car-sharing business (ex: http://www.vrtucar.com/). - Revolutionaries: Industrial Workers of the World. It's not an environmentalist group, I disagree with many things on them and I *don't* consider myself a revolutionary, but they are right on one thing: direct action gets the goods. Think about it. If a massive amount of workers stopped working demanding that the powerful stop pillaging the planet, how would the powerful stay powerful if they didn't give in to the demands of the workers? I notice you were a software programmer. I spent *alot* of time thinking how open source software could help improving how society better organize itself and increase government transparency. As computers get closer and closer to the human being, it will change politics for the better. The American electoral system is also very binary, which doesn't leave much space for the richness of debate necessary to solve the environmental crisis. But that's the impression of an outsider and a whole other conversation.

Yep, I agree that having constantly plugged a 1500W electric radiator as a statistical average bugs me but I do my part anyway. Don't worry about it too much, every bit helps. Eventually there will be enough of us to bring the stats down. AND considering that fiscally it pays more and more to save, I don't think there is a need to be militant about it. Quite opposite: save while stupid still spend money. It's like getting a blue-chip stock early in the game...

I sympathize; I've been thinking lately about how little good I actually do in the world. (People in my field who want to feel idealistic talk about how they're 'advancing human knowledge', but they're deluding themselves. We're really in it for our own entertainment, or to satisfy our own curiosity. Most people couldn't care less.) Climate change in particular worries me. One thing that made me feel slightly better was buying carbon offsets to make up for my excessive air travel, but I worry that that's just assuaging my guilt while making only a tiny perturbation on the real problem. I think it's a problem that only government can solve, by exerting strong regulatory control, and I'm so cynical about government and politics that I can't convince myself to try to make any difference there. All of which is to say that really I don't know what to say. But your vegetarian Christmas dinner looks delicious to me (and I'm an omnivore).

At this point I don't really think any of us have a net positive impact on the world. Do you?

Yes you do. Yes I do. Don't be stupid.

/end

Yes you do. Yes I do. Don't be stupid.

Okay darling much-knowing one, champion of specific language, so what is a "net positive impact," in your decidedly not humble opinion? How does one achieve such an impact? And what is stupid about questioning it?

I am ignoring your /end tag, obviously.

I don't really think any of us have a net positive impact on the world.

So?

And what do you mean by "any of us"? Humanity? Do you believe the world has any purpose outside of what humans assign it?

what is a "net positive impact," in your decidedly not humble opinion? How does one achieve such an impact?

Everyone has their own unique answer to these questions, and none is objectively better or worse than any other. That's irrelevant to my point, which is: People who do not think they have a net positive impact on the world remove themselves from it.

And what is stupid about questioning it?

There is nothing stupid about questioning it. What's stupid is claiming to have reached the conclusion that the OP did. If you truly did not believe that anyone had a net positive impact on the world, you would make it your life's work to eradicate humanity, including yourself. So either she does not really believe this, or she is too stupid to follow her train of thought to its logical conclusion and do something about it.

"So either she does not really believe this, or she is too stupid to follow her train of thought to its logical conclusion and do something about it."

or... she is trying to find a way to have a net positive impact that isn't the eradication of humanity. i assume this is partly because the destruction of humanity is (to her) a far worse alternative than letting humanity exist.

dur...

If you truly did not believe that anyone had a net positive impact on the world, you would make it your life's work to eradicate humanity

Maybe I'm a horribly selfish person and I don't really care that my net impact (and everyone else's) is negative. And there are certainly large groups of people who I unquestionably think contribute nothing positive to society (the entire state of Indiana, and any other fundamentalist Christians who spend all day watching Jerry Springer reruns). Just because I truely believe that, doesn't mean I am going to nuke them. That would make me feel guilty. And I hate guilt.

What did Indiana do to you? I think if one is trying to do better, that's good enough. If one is doing good, and improving (or bad and improving) then the worry that it isn't good enough is missing the point. Improvement is the point. To have less negative impact is good, right? None of us are perfect, but it shouldn't stop us from trying, and it won't hurt... much.

I define having a net positive impact as subscribing to objectivism and disbelieving everything smirkysmurf says.

<em>I think it's a problem that only government can solve, by exerting strong regulatory control</em>

Regulation won't solve it by itself. The tax structure must shift off of income and payroll to pollution and stop subsidizing energy to make it cheap (subsidize rather energy efficiency upgrades). That way society is not wasting so much of the energy.

<em>and I'm so cynical about government and politics that I can't convince myself to try to make any difference there.</em>

I don't know where's the most efficient entry point into politics in the US. Cities have a large roll to play to achieve sustainability and I suspect city politics is much easier to get involved with than national politics.

or... she is trying to find a way to have a net positive impact that isn't the eradication of humanity. i assume this is partly because the destruction of humanity is (to her) a far worse alternative than letting humanity exist.

If she thinks the destruction of humanity is a far worse alternative than letting humanity exist, then she believes that humanity already has a net positive impact.

dur...