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Re:We’re Not So Special: A new book challenges human excepti... by Jensson on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @12:17PM (#44963263)
> The reason I think this is important is because "human exceptionalism" carries a baggage of divine right

That is on you, that doesn't mean humans aren't exceptional. The fact that we are even discussing our role in nature and how we shouldn't abuse it makes us that exceptional.

If humans weren't that exceptional we would just go and destroy nature everywhere it benefits us with no thoughts about the future or how this could ever hurt us, just like animals does when they have the power to.

Re:We’re Not So Special: A new book challenges human excepti... by scott_w on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @02:59PM (#44965077)
Everything you said just made my point for me.
Re:We’re Not So Special: A new book challenges human excepti... by Jensson on Wednesday August 20, 2025 @07:10PM (#44967464)
In what way does what I say have anything to do with divine rights?

Rather I'd call your stance "divine obligations", which is also a stance that humans are exceptional. You don't hold that for any other species than humans.

Re:We’re Not So Special: A new book challenges human excepti... by scott_w on Thursday August 21, 2025 @01:34AM (#44969344)
> If humans weren't that exceptional we would just go and destroy nature everywhere it benefits us with no thoughts about the future or how this could ever hurt us

Let’s start here: humans are literally in the process of doing this via carbon emissions. There seems no way of stopping it as we’re all slaves to economic incentives. If you take a step away from the details of how we do this, you’ll see plenty of animals destroy their local ecology through things like over grazing, and need predators to bring them back under control. Again, the details and scale are different but the base behavioural trait is there: optimising local maxima and causing long term damage.

So no, humans don’t follow a divine obligation: we actually do the same thing every animal does and tries to maximise our short term goals to the detriment of everything else. We’re not exceptional in this regard.