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It's always odd to me how people tend to think that human-created ecosystems are "freakish" or "unnatural". Humans evolved in the same environment as the ecosy

It's always odd to me how people tend to think that human-created ecosystems are "freakish" or "unnatural". Humans evolved in the same environment as the ecosystems we're modifying. The buildings and cars and roads we make are made of materials we find on earth, similar to how birds build nests or ants make anthills. (Whether all the things we build are good and healthy for us and our environment is another story.) My hypothesis has long been that this view of human activity as "unnatural" was actually born of the religious perspective that some religions hold that humans were implanted into the universe from the outside.

eloisius 1y ago
Was it George Carlin that joked something like “maybe the earth conjured up humans in order to put all this plastic in its crust for some purpose we don’t understand”?
- binarymax 1y ago
  He certainly decried the use of “all-natural” labels for products, because “everything comes from nature!”
  - hiccuphippo 1y ago
    Just like organic and non-organic vegetables. All vegetables are organic!
- Ygg2 1y ago
  Maybe that's just the sidequest. The real quest is getting multi planetar.
  - bix6 1y ago
    Is it? No other animal seems obsessed with getting off this beautiful rock.
  - haswell 1y ago
    What if the real quest is to collectively find ways to coexist without destroying the only planet we know to be fully capable of supporting human life richly? And this doesn’t have to be at odds with our space ambitions. But framed the way you framed this, it somewhat reminds me of the religious perspective that this world is just prep for what is to come. As a consequence, they see the harms we’re doing as inconsequential.
    - Ygg2 1y ago
      > And this doesn’t have to be at odds with our space ambitions. I never said, it is. Did I? A side quest is an optional thing you do while you complete the main quest. Mentioning it as a side quest serves as a link to the supposed Carlin quote. I always considered the main quest of life is to promote more life. Multi-planetary life is life more resistant to medium to large cosmical calamities.
      - haswell 1y ago
        I was primarily responding to this: > The real quest is getting multi planetar. Which when viewed as the "real" quest, has potentially problematic downstream effects. My point was that there are many people who see who see the world as something to escape and live lives prioritizing things that harm our long term ability to survive here in the pursuit of that escape. I appreciate the clarification that this is not what you meant. It wasn't clear that the "real quest" had any connection to the side quest since they seem unrelated. > Multi-planetary life is life more resistant to medium to large cosmical calamities. I don't disagree. But I strongly believe that stabilizing the home base is a higher priority in the near term i.e. at a time when the planet is in a precarious place, spending enormous amounts of resources trying to colonize mars is a questionable priority when we have more immediate problems that would benefit from such lofty ambitions.
        Ygg2 1y ago
        > I appreciate the clarification that this is not what you meant. It wasn't clear that the "real quest" had any connection to the side quest since they seem unrelated. Thanks, I'm pretty sure I know what I meant. I meant a gaming analogy (main quest/ side quest) not the Christianity metaphor. Just because you perceive as such doesn't mean I meant it as that. > But I strongly believe that stabilizing the home base is a higher priority in the near term i.e. at a time when the planet is in a precarious place Sure, just make sure you're not waiting for Godot (I meant the play, but pun is intended). Earth is never a stable place. Ecosystems are a constant rise and collapse of dietary chains, continents aren't standing still, and cataclysms are a dime a dozen. Organisms causing mass extinctions are also nothing new under the Sun. Albeit, we do hold a speed run record I believe.
- jemmyw 1y ago
  Or to release the energy in oil and coal. When you get a build up of stored energy something evolves to use it up. I'm not being serious, but it's an interesting thought.
  - aesch 1y ago
    Sounds like an extension of the second law of thermodynamics.
Biologist123 1y ago
Well done in getting this up immediately. Pieces like this BBC piece are either implicit or explicit propaganda to define “nature” as a world without humans. Even the word “freakosystem”, as novel as it is, sets up an implicit good/bad dichotomy. Edit: If you on-board the assumption that all change is bad, you potentially open yourself up to a great deal of anxiety associated with that change.
- Ygg2 1y ago
  It goes beyond that. Depending on ecosystem and size of settlements human leaving may actually decrease bio diversity. Think it was Bulgaria or Romania, but with rural places that had their populations die out, also saw decrease in bio diversity.
- dodslaser 1y ago
  While this is technically correct, there is an important distinction to be made that we are the only species capable of even understanding the ramifications of our actions on an ecosystem, and choosing to change our behavior to have less (or more) of an impact on the environment we are in. Any species could drive another species to extinction, or carry them from one location to another, but no other species are actively choosing to do so.
  - Ygg2 1y ago
    What does "actively choosing" mean? An ant might choose to move the bugs they milk. Do they count?
    - haswell 1y ago
      I’d define this as: we consciously understand the potential and real consequences of our actions. Ants operate on instinct and are not capable of extrapolating higher order consequences like we are.
      - devilbunny 1y ago
        Thinking of individual ants is really the wrong analogy; ant colonies are more like the organism. Your hands work on instinct too (just look at newborn babies; they can do very little, but they can grab things).
BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago
I completely agree with disregarding the man/nature dichotomy, it’s complete nonsense. On the other hand, tool use and tool construction aren’t exactly the same as beaver dams, anthills, or bird nests because the particulars of the tool aren’t at all hardwired, which implies that the tool might have unexpected ramifications for the environment that would have otherwise been detected if the behavior had appeared over evolutionary timescales. A wariness towards self-conscious human ecosystem modification isn’t exactly unwarranted.
gman83 1y ago
It reminds me of people who won't eat certain foods because it contains "too many chemicals".
- haswell 1y ago
  Except we know certain chemicals are harmful, and we have no idea about the long term effects of many others. We also have a history of using materials we don’t understand and only stopping after it kills or harms enough people.
  - randomcarbloke 1y ago
    you just sound like an anti-vaxer, one of those UPF fearmongering cultists.
  - jcranmer 1y ago
    The problem with this worldview is that it dramatically underestimates the harm of "natural" products compared to "artificial" products. You see, if it's fermented grape juice, it's "natural", and so it's a complex flavor profile. But if you actually list out what's in it, it's a lot of toxic chemicals banned as food additives, and synthetic wine is illegal as a result. And you can't omit the egregiously toxic stuff because it makes the test came out wrong.
    - IAmBroom 1y ago
      Your assumptions about beverage law are dead wrong. "Synthetic wine", whatever you mean by that, is not "illegal". And beverage makers actually have much more freedom than ordinary food makers in their choices of ingredients.
      - jcranmer 1y ago
        Synthetic wine is the name for people who are trying to create wine from its chemical ingredients rather than from the natural process of fermentation. There was an article several years back about one of these groups trying to get regulatory approval to sell their product, and the stumbling block was the use of things that weren't approved additives. (I want to say it was tannins, since that's the most overtly problematic chemical in wine, but it has been several years since I've seen the article, so I could be mixing it up for one of the other carcinogens involved).
542354234235 1y ago
I think it is a useful distinction for non-religious reasons. First is that humans change the environment more than anything else, by a large margin. As they say, “the dose makes the poison”. All species modify the environment they live in, but none are reshaping the oceans, every landmass, the air, the climate etc. like humans. Humans created multiple elements that never existed on earth. Second, humans are conscious of the things we are doing. We can write articles about it and make choices about how we will change the environment in the future. We cannot discuss things with wolves in Yellowstone about how they are changing the area. The cinnamon trees in Hawaii can’t get together and decide how to share space with other plants. And finally, always have at least three items when listing things.
- fallous 1y ago
  Life has fundamentally changed the environment multiple times. The reason you live in an oxygenated environment is due to the waste produced by life.
  - jermaustin1 1y ago
    How long did it take to oxygenate the planet though? Millions of years, billions? How long did it take to spew enough carbon into the atmosphere to create acid rain? How long did it take to clear cut most of the wester European forests? No one thinks the earth was perfectly harmonious before man, but in the last 200k years (0.0004% of the earth's age), we have DEFINITELY left a mark that no other life form before had. In the last 200 years, we've probably done more harm than all other life forms before as well (but that I'm less confident about).
    - thatcat 1y ago
      SO2 and NOx produces acid rain
      - jermaustin1 1y ago
        My bad - point stands, just wrong element/molecule.
throwaway290 1y ago
Humans are part of nature but if humans are also growing to have disproportionate impact on the rest of nature it kinda worth thinking about what's going on then
loudmax 1y ago
Incidentally, this concept of modifying one's ecosystem comes up in Richard Dawkins' book The Extended Phenotype, which is a follow up to The Selfish Gene. One of the illustrative examples is beavers turning fast moving streams into convenient slow moving fisheries by building dams. The ecosystem the beavers built is "natural" in the sense that beavers are animals and it's in their nature to chew through trees. But presumably, at least some other animals were pushed to extinction when their habitat was modified by the beavers.
bix6 1y ago
I do think there is a difference when you can cause rapid global change. And most animals are benefitting their ecosystem in some way whereas we’re just extracting resources for the highest bidder 3000 miles away. Our ecosystems are struggling to replenish themselves because we lack harmony with nature. We live in an unnatural society that clearly cannot sustain our changes.
- declan_roberts 1y ago
  This is what the headlines say but it's not true. For example look into regenerative agriculture. All of the small scale farms around me are moving to rotational grazing systems because they improve the pastures and fertility of the land over time.
  - bix6 1y ago
    Small scale being the key word. Industrial farming is ruining our water supply. We just had another algae bloom here and all the wild life died.
Lutger 1y ago
There are several competing, and sometimes complementary perspectives on what 'nature' means. Some include humans and their activity within it, others do not. One thing you can ask yourself: if human activity and the impact it has on its environment is included in what you call 'natural', then what even does remain of the word 'unnatural'? What do people refer to, when they use that word? If you don't have any sensible explanation for it, then the whole thing collapses, yet evidently a lot of people really want to keep using the word nature and even seem to have no problem in making themselves understood when doing so.
- noja 1y ago
  I think if you are short-terming your existence by destroying everything around you, that could qualify as unnatural.
  - Lutger 1y ago
    That's interesting. Aren't there examples in nature where a species essentially destroys itself? There are many on the population level. Plants often do this, its called succession. There's a layer to this, where natural also implies good and unnatural implies bad. For example, plastic is bad because it is unnatural, but arguing it is natural after all somehow makes it good (that is the rhetoric I believe). This depends on the notion of a 'natural order', whether that is some vague concept of 'the universe' or of God himself. Anything against that order is bad and unnatural. Humans are part of that order. Of course, that is very pre-modern idea. I believe what comes close to a useful definition of natural would be something like 'emergent' or 'spontaneous', as opposed to deliberately designed. Its a quality you could also ascribe to, for example, cities or software systems. You don't need the human/nature split for it to be useful. It is not exactly capturing what people think of as natural, but then again we also do not believe in God anymore - by and large. At least not in the way we used to.
- kgwxd 1y ago
  > what even does remain of the word 'unnatural'? Shame.
denom 1y ago
With our consumption humans are drawing down on the ‘reserve’ that ecological services have built up. Human activities lack the sophistication of an ecosystem that is in balance and cannot recreate the network of benefits thereof.
lproven 1y ago
> It's always odd to me how people tend to think that human-created ecosystems are "freakish" or "unnatural". While this may be true, it's not what this article is about, which is IMHO why it's a refreshing change.
TeMPOraL 1y ago
I agree strongly (except with the religion part - I suspect that being guilty for existing is a perspective that was thought of / rediscovered many times over the generations, regardless of religious tradition). My takeaway from the article is: yes, we can adjust ecosystems, and no, they don't immediately wither and die, nor do they become boring monocultures. Despite popularly repeated memes, we aren't destroying everything we're touching or otherwise "playing god". If anything, this tells me we should study those ecosystems and learn from them, to become gradually more intentional about the changes we introduce.
perrygeo 1y ago
Your hypothesis makes sense. I'd call it "human exceptionalism" - the (wildly unsupported) assumption that we are separate from nature. Religions that see humans and nature as part of the same system don't have this idea of "unnatural" landscapes. They have no concept of "wilderness". All landscapes are landscapes to which we both belong and shape through our actions.
satisfice 1y ago
I also don’t see the value of the distinction. You could say that the idea that human-created change is unnatural is a purely artificial construct. What does concern me is the collapse of natural (meaning tested over millions of years) biodiversity.
JR1427 1y ago
Humans have brought with them the ability to dramatically change ecosystems on timescales far shorter than usually seen without them (exceptions being volcanic eruptions etc). These short timescales mean that the mechanism of natural selection and evolution do not have time to adjust ecosystems to changes, so they can collapse rapidly.

eloisius 1y ago

Was it George Carlin that joked something like “maybe the earth conjured up humans in order to put all this plastic in its crust for some purpose we don’t understand”?

binarymax 1y ago
He certainly decried the use of “all-natural” labels for products, because “everything comes from nature!”
- hiccuphippo 1y ago
  Just like organic and non-organic vegetables. All vegetables are organic!
Ygg2 1y ago
Maybe that's just the sidequest. The real quest is getting multi planetar.
- bix6 1y ago
  Is it? No other animal seems obsessed with getting off this beautiful rock.
- haswell 1y ago
  What if the real quest is to collectively find ways to coexist without destroying the only planet we know to be fully capable of supporting human life richly? And this doesn’t have to be at odds with our space ambitions. But framed the way you framed this, it somewhat reminds me of the religious perspective that this world is just prep for what is to come. As a consequence, they see the harms we’re doing as inconsequential.
  - Ygg2 1y ago
    > And this doesn’t have to be at odds with our space ambitions. I never said, it is. Did I? A side quest is an optional thing you do while you complete the main quest. Mentioning it as a side quest serves as a link to the supposed Carlin quote. I always considered the main quest of life is to promote more life. Multi-planetary life is life more resistant to medium to large cosmical calamities.
    - haswell 1y ago
      I was primarily responding to this: > The real quest is getting multi planetar. Which when viewed as the "real" quest, has potentially problematic downstream effects. My point was that there are many people who see who see the world as something to escape and live lives prioritizing things that harm our long term ability to survive here in the pursuit of that escape. I appreciate the clarification that this is not what you meant. It wasn't clear that the "real quest" had any connection to the side quest since they seem unrelated. > Multi-planetary life is life more resistant to medium to large cosmical calamities. I don't disagree. But I strongly believe that stabilizing the home base is a higher priority in the near term i.e. at a time when the planet is in a precarious place, spending enormous amounts of resources trying to colonize mars is a questionable priority when we have more immediate problems that would benefit from such lofty ambitions.
      - Ygg2 1y ago
        > I appreciate the clarification that this is not what you meant. It wasn't clear that the "real quest" had any connection to the side quest since they seem unrelated. Thanks, I'm pretty sure I know what I meant. I meant a gaming analogy (main quest/ side quest) not the Christianity metaphor. Just because you perceive as such doesn't mean I meant it as that. > But I strongly believe that stabilizing the home base is a higher priority in the near term i.e. at a time when the planet is in a precarious place Sure, just make sure you're not waiting for Godot (I meant the play, but pun is intended). Earth is never a stable place. Ecosystems are a constant rise and collapse of dietary chains, continents aren't standing still, and cataclysms are a dime a dozen. Organisms causing mass extinctions are also nothing new under the Sun. Albeit, we do hold a speed run record I believe.
jemmyw 1y ago
Or to release the energy in oil and coal. When you get a build up of stored energy something evolves to use it up. I'm not being serious, but it's an interesting thought.
- aesch 1y ago
  Sounds like an extension of the second law of thermodynamics.

Biologist123 1y ago

Well done in getting this up immediately. Pieces like this BBC piece are either implicit or explicit propaganda to define “nature” as a world without humans. Even the word “freakosystem”, as novel as it is, sets up an implicit good/bad dichotomy. Edit: If you on-board the assumption that all change is bad, you potentially open yourself up to a great deal of anxiety associated with that change.

Ygg2 1y ago
It goes beyond that. Depending on ecosystem and size of settlements human leaving may actually decrease bio diversity. Think it was Bulgaria or Romania, but with rural places that had their populations die out, also saw decrease in bio diversity.
dodslaser 1y ago
While this is technically correct, there is an important distinction to be made that we are the only species capable of even understanding the ramifications of our actions on an ecosystem, and choosing to change our behavior to have less (or more) of an impact on the environment we are in. Any species could drive another species to extinction, or carry them from one location to another, but no other species are actively choosing to do so.
- Ygg2 1y ago
  What does "actively choosing" mean? An ant might choose to move the bugs they milk. Do they count?
  - haswell 1y ago
    I’d define this as: we consciously understand the potential and real consequences of our actions. Ants operate on instinct and are not capable of extrapolating higher order consequences like we are.
    - devilbunny 1y ago
      Thinking of individual ants is really the wrong analogy; ant colonies are more like the organism. Your hands work on instinct too (just look at newborn babies; they can do very little, but they can grab things).

BriggyDwiggs42 1y ago

I completely agree with disregarding the man/nature dichotomy, it’s complete nonsense. On the other hand, tool use and tool construction aren’t exactly the same as beaver dams, anthills, or bird nests because the particulars of the tool aren’t at all hardwired, which implies that the tool might have unexpected ramifications for the environment that would have otherwise been detected if the behavior had appeared over evolutionary timescales. A wariness towards self-conscious human ecosystem modification isn’t exactly unwarranted.

gman83 1y ago

It reminds me of people who won't eat certain foods because it contains "too many chemicals".

haswell 1y ago
Except we know certain chemicals are harmful, and we have no idea about the long term effects of many others. We also have a history of using materials we don’t understand and only stopping after it kills or harms enough people.
- randomcarbloke 1y ago
  you just sound like an anti-vaxer, one of those UPF fearmongering cultists.
- jcranmer 1y ago
  The problem with this worldview is that it dramatically underestimates the harm of "natural" products compared to "artificial" products. You see, if it's fermented grape juice, it's "natural", and so it's a complex flavor profile. But if you actually list out what's in it, it's a lot of toxic chemicals banned as food additives, and synthetic wine is illegal as a result. And you can't omit the egregiously toxic stuff because it makes the test came out wrong.
  - IAmBroom 1y ago
    Your assumptions about beverage law are dead wrong. "Synthetic wine", whatever you mean by that, is not "illegal". And beverage makers actually have much more freedom than ordinary food makers in their choices of ingredients.
    - jcranmer 1y ago
      Synthetic wine is the name for people who are trying to create wine from its chemical ingredients rather than from the natural process of fermentation. There was an article several years back about one of these groups trying to get regulatory approval to sell their product, and the stumbling block was the use of things that weren't approved additives. (I want to say it was tannins, since that's the most overtly problematic chemical in wine, but it has been several years since I've seen the article, so I could be mixing it up for one of the other carcinogens involved).

542354234235 1y ago

I think it is a useful distinction for non-religious reasons. First is that humans change the environment more than anything else, by a large margin. As they say, “the dose makes the poison”. All species modify the environment they live in, but none are reshaping the oceans, every landmass, the air, the climate etc. like humans. Humans created multiple elements that never existed on earth. Second, humans are conscious of the things we are doing. We can write articles about it and make choices about how we will change the environment in the future. We cannot discuss things with wolves in Yellowstone about how they are changing the area. The cinnamon trees in Hawaii can’t get together and decide how to share space with other plants. And finally, always have at least three items when listing things.

fallous 1y ago
Life has fundamentally changed the environment multiple times. The reason you live in an oxygenated environment is due to the waste produced by life.
- jermaustin1 1y ago
  How long did it take to oxygenate the planet though? Millions of years, billions? How long did it take to spew enough carbon into the atmosphere to create acid rain? How long did it take to clear cut most of the wester European forests? No one thinks the earth was perfectly harmonious before man, but in the last 200k years (0.0004% of the earth's age), we have DEFINITELY left a mark that no other life form before had. In the last 200 years, we've probably done more harm than all other life forms before as well (but that I'm less confident about).
  - thatcat 1y ago
    SO2 and NOx produces acid rain
    - jermaustin1 1y ago
      My bad - point stands, just wrong element/molecule.

throwaway290 1y ago

Humans are part of nature but if humans are also growing to have disproportionate impact on the rest of nature it kinda worth thinking about what's going on then

loudmax 1y ago

Incidentally, this concept of modifying one's ecosystem comes up in Richard Dawkins' book The Extended Phenotype, which is a follow up to The Selfish Gene. One of the illustrative examples is beavers turning fast moving streams into convenient slow moving fisheries by building dams. The ecosystem the beavers built is "natural" in the sense that beavers are animals and it's in their nature to chew through trees. But presumably, at least some other animals were pushed to extinction when their habitat was modified by the beavers.

bix6 1y ago

I do think there is a difference when you can cause rapid global change. And most animals are benefitting their ecosystem in some way whereas we’re just extracting resources for the highest bidder 3000 miles away. Our ecosystems are struggling to replenish themselves because we lack harmony with nature. We live in an unnatural society that clearly cannot sustain our changes.

declan_roberts 1y ago
This is what the headlines say but it's not true. For example look into regenerative agriculture. All of the small scale farms around me are moving to rotational grazing systems because they improve the pastures and fertility of the land over time.
- bix6 1y ago
  Small scale being the key word. Industrial farming is ruining our water supply. We just had another algae bloom here and all the wild life died.

Lutger 1y ago

There are several competing, and sometimes complementary perspectives on what 'nature' means. Some include humans and their activity within it, others do not. One thing you can ask yourself: if human activity and the impact it has on its environment is included in what you call 'natural', then what even does remain of the word 'unnatural'? What do people refer to, when they use that word? If you don't have any sensible explanation for it, then the whole thing collapses, yet evidently a lot of people really want to keep using the word nature and even seem to have no problem in making themselves understood when doing so.

noja 1y ago
I think if you are short-terming your existence by destroying everything around you, that could qualify as unnatural.
- Lutger 1y ago
  That's interesting. Aren't there examples in nature where a species essentially destroys itself? There are many on the population level. Plants often do this, its called succession. There's a layer to this, where natural also implies good and unnatural implies bad. For example, plastic is bad because it is unnatural, but arguing it is natural after all somehow makes it good (that is the rhetoric I believe). This depends on the notion of a 'natural order', whether that is some vague concept of 'the universe' or of God himself. Anything against that order is bad and unnatural. Humans are part of that order. Of course, that is very pre-modern idea. I believe what comes close to a useful definition of natural would be something like 'emergent' or 'spontaneous', as opposed to deliberately designed. Its a quality you could also ascribe to, for example, cities or software systems. You don't need the human/nature split for it to be useful. It is not exactly capturing what people think of as natural, but then again we also do not believe in God anymore - by and large. At least not in the way we used to.
kgwxd 1y ago
> what even does remain of the word 'unnatural'? Shame.

denom 1y ago

With our consumption humans are drawing down on the ‘reserve’ that ecological services have built up. Human activities lack the sophistication of an ecosystem that is in balance and cannot recreate the network of benefits thereof.

lproven 1y ago

> It's always odd to me how people tend to think that human-created ecosystems are "freakish" or "unnatural". While this may be true, it's not what this article is about, which is IMHO why it's a refreshing change.

TeMPOraL 1y ago

I agree strongly (except with the religion part - I suspect that being guilty for existing is a perspective that was thought of / rediscovered many times over the generations, regardless of religious tradition). My takeaway from the article is: yes, we can adjust ecosystems, and no, they don't immediately wither and die, nor do they become boring monocultures. Despite popularly repeated memes, we aren't destroying everything we're touching or otherwise "playing god". If anything, this tells me we should study those ecosystems and learn from them, to become gradually more intentional about the changes we introduce.

perrygeo 1y ago

Your hypothesis makes sense. I'd call it "human exceptionalism" - the (wildly unsupported) assumption that we are separate from nature. Religions that see humans and nature as part of the same system don't have this idea of "unnatural" landscapes. They have no concept of "wilderness". All landscapes are landscapes to which we both belong and shape through our actions.

satisfice 1y ago

I also don’t see the value of the distinction. You could say that the idea that human-created change is unnatural is a purely artificial construct. What does concern me is the collapse of natural (meaning tested over millions of years) biodiversity.

JR1427 1y ago

Humans have brought with them the ability to dramatically change ecosystems on timescales far shorter than usually seen without them (exceptions being volcanic eruptions etc). These short timescales mean that the mechanism of natural selection and evolution do not have time to adjust ecosystems to changes, so they can collapse rapidly.