My current “sense of place”

         Vandana Shiva said, ‘Humankind is one among millions of other species.’ I agree with her. According to modern evolution, humankind is not the end or purpose of the evolution. Same as other species, humankind is merely a branch of the tree of evolution among thousands of other branches. It is very hard to say which branch is higher class than the other branches.

         It is nature for every species, including mankind, to put their self-interest first. According to evolution, the main goal of life is to survive and reproduce by all means. One species would push other species to extinction or to manipulate them without concern for their well being in order to survive and reproduce. It is perfectly justified for doing this.

         However, mankind has the ability of rational thinking and the knowledge of science. They are capable to plan, partially predict future and inference the advantage and disadvantage of their current actions. To avoid of lost of their long term interest, mankind tends not to destroy the environment just for a short term interest. The purpose of protecting the environment and ecosystem is just to protect mankind, not for anything else. According to evolution, competition among species is not only by killing each other. In many circumstances, co-operation among species is a better strategy to survive. Mankind has great power, but the power is still not great enough and we still rely heavily on the ecosystem.

         Human is part of nature. When we say “the environment is destroyed”, it means the environment or the area around is not suitable for human to live. For the earth, it just means that a little bit change of ecosystem. For instance, an asteroid hit on the earth caused the extinction of dinosaurs and 90% of other species. However, thousands of years later, the other species came up and build the world we see today. There is no such thing that “the environment is being destroyed”. By not protecting the environment, mankind are not hurting the environment, but they are hurting themselves.