Posted by pmg101 4 days ago
I don't know if humanity is what can do that, and likely nobody knows. But nature is not going to survive either once you broaden the time horizon a bit.
In philosophy there is a debate regarding the meaning of the word nature and if humans should be considered a part of it, and I see the points, but that's a different discussion.
I see humanity as it exists today as a cancer on the planet and it's not out of smugness. The pursuit of infinite growth is ruining everything that's beautiful around us.
We can discuss the semantics of the word nature all you want but it is just shifting the focus from the actual problem, which is how we destroy everything we touch. Which is also what I'm assuming GP means.
As long as "it" happens before we poison or otherwise harm our planet beyond some "tipping point" after which Earth becomes "inhospitable" to most/all "complex" life in general.
Other species co-exist in the eco-system, we destroy it.
You got downvoted for paraphrasing the poem "There Will Come Soft Rains", from which Bradbury took the title of his story.
I supposed that's to be expected online. Small consolation, but at least some of us understood you :)
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.Awesome that your copy was signed by Bradbury! I only saw him in person once in 1997, from far away, when visited Buenos Aires for a book fair. I would have loved to get his autograph, but it was too crowded.
Haunting.
He might have done better to push it another 50 years. Problem being the other half of the MAD deal.
Not that the future isn't bleak, but I take heart we didn't all die in a massive thermonuclear war this timeline in the multiverse.
There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46847297 - Feb 2026 (52 comments)
(I’ve turned off duplicate detection due to the significance of the date.)
Don't mind the dup, though.