Saltpetre,

I agree with you, that most people are usually, fundamentally good. But some are not, and some of them pose as so 100 % good and, when coups overthrow governments, sometimes these incredibly 'good' people have seized control', and in the name of 'socialism', of 'the people'.

And soon enough, they very regretfully, have to 'subtract' a handful of people (which ends up being quite a substantial number) in order to keep the rest safe and pure.

Strange, isn't it, how often in such 'people's' societies, the head of the secret police, or someone high up, takes over as the 'people''s beloved leader ? Andropov, Honegger, Pol Pot ?, Putin.

And the case of Putin shows that 'socialism' has nothing much to do with it, it's all about power, the unbroken imperial power transferred from Tsarism to 'socialism' to Putinism.

Joe

Dear Foxy,

In this country we have people who can solve our water problems,
who can lift our Indigenous people from the margins to the
mainstream, who can save our environment from destruction,
and the list goes on.

They will not have the chance to do so because they will never be in any position of power. They will never be in any position of power because they serve neither the interests of the big end of town nor the union bureaucracy.

Posted by david f-

"I was trying to get beyond whether humans are good or bad. I was trying to consider humans in regard to our effects on other life forms and the planet. Good and bad are human concepts.

Whether humans are good or bad by some criteria is not relevant. I was wrong in asking if it would be a better world since ‘better’ is a human judgment. If humans disappeared there would be no better or worse.

We can set aside land for habitat of non-human species. Such habitat should be protected from incursions of cats and dogs, predators associated with humans.

Any ideas we have such as valuing biodiversity, democracy or other concepts are all human abstractions. If the planet were a spinning lifeless orb it would still exist."

Answer-

Lee Smolin apparently considered a bit of a rebel in science says that "life is the universe trying to understand itself".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_of_the_Cosmos

http://www.edge.org/conversation/lee_smolin-leonard_susskind-smolin-vs-susskind-the-anthropic-principle

What you are getting at appears to be similar to paradoxes such as the answer to the question "what would the world be like if I was dead" or "if a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it". I find these paradoxes interesting- the classic Zenos paradox and variants are also interesting.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-zeno/

Maybe David F raised a "paradox" purposefully.

Or maybe it's along the lines of "why are we here".

Maybe there can be a utilitarian principle that includes fauna and flora.

Doctor Manhattan asks similar questions in the "Watchmen" comic created by anarchist Alan Moore.

Human's seem to be the predominant "effect on other life forms" by a margin - but it could be argued that human's having a higher level of consciousness is more valuable in the universe.

Dear David,

I have more faith in the Australian voters.
Being a young country this still gives the people
plenty of capacity to make the right decisions
for our and future generations. Although we have
had failures and although we have not on every
occasion lived up to the best practices, the
Australian achievement - political, economic, and
in lifestyle - is one of the great successes of the
world.

Of course we can do better, and we shall, as long as our
country continues.

cont'd ...

Dear David,

I'm looking forward to the day when we become a
Republic and when we have greater representation
of our current population
in our parliament than we do. It would be good to
get rid of the "club" mentality that has persisted
for so long.

Foxy,

The Australia you have described above has come and gone. We are now an Asian nation-state.

Yours is a description of Australia between post-WW2 and the Great Asianization Period (1980-2020) in Australian history.

The only thing that makes one an Australia today is a piece of paper saying one is a citizen or a permanent residency stamp on a foreign passport.

The Australian that you are thinking of no longer exists.

Stop living in the past Foxy and get out and start putting your Asian identity into practice.

And don't forget to give us all one of your big "Ni hao mates!"