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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32255 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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these are all social or institutional failures, not nature giving us something we can't take

I think "can't" is ambiguous here, because social and institutional failures in response to a natural challenge is exactly an example of what I would regard as a failure of control over nature. Subject to the goals and abilities of the human race, as it was in 2020, the response to covid was not one of being able to control the situation, and not one of being able to avoid massive damages of multiple kinds.

I'm just arguing 'nature' isn't an interesting part of the picture here, unless you mean nature in the sense of ''natural law' (which just means 'progressivism is bad', not that i disagree, but that's a different thing) - but if nature means forests, diseases, and climate, we're very good at controlling the former two and navigating around the third.

I would certainly say we have some control over climate and some diseases. On the other hand, if a prion starts decomposing your brain or Yellowstone erupts, the limits of our control become apparent. It's a gross simplification to say that "Humans are in control everywhere".

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