I actually soft hate every version of this meme, even the cute ones (this is cute). The planet is not endangered by human activity. The most endangered being from human activity is humans. We need to think of fixing this less as a favor to the planet spirit and more as a basic survival issue.
Plus the whole “we are the virus” framing smacks of Malthus and just opens the door to “which people are most the virus and who do we get rid of?”
The most endangered from human activity is all life. There is a massive die off happening and will only get larger impacting all plants and animals.
But you’re right, the planet will still be here once we’re (and everything else) is gone.
The most endangered being from human activity is humans.
We’re not just making the planet unlivable for us. We managed to get rid of almost half of all the insects in the last 30 years. We made countless species go extinct via various methods. And that’s just a few of our “achievements”.
I get what you’re saying, but I think memes like this are trying to do a few things:
- frame mankind’s unique ability to think beyond just the interest of self to drive a sense of common purpose (i.e., increase our chance of survival and avoid self destruction).
- to that end, evoking the construct of a helpless and fragile planet as the calling to fight for self preservation as a species probably works better since all signs point to our inability to act on behalf of a greater good for mankind.
- the imagery and framing of this sort provides subliminal messaging that we collectively and individually have a power to do something about it (humans can create the problem as well as the solution). Honestly, even if it weren’t true, it feels better to think we can affect change rather than not.
And I soft hate ‘the planet will be fine’ people.
It’s figurative, not to be taken literally. This is not difficult. You’re trying too hard.
Well, if you frame the issue as humanity being imperiled, you kinda lose the misanthropic and psychopathic crowd, which is a significant percentage of the population. They might uh, hear that news and go: “Great! Population Zero, here we come!”
Whereas, the planet being unlivable, means they die too.
It’s all about psychological framing.
Some people simply can’t be compelled to care about anything except themselves (and nearest family / friend circle / insert object here). That’s partially how we ended up in this mess in the first place: The Tragedy of the Commons.
Sorry to put it this way.
every coworker telling me why I should have children 20 seconds after telling me why they cant do anything on the weekends, have no money and are always tired. Yeah… it really sounds like fun eh?
Even though they could do terrible things, however far and few there might have been, there were those who could bring beauty and goodness to this world.
No amount of beauty and goodness can compensate for being rapetortured in a Russian torture chamber.
Some people would think of torture as a form of art, im not one of those, but they exist…
Free cookie emoji for anyone who guesses what I just quoted
To Uranus…and beyond!
And disappear into your black hole
