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So I am attempting to start a new group, ( it was bound to happen one day ). It is intended mainly for pleasure and nature lovers, any thing and everything to do with the beautiful world we live on, and especially the things we share it with. Please check it out if you have time. There are a couple of posts already, more to follow. [agnostic.com]

Fernapple 9 Dec 3
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1

The entire drive of human history, as far as I can tell, has been to get as far away from nature as possible. Who am I to buck the trend.

Good luck, though...

The entire drive of human history, has also been to find better ways of fooling your fellow humans, or better ways of killing them if they refused to be fooled. The best thing about nature is that it is not trying to fool you, so if you know nature you know what reality looks like for comparison. Go on buck a trend or two.

Hm. Like this may post it.

@Fernapple Are you serious? Nature invented fooling one another! Camoflage evolved as a natural defense and/or stealth attack mechanism. See: the stick insect, the tiger, the leopard, the zebra, the dead-leaf mantis, the dead-leaf moth, the timber rattler, the copperhead, the chameleon, the gecko... I'll stop now or I'll be here all night.

The point is, fooling your foes is not a human invention, nor is killing them. Let's not overly idealize nature.

@Paul4747 No I did not say that things in nature are not into foolling, many things in nature are as you say very good at that. I said that "nature", as an abstraction, is not trying to fool "you", especially about the big issues. Individual animal and plants do use deception wonderfully well, but that is only for the individuals benefit and targeted at other individuals, there is no organized mega-deseption over issues of no immediate benefit.

Indeed it is because it helps us to understand deseption which is one example of how useful to education an understanding of nature is. For example. Some ochids tempt bees and other insects into providing them with a pollination service, by pretending to be sexual partners, even giving off powerful sex scents, and looking like the insects themselves. Often they are larger brighter and more highly scented than real sexual partners would be.

The lesson therefore for humans who can easily see through the deseption, because it is not directed at us is. "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true." Would not the orchid and the bee, be a good lesson for every school child, especially if it is made memorable by introducing them to the practical, and beautiful, physical evidence ?

@Fernapple DECEPTION...
I agree with Paul: nature is a dangerous place. Here in North Florida we have all KINDS of stinging, biting, poisonous creatures...thank the stars for calamine lotion, hydrogen peroxide, rubbing alcohol, etc. And that's for the more benign critters.
For instance, the adorable Yellow Fly, which in the summer makes going from your front door to your car door a desperate dash for cover. No they aren't trying to "fool" you, they want your blood!
Still, winters are nice, if you can stand the temperatures plunging into the 40s and 30s every night!
I love nature, but let's not fool ourselves, it is literally a vicious fight for survival, made tolerable only by our ingenious ways of avoiding the worst of it, and maximizing it's more pleasant aspects.

@Storm1752 True it is often a vicious fight for survival. But does that alone not tell you something? So just quoting Darwin.

"It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less improved forms."

He did not say then that this vision was pretty, the phrase he used was. "There is a grandure in this view of life."

I would never say that it is comfortable, but neither is life in human society. And the big point is, that we are all culture victims to some degree, even those of us not caught in the extreme forms of culture such as religion. For many people, especially urban people, the only inputs their brains receive, come from human controlled media, and all humans who control media have a hidden agenda, so that many people they can live their whole lives without any input which is not distrorted. What I would say however is how will you ever understand human society, unless you study that which is not human society, and that which produced society in the first place. You can not know the depth of the sea, without sounding to the mud at the bottom.

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NOW we are talking! I spent about 2 years of my life primitive camping and just living out of a tent. During that time I began to grow a greater love and respect for nature! Count me in!

Donne Level 5 Dec 4, 2019
1

What's the name of it?

Natural History. Just follow the link if you like.

4

Nature is Nude after all - how about a little Nude Nature ??? Hahaha!

I'd say that is about as much any bear can bare....LOL.

3

Very nice . I am in 🙌

Natural history. Just follow the link if you like.

1

You know of course that it is coming to an end?

The world or nature?

True. The sun will burn out and turn into a red dwarf in, oh, just a few billion years now. Then it's goodbye, planet.

@Paul4747 I had something much, much sooner in mind. Like the Artic permafrost melting due to global warming releasing the trapped methane (a more serious green house gas than Carbon Dioxide), causing Earth to become as hot as Venus. [en.wikipedia.org]
[joe.ie]

@dahermit Well, the planet will still be here. Life forms will evolve and adapt to it as always. Whether we've ruined it for the ones we know is a different question.

@Paul4747 What life forms can survive the heat of Venus? [google.com]

2

I think there is something similar started a while back by @Allamanda which I joined, but you can count me in as well if you like.

1

That sound good. I'm in.

1

I am in!

djs64 Level 7 Dec 3, 2019
1

We need another new group like we need another

I know tell me about it, but it is my first and only one, and there did seem to be a gap.

2

Hope you are successful, and get the response you're hoping for.

1

Is there anything about people or just nature?

No this is just nature, exactly because we are too self absorbed and need to get over ourselves more than anything.

2

Nice! I'm in!

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