Cancer cells are cells that keep growing even when they are told to stop. They continue to grow even when they are a detriment to the body. They consume a large amount of resources and they have no regard for the future even though their unsustainable growth will always lead to the death of their host and to themselves.

Humans have a lot of these similarities. Nature has a lot of mechanisms to prevent the unbounded growth of any population either through finite resources (ie. Carnivores die when they are too numerous because they will run out of prey to hunt) or disease and crazy fungi that spread much easier when there is over population. Humans pretty much learned to circumvent these mechanisms, leading to essentially unbounded growth. Humans over consume resources and we don’t stop even when we learn of our over consumption. And despite learning that our way will lead to either mass deaths or extinction we do almost nothing and keep going.

    • moistclump@lemmy.world
      8·
      1 year ago

      Probably but also matrix refers to humanity as a virus, extracting from its host. I remember finding that striking and chilling. Still do, I suppose.

    • idunnololz@lemmy.worldOP
      92·
      1 year ago

      No. Did this get explained in the matrix? I haven’t watched it in over a decade. I literally just thought about this in the shower lmao.

      • intensely_human@lemm.ee
        7·
        1 year ago

        I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had. It came when I tried to classify your species, and I realized you’re not actually mammals.

        Every mammal instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. Instead you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. Then the only way you can survive is to spread to a new area.

        There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern: a virus. You humans are a disease — a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we are the cure.

        • lazylion_ca@lemmy.ca
          1·
          1 year ago

          I put forth that humans coalesing en-masse in cities are like bacteria festering in an open wound.

      • Dudewitbow@lemmy.ml
        51·
        1 year ago

        Depends on how low you define it. Many have monetary like transactions for procreation (e.g male insects offering food, some wasps offering service to mix her eggs into the colony eggs, penguins offering stones to mate), so the idea of offering a good/currency for a service is not innately human.

        • my_hat_stinks@programming.dev
          3·
          1 year ago

          Paying for goods isn’t capitalism in the same way breathing isn’t speech. Currency makes capitalism easier but using currency does not make you capitalist.

    • idunnololz@lemmy.worldOP
      52·
      1 year ago

      My shower thoughts don’t get this deep. Honestly this is prob more of a iam14andthisisdeep shower thought. Im pretty pessimistic about the future though, I think we’re all fked.

  • FiveMacs@lemmy.ca
    4·
    1 year ago

    And despite learning that our way will lead to either mass deaths or extinction we do almost nothing and keep going.

    We haven’t collectively learned to disregard heard mentality.

    Herd Mentality: A behavior in human beings where they flock like sheep subconsciously following a minority of individuals.

    minority of individuals.

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