DBT
Contributor
It's not a very good metaphor. Ecosystems don't function like a mother correcting her children, and if you're using mothers correcting their children as your model for understanding ecosystemic interactions, you'll make poor predictions. Who is the "mother" and who is the "child"?Yeah, sorry, but that's bollocks.Sooner or later, Mother Nature corrects an imbalance in the ecosystem. And when it does happens, as it surely will, what happens may not be to our liking.
If there were an "imbalance", it would be swiftly and very obviously corrected.
Mother Nature is a myth; There's just reality. And the reality is the Homo Sapiens is currently enjoying high population, low and declining population growth, high and increasing life expectancy, and high and improving quality of life.
And that's entirely a consequence of our technology, and our demonstrated ability to meet challenges with more technology.
Population growth was a problem; We developed safe and effective contraception.
Plague was a problem; We developed antibiotics and vaccines.
War was a problem; We have dramatically reduced its frequency, severity, and area of effect.
Famine was a problem; We eliminated it.
The reality is that life is, mostly, better for a random human today than it would have been at any time in the history of our species.
That we constantly worry that it's all going to collapse, and cherry pick our news to focus only on the places where it's not going so well, may be a significant contributor to that success. Certainly it's not objective evidence that things are bad, or are getting worse, or are about to collapse.
You know that the term "Mother Nature" is just a metaphor for how ecosystems work, where 'corrections' and extinctions do in fact happen, and that we are not exempt.
It's just a figure of speech, it's not meant to be scientific or used to make predictions.