SPATA, Greece (AP) — In an olive grove on the outskirts of Athens, grower Konstantinos Markou pushes aside the shoots of new growth to reveal the stump of a tree — a roughly 150-year-old specimen, he said, that was among 15 cut down on his neighbor’s land by thieves eager to turn it into money.

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102 points

What short sighted idiots. Chopping down a tree to steal the fruit? Our species is its own Great Filter.

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67 points

The very last line stuck out to me:

Markou, the grower, said of the tree-cutting. “You kill your own history here.”

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-72 points
*

Are the thieves to blame or the system in which they live in that’s full of social inequality? 🤔 Maybe it’s not the person with the chainsaw that’s killing their history.

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82 points

I think the people cutting down 150 year old tress are pretty clearly the ones to blame for cutting down 150 year old trees.

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28 points

People may be driven to steal because of horrible circumstances… But they still choose what to steal.

If these guys were just knocking over a Target, I’d agree with you.

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14 points

The thieves are. Next question.

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4 points
  • I really blew it, didn’t I?

  • I mean, maybe you could have been a better role model when she was young, but also, she never really had a chance. This is what our celebrity culture does to people.

  • So what you’re saying is: Everything is society’s fault, and we as individuals never need to take responsibility for anything?

  • Uh, no. Not exactly. I was just saying that.

  • Yeah. I like that. I didn’t do anything wrong because I can’t do anything wrong because we’re all just products of our environment, bouncing around like marbles in the game of Hungry Hungry Hippos that is our random and cruel universe.

  • Wait, no, that’s not even what I’m saying …

  • Yeah. It’s not my fault. It’s society. Everything is because of society. Hooray! Everything is meaningless! Nothing I do has consequence!

https://youtu.be/_KCUSGMHPNg?si=ChBiq6EHlp3eiuvl

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10 points

To be fair, olive trees only take 2-3 years to mature, so they’re fairly easy to replace.

Just the fact that they’d do that is terrible, though.

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14 points

No, an olive tree may give you an olive at 3 years. One. A hundred year old olive tree gives thousands and thousands. It’s really not replaceable.

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Use whatever wood bits that are left to fashion a few stakes and do what stakes do to the people who cut them down.

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1 point

Sure. That’s poaching, overfishing, clearcutting, and every other natural resource that is exploited into oblivion or causes environmental destruction for a profit.

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3 points

The way you phrase this like you found me to be arguing in favor of those things confuses me.

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1 point

I was agreeing with you and expounding on the problem.

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