I've been thinking on and about anthropocentrism. It seems that there are more and more people who seem to subscribe to the idea that we need ecocentrism or biocentrism, perhaps the most famous thinker on this is Peter Singer(?).
The authors (Kopnina, Washington, Taylor, Piccolo) write:
> What we face as a society is deciding whether we want to insist that all value and ethics is limited to humanity, or whether value and ethics lie in the rest of life on Earth, as ecocentrism maintains. Anthropocentrism as an ideology is egotistical and solipsistic, obsessed only with humans. Yet humans actually do love animals, trees, rivers and landscapes, and many indigenous cultures attributed value and respect to them (Knudtson and Suzuki 1992). Anthropocentrism is clearly a significant driver of ecocide and the environmental crisis, for society has been madly pursuing project ‘human planet’ without considering that humanity is (in the end) fully dependent on nature (Washington 2013). Anthropocentrism cannot lead us to a sustainable future. Ecocentrism, in contrast, accepts that we are part of nature, and have a responsibility to respect the web of life and heal the damage caused by the ideological dominance of anthropocentrism (Washington et al. 2017a, b).
Is anthropocentrism really that bad? To me, while eco- and biocentrism sound noble (and like a way to fight our selfishness), it seems unrealistic because it, while I agree that being aware of our selfishness is good, but how are we to ultimately escape it? Do people really think that we have such a grasp of nature that we can see it as a unifying thing that we ought to protect? I mean, how do we even define nature or life? If we are to accept biocentrism, well, how do we define life? Aren't, for instance, cancer cells or viruses living organism too, or say if we adopt panpsychism, then, isn't it the case that, in a way, there's life in stones, trees and dirt, too? If we were do adopt ecocentrism, how do we define nature? It does sound kinda logical that we would talk about nature from our perspective, since, we can't talk about a hawk's perspective of nature, can we? Am I missing something?
To me, it seems, that a purely ecocentric or biocentric view, as the other extreme, would only make society more based on control and masochism, and perhaps delusion; though, it might be greener and more colourful.
What are your thoughts Yea Forums, any recommendations: papers, essays, books...
Neither humans nor animals are valuable by default.
Kayden Long
>be an alien >arrive on Earth >be more fascinated with cats, squids and virus than humans
Would make sense to me.
Dylan Thompson
>pic It's valid depending on the hierarchy you're looking at, and invalid depending on this too. In certain hierarchies the human is definitely over all the other animals, men over women, women over men, etc.
Hunter Walker
>If we adopt panpsychism isnt it the case that there's life in stones, and trees and dirt "Life is robbery, but the robber needs justification."
Haha I just watched a John Sakars music video with that same picture, except it had ego on the left and eco on the right. Yeah, we must preserve the earth but that's only our responsibility because we're at the very top. We can ruin the Earth, we can build it up
Thomas Murphy
Eco centrisum is a globalist plot. Yes it sounds good and makes certain good points, but it's utalization will be abused by the elite. Examples are "green energy" it's just more expensive electricity you are forced to buy. And carbon tax, absolutely useless except at taking your money.
Sort of bottom middle on the pyramid. Sort of top middle on the circle.
Nathaniel Rogers
The fact that you need grass, water and animals to live points to the need of including non-humans into our 'democracy'. Look what happens when you disregard non-humans. You get catastrophes. Yes, anthropocentrism is retarded.
Ethan Gray
with each step up in the food pyramid you waste 90% of the energy so the most efficient way to live is plants but meat is necessary for humans (although nowdays humans consume way more meat than they need) so the solution is to genetically modify a tree-cow hybrid. it's basically immobile, brainless, lacks all the unnecessary organs, doesn't fart but it''s meat like a tree on the top (for photosynthesis) but with organs in the trunk and stores energy in fruits made of meat
You can blame Christianity for anthropocentricity. It spread the myth that Man was uniquely created by God, and that the world was created for Man's benefit. This led to wide scale exploitation of nature. Previously people had no problem living in harmony with nature, since they knew they were a part of it.
Christopher Bell
It depends which view on anthropocentrism you're going to take. You think the Renaissance was about destroying the earth? The point of anthropocentrism can also be 1. loving yourself first, so you can love other thing (that is, you can't love anything if you don't know what love is and hate yourself) 2. learning about yourself and letting go of egocentrism.
> Look what happens when you disregard non-humans The same argument can be made in the other direction too: -- Look what happens when you disregard humans: WW1+2, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Chernobyl, Global Warming (yes, disregarding the safety of humans in order to further profit), Colonialism, Slavery, and so on. These things have also been incredibly destructive towards the environment and all creatures. To some extent, the well-being of some, if not all, creatures depends on us not screwing up. We have to learn to love ourselves in order not to mess it more up than it has already been done.
> including non-humans into our 'democracy' How are you going to do this? And what creatures will this be? Sacred and culturaly important animals: Dogs, cats, elephants, cows. Sure. What about venomous snakes, termites, scorpions? Sure. What about bacteria and viruses? Not trying to be disrespectful, but where and how do we draw the line. Also, animals and ecological creatures do NOT suffer from lack of democracy, or politics. It's not them who have political problems, it's us. We are not sophisticated enough to organise ourselves.
The only animal capable of conceptualizing the right side of the picture is the one on top of the left.
Christian Baker
If i had to sacrifice 10000 rabbits to save one kid, and that ruined the local ecosysthem, would fucking do that in an heartbeat. If You dont agree you don't understand morality.
Charles Anderson
‘Can Life Prevail’ is a collection of essays by Linkola on this subject. It’s an interesting read. I read it earlier this year and it was really my first introduction to the idea.
Jose Turner
what an absolute unit
Angel Moore
I think it's absurd to insist that no natural hierarchy of animals exist. The thing that separates humans from every other animal on earth and puts us at the top is our rational nature. We can philosophize and formulate ideas and either accept them or reject them. We assign value based on this rationality and no other animal has it anywhere near to the same degree as us. Cognitive ability is why dogs are more valuable than plants.
Jacob Barnes
What if the destruction of the ecosystem caused a famine that made other children die?
Dylan Bailey
I don’t think ecocentrism means to make us second fiddle. We’ve already defined nature, now we need to find a way to preserve it. Project “Human Planet” is about making a global city with an occasional park bubbles of a handful of green but sickly plants. It ought to be just Project Human, where we self evolve however we like, but protect the remaining biodiversity
It should be an upside down floating pyramid where the human is using the others as balloons to stay above lava
Camden Anderson
If the man wants to get to the lady he's gonna have to go through that big snail first. Good luck.
James Gray
Oh and popping one balloon on top makes them all go free and you die
Caleb Brooks
Retarded jpeg viruses and immortalized cells are on top
Angel Ramirez
>eat is necessary for humans most stupid answer in the thread, and you've got a lot of competition
Grayson Lewis
>a girl rejected me 20 years ago and since then I hate women. sad, really.
Parker Carter
All life has an inner divine spark which they have the potential to liberate.
Evan Kelly
Are you saying that I should free their souls with my long rifle? I always hear that but this is the first time it's been from an external source.
Jackson Anderson
you can go without eat? how long?
Robert King
>anthropocentrism Cringe >ecocentrism Cringe >Teocentrism Based
Kayden Thompson
>misanthropic absurdism Stop shitposting and crawl back into your hole
William Sanders
>all value and ethics is limited to humanity What are these? Humans are just as much of bloodthirsty beasts as every other animal, embrace it, who the fuck cares about "ethics"
Eli Evans
Not even close. When was the last time you saw an office dispute resolved by violence? Meanwhile, even my chickens regularly peck each other.
Kevin Morgan
You mean Theocentrism? Because that’s the cringiest
This. There is no concrete line when you go that route, and animals should be largely excluded because they have little non fundimental socializing skills or ego that could be incorporated into a political or structural body on a large scale. Anyways, egocentricism is the only reason why someone would come up with the concept in the first place.
Jaxon Thomas
Then the child is still the important entity, and whatever you do for the environment is directly for human Beni fit.
William Hall
AnotherJew raging against healthy hierarchies.
Alexander Long
>Apex predator being at the top of an apex is wrong
Souls are freed through contemplation and meditation, and it takes a lot of time to do so.
Juan James
Fuckwit. First, sounds don’t exist. Secondly, you assume they can be magically captured or confined. That’s two combined steps of magical thinking. You are an imbecile. Or the living avatar of the divine itself.
Cooper Cruz
>t. parrot
Carter Richardson
this might shock you but a food pyramid is supposed to be narrow at the top
Eli Gomez
Anthropocentrism is obviously a mistake because man is not the formal, efficient, or material cause of the universe. Theocentrism is the only valid answer: God above all, then order beings in god-likeness.
I like how woman is slightly closer to animal than it is man desu.
Kayden Cox
"Anthropocentrism" is in itself an anthropocentric term. We are happy to accept that lions consider the Lion the greatest and most important beast, pigs, the Pig, apes, the Ape, etc. But when humans do the same thing, it is decried as arrogant and "anthropocentric." Why would this be, if not for the fact that humans are held to a greater standard than the brutes? This criticism of anthropocentrism is nothing else but the old fable of Adam set to rule over the beast of the field, wrapped in scientific raiment.
>We are happy to accept that lions consider the Lion the greatest and most important beast No we are not. Animals don't have syntax and therefore can not think rationally. There is no animal concept of being and non-being that gets applied to sense data in their minds. Animal minds are limited to immediate drives, not abstract reasoning of the beingness of things they perceive.
Gavin Reyes
lol
Angel Stewart
Retarded pic spread by retarded people and jews.
Even if we grant that all life is eual in importance (whatever that means, though I do support life generally) then humanity should still be at the top because nothing else on this planet is going to be building a spaceship to spread life beyond this planet. If you actually support the cause of life from a species neutral standpoint, then human dominance is the only sensible conclusion.
Look up Alex the Grey Parrot and studies on New Caledonian crows who have technological evolution. Animals are smarter than niggers.
Luis Jackson
Nevertheless you must admit that they cleave close to their own kind, and we censure them not at all for it. To do so for humans, who are guilty of the very same crime, is human exceptionalism.
John Perez
Experimenter bias. No syntax, just guided pattern repetition.
Christopher Ward
There were controls to prevent experimenter bias. They were able to avoid the "The Clever Hans effect" as most scholars agree. Some animals have been proven to possess "metacognitive awareness" based on carefully controlled behavioral studies.
The argument for human non-exceptionalism depends on humanity's exceptionalism as rational agents. Because humans are rational, we ought to abdicate our group interests. It's very dumb.
David Powell
Stanford prison experiment tier """"controls"""".
Jordan Jenkins
Imagine thinking this way. No, anthropocentrism is not bad. We evolved to discern abstract quality from chaos, and to order said quality into elaborate hierarchies. While all animals have a rudimentary form of this (eat this not this, go here not there) only we can do this in a simulated vacuum within our own thoughts. This makes us inherently better than all other life on earth.
Christian Butler
We have a lot of carefully controlled animal cognitive studies showing these animals possess metacognitive awareness or theory of mind: >African grey parrots >crows >dolphins >elephants >dogs Note, these are the only ones whose cognition I have had time to study. There are a lot of books about animal cognition research coming out in the market. Why not read them?
Ethan Flores
>only we can do this in a simulated vacuum within our own thoughts Some animals have been proven to have metacognitive awareness and theory of mind, so you are wrong.
Leo White
So why arent we posting alongside elephants right now if im wrong?
Kevin Gutierrez
They have different means of communication, but to give an example of sophistication, look at how crows improve on tool-design over time:
"Many animals use tools but only humans are generally considered to have the cognitive sophistication required for cumulative technological evolution. Three important characteristics of cumulative technological evolution are: (i) the diversification of tool design; (ii) cumulative change; and (iii) high-fidelity social transmission. We present evidence that crows have diversified and cumulatively changed the design of their pandanus tools. In 2000 we carried out an intensive survey in New Caledonia to establish the geographical variation in the manufacture of these tools. We documented the shapes of 5550 tools from 21 sites throughout the range of pandanus tool manufacture. We found three distinct pandanus tool designs: wide tools, narrow tools and stepped tools. The lack of ecological correlates of the three tool designs and their different, continuous and overlapping geographical distributions make it unlikely that they evolved independently. The similarities in the manufacture method of each design further suggest that pandanus tools have gone through a process of cumulative change from a common historical origin. We propose a plausible scenario for this rudimentary cumulative evolution."
Cooper Cooper
You are being intentionally obtuse or playing devil's advocate.
The capacity for meta-cognition of any other animal is inferior to human meta-cognition.
Though all those you have in mind are probably greater than niggers.
>The same argument can be made in the other direction too I didn't suggest that we should give priority or even forget a form of life for the benefit of others. I just said that we have to take into account everything (not only animated or things that posses life) in order to not live the present at the cost of the future or to make earth a place where we as humans can live. >ow are you going to do this? And what creatures will this be? Sacred and culturaly important animals The thing is that i'm not drawing a line, the divide between nature (the non-human domain we thought we should and could dominate, wich obviously hit back) and society/humans is a fatal invention of modernity. So to say that they don't already take part into politics is to ignore a huge quantity of agents that shape our world and with whom we shape it. Even a microbe has a huge impact on how our societies are shaped, just think of Pasteur and the french societies of XVII century. >How are you going to do this? Even if our way we act is incomensurable to the way other things act that doesn't mean we can't take into account their agencies affect the planet. When i say that we should include them in our 'democracy' i say that we should take full account of how they act and circulate and act accordingly or cathasthropes will keep happening.
Austin Carter
So based on this diagram, pigs and trees and rats are most important? K.
Carter Martinez
>the only reason people could hate women is being rejected by them
Try living with one.
Kevin Gomez
What would exactly change if we gave the vote to fish?
Michael Wright
If you haven't read Han Kang's The Vegetarian yet, do that! It goes into a lot of these questions. The protagonist wants to be biocentric but it turns into self-destruction.
Camden Moore
>When i say that we should include them in our 'democracy' i say that we should take full account of how they act and circulate and act accordingly or cathasthropes will keep happening
Give an example
Jacob Thomas
No way. Humans are objectively more advanced.
Dominic Torres
Fuck you.
William Green
>meat but in a tree Isn't that what nuts, almonds and the like are for?
Robert Jackson
Human have granted themselves a privileged role arguably since the development of herding and agriculture, it was already the case in Babylonian times at the very least.
Caleb Howard
This is basically lab-grown meat.
Eli Martin
But cognitive abilities being more valuable than others and rationality being more valuable than other forms of cognition is an human idea (actually it's even a post-writing idea). It didn't even come naturally to us, why would it be a intrinsic hierarchy of all nature?
Elijah Baker
They're not as cute as cats tho
Ian Gutierrez
>teocentrism >a morality which holds tea as the superior entity I could really get behind that
Sebastian Foster
Is there some agenda listing women as a separate species or class? Is there some other meaning to including that in the figure on the right?
Adrian Wilson
I would agree that OP going a bit far if he meant "give a democratic voice" to animals. But making the well-being and preservation of environment (including animals) a major concern of democracy makes sense. We already have a lot of concern for children because we need them, even though their rational abilities are limited and they can't vote. We also do it for retarded children who might never understand what voting entails. Why not do it for animals in general, at least those in our ecosystems?
Sebastian Watson
Causal reasoning is flimsy. Why not "bigbangcentrism" instead? It's retarded in both cases.
Caleb Carter
Precisely because man can hold himself up to standards he should not be sloppy about it. There's nothing contradictory about humans wanting to treat animals more humanly.
Adam Sullivan
>because nothing else on this planet is going to be building a spaceship to spread life beyond this planet. Sorry to break your bubble but neither are we. And spaceship-making is pretty tame compared to atmosphere-wide oxygenation, a thing that was done by bacteria in the past.
Joshua King
>This led to wide scale exploitation of nature. Previously people had no problem living in harmony with nature, since they knew they were a part of it.
So when aboriginals aided desertification of australia that was living in harmony with nature? African bad stewardship of desert edges throughout history is an example of living in harmony with nature?
It's all noble savage nonsense. Imbalances always occur, even without man's hand, often with. You need planning and understanding to bring back balance.
Grayson Cruz
So I worked in animal rescue for 3 years and at first I was very idealistic but over time I kind of realized that there's just too much suffering in nature for humans to control. Like it would be nice for every cat to have a home, but anyone who dedicates themselves wholly to that cause without regard for their own well-being is being self-destructive and there's something else (depression) at play there. It is healthy to care about yourself first.
I hate this all-or-nothing mentality when it comes to helping animals. You don't have to be entirely selfish or entirely good and I think going to either extreme leads to pathology. Everybody's got their level of comfort (and ability) with what they're willing to do to help animals. For me, it's providing a home for only 3 of my own cats and eating vegan most, but not all, the time. To some degree I failed/am failing as an animal advocate and I'm rationalizing my choices from my own preferences rather than being objective, but I can't see it that way because if I did I would feel shit about myself all the time and I would rather have a healthy life than obsess over being 100% pure and good and moral.
Humans have the capacity to know what is right, but we're also physically, mentally, and morally limited.
Hunter Green
It's not really exceptionalism, more a "from each according to his ability" mentality. Humans are capable of universalist thought so they should be able to act accordingly. We consider healthy that bats (rather than pesticide) kill cereal-devouring parasites. Is that bat exceptionalism?
You als forget that "censure" is not only a human concept but also an inter-human practice (unlike say hunting: we hunt other animals but we don't censure them). What are you going to do, writing a manifesto against lions, and expecting them to retort with a counter-manifesto?
This whole "exceptinalism" argument is retarded. Being aware of the behavior of our environment is a matter of long-term, specie-wide survival for us. We're not the first species to face the problem, but we may be the only species able to organize in order to solve it. But even if tha weren't the case it wouldn't matter. The question is rather: "will we be extinct in 100, 500, 1000 years? Can we prevent it?".
As for whether we're exceptional, duh, we're exceptional according to human-centered standards. We human are the best at humaning, incredible. It shouldn't be hard to understand how that mentality leads to intellectual blind spots, particularly when it comes to investigating human cognition. But as stated above the most essential question is untouched by the problem of exceptionalism.
Lastly, complaining that we're not being as demanding to other animals as we are to ourselves is retarded. It's not like we're going to file a complaint to the United Council of Cats. Standards, complaints, moral righteousness are human things. They're made for human to be adressed too other humans. It's not exceptionalism any more than using all our five fingers to craft tools is exceptionalism. You could say it's functionalism, in reality it's just human behavior. All species have things that only they (and closely related species) can do. Again, we don't think dolphins are being dolphin exceptionalists for using echolocation. Both arguments ad counter-arguments are retarded, the real question is "how is the proper way to deal with other animal species?". Starting to treat them as part of the same environment as us, and just as essential as us, could be a rational step. It is also a step entailed and facilitated by a less anthropomorphic outlook.
Eli Watson
>user argues some animals are capable of metacognition >"no they don't, they don't even make computers" >user gives an example that hints a possible animal metacognition >we do it better than them anyway Somehow I feel the argument hasn't been really understood. Also why do we also use tool sophistication as an unambiguous proxy for intelligence when it's clearly also limited by limb dexterity? There should be more multifactorial means of assessment.
pigs, trees and rats are pretty based t.b.h
Connor Morgan
*when in comes to investigating animal cognition
Zachary Clark
>tranny realises xe switched to the worst gender
Ian Long
The planets and animals which are most vital to human survival would be part of anthropocentrism since they benefit us. Athropocentrism would be most harmful to life in the biosphere that has little effect on human wellbeing. Why should we limit our selfishness when nature is survival of the fittest.
Camden Green
Those poor snails
Cooper Bell
it's one reason i'm a vegetarian unironically
Matthew Sanchez
> when nature is survival of the fittest That sentence is a meme and comes from a wrong understanding of biology, you're not going to hear many modern biologist hear it (a very simple reason -among many- why this is a bad sentence is that evolution is a about reproduction, not survival).
>Why should we limit our selfishness Nature doesn't answer any "why", so why should we use an half-assed meme maxim on evolution as a moral guide?
IF YOU AREN'T RIGHTEOUS, YOU WILL HAVE NO QUALMS WITH ABUSING THE EARTH AND THE LIFE UPON IT. IF YOU AREN'T DISCERNING, YOU WILL GIVE CREDENCE TO THE RESEARCH PAPERS OF SOPHISTS WHO CANNOT, AND NEVER WILL, INTO PHILOSOPHY OR ETHICS. IF YOU AREN'T A PSYCHOPATH, YOU WILL FIND A REASON TO LOVE LIFE AND RESPECT THE DIGNITY OF IT. THERE IS ALWAYS AN ABUNDANCE OF SCHOLASTIC TERMS SOPHISTS USE TO EXPRESS THEIR PROFOUND IGNORANCE. PEOPLE COMPLICATED WHAT SHOULD BE, COULD BE, CAN BE, AN EASY PROCESS OF SPIRITUAL MATURATION.
A SANE HUMAN BEING RECOGNIZES THE RESPONSIBILITY THAT HIS CAPACITIES IMPOSE UPON HIM --- THAT IS TO SAY, THAT HE IS REGENT-STEWARD OF NATURE, BUT WITH RIGHTEOUS FAR-REACHING VISION, HE SEES WHAT GOD *WILLS*: THAT IT IS IN HIS HANDS TO BRING IT TO ITS FULLEST, MOST OPTIMAL EXPRESSION, AND THUS CLOSER TO GOD. AND IT WILL BE SO WITH THE COMING OF THE SON OF THE LIVING GOD.
Loving ourselves is not the same thing as loving all fellow men unconditionally. Easier to love animals/nature unconditionally since they possess no consciousness/means for evil / escaping their homeostatic environments.
Scorpions pose no threat to us. It's just a question of how much of nature's work, throughout millions of years of evolution, we're gonna destroy and replace with the monoculture of anthropocentric logos. The biodiversity of the jungles we're willing to give up to have a few thousand more brazilians and filipinos
Nathaniel Phillips
we could install BCI electrodes into fish and sell their vote to the highest bidder
> Easier to love animals/nature unconditionally since they possess no consciousness/means for evil / escaping their homeostatic environments. They also don't possess a drive to do good, nor will they build you shelter, pay for your bills, donate for you blood or organs... and so on.
> The biodiversity of the jungles we're willing to give up to have a few thousand more brazilians and filipinos You think that the majority, the average man is thinking and acting in this way? "Imma go and destroy me some nature" or the people who live in or next to the jungle.You don't think that the problem is in specific people, who willingly don't care for our nor the well-being of nature, and push their agenda?
> to make earth a place where WE as HUMANS can live. > I say that WE should take full account of how they act and circulate and act accordingly or cathasthropes will keep happening. user is deep in the anthropocentric closet.
Do i really need to? there are some pretty obvious examples: climate change, simplification of biodiversity through agriculture/plantations, destruction of forests. Don't just think of the elements involved as resources but though the lens of filiation. Im on my phone, read Facing Gaia. Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime
Asher Collins
All morality, all values, and all our perception, in all their variation: object-ness, the sublime, frame, meaning—is an Anthropocentric Inter-subjectivism, evolved to be; all that we are. Die Welt Ist UNSERE Vorstellung
>sounds don’t exist. Only if there's no one to hear the tree falling.
Oliver Collins
semieotic animism
Jason Foster
Make you hippy faggots a deal. When a non human species can write a law or justification for this faggy shit, humanity will take it under consideration. Until then, we'll celebrate the completely unique human accomplishments like computers, planes, and atom bombs.
Ryder Flores
>human accomplishment >atom bomb Also, computers, planes, massive interconnected communicative networks, and mass transportation have brought so much damage to this world.
Josiah Myers
A world that kills off its inhabitants with storms, earthquakes, and volcanoes. Why should I care about a place that will kill me. Because it's not conscious, it gets a pass? You got Stockholm syndrome.
Kayden Butler
I'll send food relied untill rabbits can be reintroduced in the fucking eco system so he and others dont starve. In short as says; and no regrets
Gabriel Harris
Damn look at these poor animals killed by humans...oh wait, mother earth killed them with a natural disaster. Better make all the peasants go back to living like Neanderthals so mother hurt doesn't get a tummy ache
This world kills both us and the environment slowly. That's the only difference.
Evan Perez
Molluscs should definitely be higher. Octopodes are psychic and lice live nearer to us than pigs.
Jeremiah Clark
You are right that this is a set of completely intractable dilemmas. The only self consistent moral world-views end up being either horribly destructive or horribly self destructive.
This is because these are not really moral problems at all, or maybe to speak more directly, because Anglophone "moral philosophy" is a fundamentally flawed concept incommensurable with the concept of Nature, or rather, to paraphrase Thomas Hobbes, morality really only exists within the State, and there is no morality recognizable as such in the State of Nature.
For isn't wishing one's own survival, or the survival of one's own kind, selfish? But only those that value survival survive, and only kinds that propagate the survival of their kind persist----and by definition, therefore, in the system of Nature, these are the only Kinds which have any but the most ephemeral existence. "Unselfishness" in the sense of not favoring your Kind, is equivalent more or less to suicide. Honorable suicide or not, it is self destruction, self negation. Given the element of temporality, is it not clear that Nature favors that which is self-affirming? In what sense, therefore, within the context of Nature, could we call selfishness "bad" as such?
A noble race or person which puts universal ideals above its own survival will quickly be taken advantage of and destroyed by those other races or persons which did not. Therefore it is at best an honor-in-death, a self-destructive blaze of commitment to "higher ideals," which makes one question whether those ideals are really "higher" at all, or at least whether they are "higher" than the principle of that which survives, survives.
I'm not saying that these problems are unsolvable. But I am saying that these problems are unsolvable if you refuse to abandon the way you have been taught to think about them, and about morality in general.
