If we go looking for what truly betters our chances as a species I'm not sure we'd like the answers we'd find.
And I'm pretty sure most of it would fly in the face of just about every conventional human morality (which comes about largely for self serving purposes in my opinion).
Our horizons of view are necessarily limited by the narrow slice of space and time we occupy and the culture in which we come to conceive the world. We can break out a little from time to time but for the most part we can't separate our innate ideas of "social good" from that which more objectively probably is better for the species.
I understand the sentiment. I thought about it a lot. As I got older I realized the important things in society are the little things. We are individuals, there are millions of us. We generally won't dramatically alter the course of history but the way we treat others personally, the way we conduct our affairs, our character as individuals, that's what makes up a society. We have to eat and drink. It's part of life. So we sometimes have to do things that we'd rather not. But we can try to minimize our negative impact.
Also I think we partially got where we are right now because some of our ancestors were basically beasts who killed the competition and took their women. And if that hadn't happened at some level regularly we'd probably still be swinging from trees and eating seasonal fruit. I'm not sure I want to know what the implication of that is. But I try to live in peace and stay balanced which means not worrying about saving the world all the time. Because it truly cannot be saved but maybe you can be. And a few others.
And I'm pretty sure most of it would fly in the face of just about every conventional human morality (which comes about largely for self serving purposes in my opinion).
Our horizons of view are necessarily limited by the narrow slice of space and time we occupy and the culture in which we come to conceive the world. We can break out a little from time to time but for the most part we can't separate our innate ideas of "social good" from that which more objectively probably is better for the species.
I understand the sentiment. I thought about it a lot. As I got older I realized the important things in society are the little things. We are individuals, there are millions of us. We generally won't dramatically alter the course of history but the way we treat others personally, the way we conduct our affairs, our character as individuals, that's what makes up a society. We have to eat and drink. It's part of life. So we sometimes have to do things that we'd rather not. But we can try to minimize our negative impact.
Also I think we partially got where we are right now because some of our ancestors were basically beasts who killed the competition and took their women. And if that hadn't happened at some level regularly we'd probably still be swinging from trees and eating seasonal fruit. I'm not sure I want to know what the implication of that is. But I try to live in peace and stay balanced which means not worrying about saving the world all the time. Because it truly cannot be saved but maybe you can be. And a few others.