Are our emotions enough of a reason to support the survival of mankind?

We, humans, often describe our race as a race of destroyers, of predators. The Neanderthals are gone, all the other humanoid races are gone. They died and did not pass on their genes. Maybe because of being murdered, maybe because of being left alone, but the case stands that we are what remains, the survivors. Perhaps it was not due to just one of our traits but the synergic relation between them.

And now we have reached a level of written word, of complex notions, and we can ask ourselves: Why do we philosophically support the survival of our race?

Our era of technology is destroying many ecosystems all around the globe. Species that once prevailed, like the ancestors of the homo sapiens, have been hunted down into extinction for fun and profit. We also work to protect certain ecosystems, but we choose them by the appeal we feel for the animals. Pandas are prettier than ugly insects. Rhinos are prettier than certain tribes who will lose their whole heritage due to emigration, foreign influence and forced policies.

We war, we have nuclear bombs, our governments are admittedly corrupt and deficient and we fail to find a solution to it all. Yet, double-speech finds a way to glorify humans and make us seem much more important than we apparently are. Didn’t we just evolve like all other species?

To join @anjkara in her series of posts^[1][2][3][4] about arguments for and against religion: we seem to find countless spiritual arguments that justify our apparent superiority, such as having been created as masters of the world over all other species… and men over women?

These truths go unquestioned by many, but once we question them, the argument takes the direction of whether the dogma justifies something that is “correct” or “incorrect”, “justified” or “unjustified”. I have never, however, heard an atheist say that since we are not created by God to enslave sheep, but we are instead equal to them in evolutionary matters, that we, as a race, should consider the decision of unanimously stopping to exist.

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Some reasons to consider against this mass suicide are the passing of a legacy to family and children. We tend to feel a special bond with people who are “related by blood” to us. Related by blood would mean that some ancestor probably shagged with another ancestor and the line continued until it arrived here, to us. Does this link have any magical or transcendental, perhaps spiritual meaning to our relationships? Does a human deserve more of my help than a meteorite on the other side of the universe? Why?

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Are we humans causing more damage around us than there would be if we decided to disappear? But what is damage? Do the extinct races deserve to live? Perhaps their existence is just as absurd as ours. Maybe there is no deserving. If nothing deserves protection because everything is just as accidental to nature, is there any justification toward laws and rules against the damage that we may cause, accidentally, through negligence, or intentionally, to other beings and things related to such beings?

We protect the “human rights” of criminals. Is it because we are also human? I certainly do not feel an ounce of understanding or empathy for a psychopath who smiles and laughs as he recounts the way he smashed his mother’s head in with a sledgehammer.

“Will and do to thy neighbour those things which thou wilt that he should do to thee” (Source)

Why do we say this phrase and similar ones? Maybe it is because we feel like it could be us instead of them. Yes, I should not support the jailing of this psychopath because it could be me…? I don’t think that’s the case. Maybe it’s because we’re all human, we’re all in this together, moving like a herd toward the slaughterhouse that is inevitable death, both as individuals and as a collective. We should help each other in these fleeting moments because, beyond our empathy and genetical gregariousness, we identify as humans and we are egotistic enough to believe our own self-delusions when we assert our superiority over other things.

But I don’t run on philosophy just as cars don’t run on environmental friendliness and love. I run on emotions, energy, genes and circumstance. Even though I do not have any rational reason to support humanity, I still do as much as I allow myself, and I indulge myself quite a lot. In the absurdity of existence, there is no reason to help humans, but there is no reason not to do it, and we are very emotionally tied to those similar to us.

Empathy runs through our nervous systems. There is no changing this. Perhaps there is no reason, or maybe there is. I hope, from my anthropocentrism, to one day realize that we are actually superior, but until then, I indulge in my self-interested altruism to improve my surroundings because it makes me happy. And what else is there but watering our own happiness in this vast speck of dust we live on in an infinite universe of darkness and cold?

All images taken from Pixabay

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