Gruff, contrary, and confused?
Baron Max said:
Why do you say that? When humans are literally destroying not only their own habitat, but the habitat of every other living creature on the planet ...and you call human a "higher and more valuable form of life"????
You have an odd idea of "higher and more valuable".
Max, in history, if you go back and look through the creation stories told by various cultures, you'll find that they're all really self-centered. Well, of a sort. See, the thing is that I have yet to find a creation story that reads, "In the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth for those people over there. Who the fuck are we? Doesn't really matter, does it?"
That is, the Hebrew creation story followed creation to the Hebrews; the Hopi creation story followed creation to the Hopi. It is not the case, for instance, that the Cherokee creation story follows creation to the Israelites. In each case, the people who tell the story are at the center of God's focus.
This actually follows an anthropological pattern.
In natural selection, the human factor is rather confusing insofar as I have known of a dog to die for the sake of a human, but that's a conditioned outcome. More generally, the focus of a species tends to be on itself. One might observe an old walrus separate itself from the pack in order to draw off predators, thus sacrificing itself while the rest of the group herds the young into the water, but it's not going to do that for anyone else's young.
The focus is on
species.
The fact that humans are imperfect does not change the inherent presumption of priority for one's own species.
Has this never occurred to you before?