Our Own Kind
Doesn't duty to our own kind come first? Of course it does. It is not "unfortunate that it is a part of human nature to have less compassion for those who are different from us than we do for our own kind", it is a necessary survival strategy. It is something which is present in all the living beings, although it doesn't manifest as "compassion" in the greatest majority of non-humans. Those of "our own kind" are, if nothing else, potential mates (or sources of our potential mates). Others are never even that.The answer to the question to what our own kind is is obvious. It is our own species. This is a widely recognised (the term here doesn't mean any conscious recognition, but rather a principle around which living beings function) fact in the living world. Examples which at appearance disprove this exist, but they are a result of different survival strategies different species have developed, and don't invalidate this fact.
Some would, then, claim that "the species boundary is no less arbitrary" than the boundaries between nationalities, tribes, or religions. This is utter nonsense. Species is a group of organisms which can breed, and through breeding, produce offspring capable of breeding. Although the exact meaning of 'capability to breed' can be, and is, argued, there is nothing arbitrary about the meaning of the species. A German Shepherd and a Golden Retriever are, their different appearances regardless, of the same species - they can produce offspring, and their offspring is capable of it. On the other hand, no amount of mules thinking can make a horse and a donkey the same species.
So, why should the "duty to our own kind" come first? Simple. Put somebody else's kind in front of your own, and you're on your way to extinction.
Tendentious comparisons to the Holocaust, slavery, and other things humans do to each other from time to time, are nothing more than an attempt to play on people's emotions.
posted by Leo @ 22:00
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