What is Valuable in Humankind?

I have asked myself this question several times now.  Sometimes it seems that the majority of our kind inhabiting the surface of this planet are in fact:  undereducated, illogical, given to group thought, riotous, rebellious, cynical, gluttonous, lusting, hating, little misanthropes who only love themselves.  And that is on a Sunday.

Then you see acts of altruism and heroism and courage and intellectual fortitude and vast kindness and sacrifice and all the virtues that make man the most noble creature in the known universe.

My first question is “What is Valuable in Humankind” would be about characteristics and attributes.  What do we value in ourselves?  What do we value in other species?  Some of them we keep around because they taste good to us.  Some are cute.  All fall under that old biblical dictum.

It is:  Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”

Is it right to say?  Well man has in his own heart and mind bent the world to his will.  There are some species that we have gorged ourselves upon so much that they are no longer extant.  We even picked our teeth clean with their bones, and moved on to others.  No problem here.

So, what gives us the right to do that?  The Bible?  A book?  Do all intelligent species eventually overwhelm their planet with their biomass?  What makes us valuable?  Are we valuable to ourselves?

My next work of fiction attempts to answer all these puzzling questions.  It even has a working name.  It is going at 300 plus pages right now.  Again, I will not publish it in a traditional manner, because I want to help in killing these old sacred cows off.  I mean I want to garrote them, like one would a cow on Eid al Fitr.  Bleed them out into the gutter where they belong.  And we all could get fat and happy off of their carcass, but I would rather stay wiry and fast.  That is the dictate of nature, no matter what the Bible tells us is so.

Someone answer me.  Maybe there is a democritization of attributes that are held to be valuable and worth maintaining in our species.  I don’t see it.  I see us becoming a species unfit for life.  It will be the environment which decides though.  We don’t decide anything about it.  I am sorry, but those are the choices we are confronted with.