Genuine altruism is not intentionally altruistic; on the surface it looks like utter selfishness.
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Yes. The desire to do good is driven by self-interest; on the other hand, self-interest pursued to the extreme ends in the realization of one’s inseparability from everyone else and thus leads to altruism.
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But I had in my mind something like the beavers, who do not intend to be crucial contributors to biodiversity but who pursue their own ends entirely without regard for the good of the ecosystem. And thus end up being irreplaceable for it.
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And then on the other hand, we humans in our attempts to do good for the world end up destroying it by interfering with interdependent natural processes we cannot understand adequately.
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There are countless examples of man's interference in natural patterns for the sake of doing something that to him seemed a service to either his community or the natural world; one particular example could be the Four Pests campaign in Maoist China.
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The central thing to consider is that whatever is perceived as 'good' is entirely relative. What's good for the monkey is not good for the fish—so when the monkey wants to save the fish from drowning by taking it away from the water, it kills it.
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Unimaginable tortures and horrors like the Holocaust were the result of thinking that we knew exactly who we were and what is true.
Beyond that, it's impossible to know beforehand what can follow from attempting to shape the natural world to pursue whatever imaginary ideals happen to be present in the human mind. The ancients were infinitely wiser than us today for letting the gods operate the natural world.
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