I should be better because no one else is trying. I should be honest because everybody lies

A friend of mine brought up an interesting observation the other day. If someone sees a butterfly caught in a spider web, their first instinct is to save it. Surely without help the butterfly will die, and most people feel a noble sort of obligation to save a beautiful creature like a butterfly. But looking at the other side we know that without that butterfly, the spider we stole it from will starve. That SHOULD be just as wrong, no matter how scared you are of spiders they are just as much a living animal as a butterfly.

Don't like bugs? Fine, how about bears eating deer? Orca eating penguins? Cats and birds? People eating cats? In any of these examples the point remains that once something like this is witnessed one feels a sense of responsibility to take action, and even by inaction in a way we decide the fate of those creatures. Either way, someone gets hurt and we knew it.

As the Indian gurus and American hippies say, "there's a natural way of nature". Up until the Homo-Sapien there was a balance on our mother earth, even though all animals were striving for world domination in pretty much the same way we were.
Survival of the fittest, eat and be eaten, mindlessly doing ANYthing necessary to prolong your species. We just happen to be the best at it, so we came out on top.
Isn't that weird that humans have come up with the idea that it's wrong to be like this? That we believe there's some way to make Everyone happy? Why do we WANT everyone to be happy? I mean sure we're social creatures, but so are ants and birds, and they wouldn't give spit if one of their comrades died. For them it's just about using each other. We've got it into our heads that other people not only have feelings but even deserve power and freedom of their own.

Maybe the correct answer is to free the butterfly, but then reform the spider. Take it home and set it up to eat all the flies and bugs that hurt your home. Teach the bear to be comfortable eating cat food and the occasional burglar. That way your just defending yourself from others, and maybe there's even a way to set up homes for those creatures you don't like.. But.. hold on. Shouldn't a correct answer stay correct even on a large scale? It's not fair if only a small number of people can do the right thing! So THEN what happens? Save the trees save the whales and the lions save the wolves and the hippopotamus (hippopotami?), get meat eaters to eat fast-food and special nutrition bars, You now have a planet bursting at the seams with animals that only die by accidents, old age, and meteors.

Well, if the planet is getting too full we obviously need only to spread out! spend a few years "terraforming", and start putting life on other planets!

.YES.

and with all the animals reformed and working together (under us) we can reach levels of productivity like never before! We'll get rid of disease! Cure cancer! Learn to transfer brains into new bodies and we will become a cornucopia of immortal creatures spreading across the galaxy like a plague of lawful/good slime-mold!!
Isn't it freaky to think that in fifty years, this could totally be possible?


And yet as fantastic as it sounds.. there is something very WRONG about it, isn't there? What makes us cringe is the thought of us over using our power to mess with the way things were before we got here. Nobody wants to be the fat loud American that comes into a country and tears everything up.

So we watch the predator eat the prey.