<!-- bryant-content-generator:start --> # That is the final insult to our vanity. We imagine... > That is the final insult to our vanity. {{We imagine savagery and altruism as cosmic opposites, good and evil struggling across some metaphysical battlefield, when from the standpoint of physics both are transient behavioral arrangements inside organisms that will cool, decay and return their borrowed matter to the world.}} {{Our murders do not offend entropy. Our mercy does not impress it.}} {{Every scream, every embrace, every civilization and every corpse passes through the same indifferent gate, and the gate does not look up.}} {{Altruism is our beautiful objection to the jungle. Thermodynamics is the jungle's final answer.}} **Source:** [[books/Chimping Out|Chimping Out]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “That is the final insult to our vanity. We imagine savagery and altruism as cosmic opposites, good and evil struggling across some metaphysical battlefield, when from the standpoint of physics both are transient behavioral arrangements inside organisms that will cool, decay and return their borrowed matter to the world. Our murders do not offend entropy. Our mercy does not impress it. Every scream, every embrace, every civilization and every corpse passes through the same indifferent gate, and the gate does not look up. Altruism is our beautiful objection to the jungle. Thermodynamics is the jungle's final answer.” — Bryant McGill https://bryantmcgill.com/passages/passages-final-insult-vanity-jungles-final-answer ``` <!-- bryant-content-generator:end -->