Mankind and the Planet, past, present and future Philosophical Speculations

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22.

Responsibility for success and failure, the duty-character of knowledge, applies to all human collectives and to all human relations, except those between individuals. A people is such a collective;  no 'natural law' of death or the duration of life  apply. The demise of nations has to be viewed in a moral context. (This is one aspect of the concept of God, one of His natural aspects). In the long run, collectivities go down as the heap of crimes – which are, in the last respect, all crimes against life – suffocates their capacity to live on. Law, that which is right, justice, the legal structure of nations, constitute the organisation  of life of collectivities, an organisation that may be highly inadequate, 'conscious' and mechanistic and is yet the forerunner of the structure of real life. Groups are not organisms (that is a mistake in organistic social theory); they are mere copies or imitations of organisms; but their final aim in the evolution of mankind  is to become a living organism.

In the world of collectivities, then, just as in individual life, Nature advances an amount of life, capacity to live, that can be consumed or extended or even used as the germ cell for prolonging life indefinitely. The death and destruction of collectivities has to be valued as punishments; the prolongation of life and power as rewards for the proper management of life resources or as the sign  of a rich and 'undeserved' endowment by Nature.

All collective moral values lead to the destiny of the ultimate collectivity, that is the whole human race. Mankind is the ultimate  test of morality.