Logically, fathers are not as special as children. I have hundreds of millions of sperm, I can create lots of children. My children are a few of them, PowerBall winners. They are special, not me. I'm like a pollen cloud, my kids are like a 1 in a billion germination. (not that I'm not going to milk Father's day for everything I can--I invented the framing device, 'Father's day weekend').
My kids are the best people in the whole world. I would rather save their lives than anyone else's, and would easily sacrifice my life for any of theirs at a moment's notice. They are probably not the most gifted kids in the world in any objective sense, yet I consider them not just good, but best. Why? I guess, a really targeted racism, whereas I have a strong Selfish-Gene preference for my kid's 50% correlation with my marginal genotype. I'm a pretty logical guy, but I must admit, to a Martian, I must look like Spock in that episode (Amok Time) where he is pulled on some biological imperative and gets called like a salmon swimming upstream to fulfill his genetic prophesy.
Perhaps Dawkins was right. A chicken is a way for an egg to make another egg, not the other way around. I really have no control over my actions (creating kids) or preferences (prioritizing my kids).
1 comment:
f you have no "control over my ... preferences (prioritizing my kids)" does that mean those who don't prioritize their kids can claim they have no control?
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