The notion that animal behavior evolved for the good of the species was a longstanding myth that met its demise as a result of the work of several biologists.

There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality which excites men to wish all to be powerful and honored. This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level, and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.  — Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59)

While nature does not have a sense of good and evil or moral and immoral acts, feedback from man’s conduct has led to a vocabulary that describes them. We call conduct “good” and “moral” when it leads to our well-being and “evil” and “immoral” when it leads to unhappiness.

In the summer of 1961, I was returning from a fishing trip with my friend George Vermillion. We were both in our early thirties. George was a pharmacist and I worked for Parke Davis, a pharmaceutical company. We had been fishing in Mexico, and George was driving us back home to Long Beach, California — a trip that would take about three hours. During the drive, I told him (it was more like a confession) I had never registered to vote and was embarrassed about not knowing the difference between a Democrat and a Republican.

The highest manifestation of life consists of this: that a being governs its own actions. A thing which is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing.   — Thomas Aquinas (1225–74)

To all those minding their own business while tending to my every need.