Our Job as the Dominant Species

Here is the deeper argument that sits underneath every safety rule in this book. Human beings are the dominant species on this planet. We did not earn that position through strength, speed, claws or armor — by those measures we are unremarkable, and against a large crocodilian we are hopelessly outmatched. We are dominant because of our minds: our intelligence, our capacity to plan, to cooperate, to imagine consequences and act on them. That is the whole of our advantage, and it changes the moral arithmetic entirely.