The human race is proud of its capacity to die and kill for no reason at all, that is, in the name of abstract words such as glory, honor, and duty. No other species dies and kills for reasons that have no relationship to survival.

Human beings have defined their “humanity” (their difference from other species--what makes them "human") precisely from the perspective of their desire and capacity to go beyond mere survival: to engage in activities that are useless from a practical point of view: dying and killing in the name of symbolic abstractions.

Richard Koenigsberg