> We are here because our ancestors had the strength to raise the next generation, not because somehow individual death was defeated.
Yes, no individual life (save one's own ancestors) is responsible for where we are now. But I would help a dying man on the sidewalk, I would be in favor of criminal charges against myself if I just passed him by. I would participate in a large scale search for a neighbor lost on a hike, and I would support the fuel and maintenance costs of helicopters and other search vehicles, and I would support those several rescuers who risk their lives to save one. I would support spending $400,000 to perform a quadruple bypass on a 77 year old man so he can live to be 85. I would take on personal inconvenience along with 50 of my neighbors to save a single life. I would follow community health guidelines. I would wear a mask.
On the urban side, we are acting as if we have somehow become immortal, and that everybody must sacrifice everything, school, work, family, friends, so that some can live to 85 instead of 77. That is an unprecedented high price to ask.
Natural selection, it's cold and harsh. It doesn't fix individual, aside that the immune system is a natural selection mechanism within the organism level natural selection. It simply selects fit individuals to reproduce. We are well atuned to this mechanism, witness 'youth' or 'beauty'. Think of dental braces. In old times, without orthodontics, would be a visible marker of less than optimal fitness. Ugly. Negative selection pressure. As orthodontics becomes more prevalent, in the beginning everybody gets a beauty boost. Let's celebrate. Yet, in a few generations, in absence of any selection pressure, a larger and larger fraction of the population now needs dental braces. Teeth simply don't fit on the mandible anymore. We can handle this with technology, but it's a growing problem. Should we close orthodontics clinics tomorrow? Probably not, but that should not prevent us from recognizing the long term hidden costs of medical technology. 'Use sparingly, mostly for emergencies'.