I find that all things evolve. You may not feel humanity has had time to evolve lower and higher orders, but from my perspective there is infinite time for such to have occurred. Relativity means a moment and an eternity are interchangeable units of time from a certain level of energy transference or, more properly, the energy's rate of vibration.

So humanity is both infinitely old and a newborn simultaneously. Finding extremely disparate examples of this humanity are not hard to do, despite your desire to lump everyone into some empathic brotherhood.

I really don't want to change your mind. I appreciate the amount of time you spent to respond. It's that level of depth that makes the HZ a worthwhile enterprise.

Humanity is endowed with shared traits and responses, but these ARE tempered by intellect. Your example of Churchill and his conscious decision serves as a great example of the new morality that evolves past the instinctive reactions.

Yes folks panic and such panic is contagious - for most. For some, who rationalize the threat and can resist their impulse to join the fleeing masses, this is an example of the 'Spock' response. Kirk wanting to save Spock was not merely an instinctive response. Instinctive responses of fear and fear for the friend in jeopardy would be equally matched in most folks. The decision to risk one's life to save someone undergoes the very loathesome calculating processes you wish did not exist.

You would rush in to save your spouse, your daughter and a close friend, but what about a stranger? Would Kirk have wanted to rush in for a Klingon? The moral impulse is there to save everyone, including oneself but you can't deny that this impulse is modified by the circumstances and that decision making comes into play.

Smart folk don't make good soldiers. You're supposed to respond like you've been trained. Follow orders. Responding to the moral impulse is swell and fine but eventually is supplanted by logic and experiences to modify these impulses.

Let's move from the moral impulse to the sexual drive and we can see that acting on these basic drives would lead to an animal like society with procreation on demand with the nearest male/female that responded to ones advances. Logic and reason and contemplating the ramifications is a sign of advanced thought processes. Thinking ahead is a step-up over immediate reaction.

A chess player who can think only of the move at hand is at a strategic disadvantage to the player who thinks four moves in advance and is drastically at a disadvantage to the player who sees 10 moves in advance. Such is the same with folks who can only respond to crisis' with the 'version 1.0' of human morality. The calculating/equating morality is an upgrade - let's call it 'Morality Version 2.0'.

You're using morality 2.0 as you arrive at your dislike of calculating morality over basic human impulses. A culture that uses basic human impulses and 'inherent morality' seems purer and appeals to the leftist viewpoint that always seeks human equivalence.

Animals use basic instinctive morality. Fortunately, we have the upgrade. We can evaluate in very complicated manners which animals cannot. We can think ahead and struggle with the consequences of our actions.

I find studying primates as a clue to human behavior to be near worthless. Studying humans and human history is much more beneficial. History illustrates the endless number of decisions man has made to go to war. And always this war was justified in the minds of those who started it.

And always there have been the pacifists, the conscientious objectors and those who simply felt the gains were not worth the trouble and losses. They arrived at their decisions not solely due to some empathic communion with the rest of humanity, although this may have been a percentage of their motivation, but because logic and reason and cold calculations dictated that war was an unprofitable venture.

Lindbergh felt WWII was the result of poor US foreign policy by Roosevelt. He was castigated as a Nazi sympathizer as a result of this view. However, once the US was attacked by Japan, he threw his hat in with the rest of the pro-war folks.

Those against the Iraq war have rationalized their dislikes. They justify the venture as a failure because of continued unrest and killing in Iraq. They used to justify it because Saddam and Osama had gotten away and had escaped. Now it is just Osama. Others declare that the US was not reacting to an attack but was the aggressor. They rationalized and calculated that the UN was right and that the US should have let 'inspections' continue. A billion and one various 'version 2.0' rationalizations for disliking Bush and his actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Amazingly all these empathic liberals can leave their human empathy for other humans at home when dealing with Bush. He is the idiot deformed chimp that earns the packs contempt and disdain. "Being true to our own morality" obviously is a very selective and conscious decision.

As for the existence of lower and higher orders of humanity, "the proof" as they say "is in the pudding". The folks without the upgrade also succumb to the urge to destroy those that embarass them, threaten them or those whom they don't understand or share opposing religious beliefs. Wishing that human morality is equivalent in all people does not make it so and history's grim statistics bear out the folly of such an assumption.

All said....I don't think my logic will persuade you any more than your empathy will persuade me. ;-)