There is no gene “for” such unambiguous bits of morphology as your left kneecap or your fingernail. […] Hundreds of genes contribute to the building … - Stephen Jay Gould

The argument of the “long view” may be correct in some meaninglessly abstract sense, but it represents a fundamental mistake in categories and time scales. Our only legitimate long view extends to our children and our children's children's children—hundreds or a few thousands of years down the road. If we let the slaughter continue, they will share a bleak world with rats, dogs, cockroaches, pigeons, and mosquitoes. A potential recovery millions of years later has no meaning at our appropriate scale.

As a final footnote to life’s little joke, I remind readers that one other prominent (or at least parochially beloved) mammalian lineage has an equally long and extensive history of conventional depiction as a ladder of progress—yet also lives today as the single surviving species of a formerly more copious bush. Look in the mirror, and don’t be tempted to equate transient domination with either intrinsic superiority or prospects for extended survival.

Antiessentialist thinking forces us to view the world differently. We must accept shadings and continua as fundamental. We lose criteria for judgment by comparison to some ideal: short people, retarded people, people of other beliefs, colors, and religions are people of full status.