What makes the human species the most selfish and cruel species on Earth? Have you ever stopped and wondered why our world is slowly crumbling around us? Is there a reason beyond the natural cycle of life that is causing our world to diminish before our eyes? I believe that the answers could not be more clear. All it takes is the stretching of one's mind to realize that we are the cause of our own downfall.

Could the answer to all our problems really be that easy to recognize? The answer is yes. We are in charge of constructing our own society, and yet somehow we have constructed one full of selfish and cruel acts. People often forget the power that they hold. It isn't about following mainstream society or blindly trusting the propaganda of large corporations, it is about preserving our environment and the animals of our Earth.

We could start by acting as responsible inhabitants of this Earth and stop killing animals and destroying our environment for our own over-indulgences. Rather than act as parasites to the Earth and its natural ecosystems by destroying it to gain profit, we could strive to work together in order to minimize our negative impact and preserve the Earth.

In his book "The Descent of Man," Charles Darwin states that "sympathy is the strongest instinct in human nature" – yet all people seem to take away from Darwin's many ideas are those based on the "survival of the fittest." Instead of thinking of ourselves as beings existing in constant competition with other humans and with the animals of our Earth, we should recognize that the basis of nature is cooperation among species.

We need to realize that greed plagues our society in almost every way. We constantly take more than we need. We destroy the Amazon rainforest, the lungs of our Earth, in order to meet global market demands. Commercial logging – "the logging of tropical hardwoods for exportation (teak, mahogany, etc.) as well as other timber for furnitures" – is the number one cause for Amazon rainforest deforestation.

We sit idly by and let the media distract us from the ongoing problems that we face. People know more about the lives of celebrities than they do about the fact that the Earth is undergoing its sixth mass extinction. The World Wildlife Fund estimates that between 200 and 2,000 extinctions happen every year. Many of these animals face extinction due to our greedy actions, which include poaching.

In the philosophical documentary "I Am," filmmaker Tom Shaydac – along with other philosophers and scholars – expresses how nothing in nature takes more than it needs. "Nature takes only what it needs to grow and survive. When it does take more than it needs, it becomes subject to this law and dies off. A redwood tree doesn't take all of the soil's nutrients, just what it needs to grow. A lion doesn't kill every gazelle, just one." Humans need to follow nature's law and stop taking more than what we need to comfortably survive and live well.

If we apply the concepts of cooperation and compassion in our everyday lives, there is no telling what effect it could have. We need to recognize our own power and realize that small acts we perform build up over time. Look at the bigger picture and stop viewing the human species as the only species whose lives matter. The Earth's ecosystem works in a symbiotic way to ensure life. Without one, the others can't survive. Don't be responsible for that destruction.