A Short Essay on Morality with Respect to Groups. (my respects to Bertrand Russell)

Humans are tribal animals. This is apparent in primitive societies, and it is apparent in our society. We have a deep seated need to attach ourselves to some group (and often to exclude and regard with suspicion those separate from our group). I myself happily associate myself with a number of groups.

Morality's fundamental purpose is in promoting the welfare of whatever group with which we are concerned, including the "group" that includes our individual selves.

However, we need to recognize that these groups into which we divide ourselves are arbitrary and dependent on custom, if we are to survive. What we need to do is determine which ways of dividing humanity into groups have objective significance. From a moral standpoint, these should be the only ways of dividing up humanity that should be of any importance.

I'll define a grouping with objective significance as one whose boundaries are more clearly and distinctly defined than any other way of grouping; where there is very little fuzziness and almost no examples of something that is "in between" the two groups. This leads to three groupings that have objective significance:
The Individual
Man or Woman
Humanity as a Whole
Now "Man or Woman" would not have moral importance as it is merely biological distinction, and although women and men are on average different, there is overlap in their abilities, needs, wants, etc...everything that is important to morality. Therefore from now on the only groups whose welfare we should consider when contemplating moral questions are those of the individual and of humanity as a whole. I feel that these two groups are equally important: humanity's needs don't in general override those of the individual, and the individual's needs don't in general override those of humanity.