Look at it from another perspective.
Generally, individuals who believe that life will continue in some form after death, whether they believe in heaven and hell, or reincarnation, most of them will now abide by certain norms, such as morality, in order to seek benefits and avoid harm in the future.
Individuals who do not have relevant beliefs pay more attention to the present, and are mostly realists, aiming to maximize the interests of this life.
To put it simply, the former values this life and the next, while the latter values only this life.
A living individual will one day start to care about things after death, which is what we call "things in the afterlife." The reason why major religions today emphasize the afterlife in various ways is to remind people that life will not disappear completely at death, but will continue in different forms.
However, even so, many people are still doubtful because they have never verified these religious teachings, and many people are misled.
In fact, we can understand things about the afterlife through our present life. It is as if the laws of nature govern the world afterlife, just as they do here on Earth. The makers of these laws do not need to show their faces in this world or the next.
For example, if we want to drive without causing accidents, we must abide by traffic rules, because inertia and friction are natural laws. We must either abide by them and drive safely, or violate them and cause the car to crash and kill people. Or, if we are standing on the balcony of the 20th floor, we cannot jump off casually, otherwise we will fall to pieces in front of the law of gravity. These laws were established at the beginning of the universe and do not need to be temporarily formulated or modified for an individual. Similarly, God in the religious sense has also established eternal laws for the world after death, that is, "Good will be rewarded with good, and evil will be rewarded with evil!" In view of this, if we hope to obtain peace, happiness, and eternal life after death, there is no The better way is to live, work, and act according to this rule from now on. Otherwise, you will end up regretting it like those people who not only violate the rules of drunk driving but also drive at will with a sense of luck.
This is the positive guiding role of the religious view of the afterlife on this life, advocating "promoting good and avoiding evil." In this sense, religion is not to set rules for the Creator, let alone change the established rules, but to remind the world that people must "act according to the rules" in order to "die without regrets."
Ant's belief does not include any concept of life form after death. In theory, he will be a complete realist in this life.
If the entire ant colony is taken as the object, then this view is true most of the time. The ant colony is like a living organism, seeking advantages and avoiding disadvantages, pursuing good fortune and avoiding disasters. It competes and plunders by any means to maximize its own interests, ignores all win-win concepts, and is completely a participant in a zero-sum game.
But if you put it on individual ants, then this does not hold true. Individual ants can easily die for the benefit of the entire nest without complaint or fear.
There is a view that individual ants are just neurons and cells, while an ant colony is a complete independent organism, which is why there is a huge contrast in biological behavior.
But in the protagonist's view, based on his personal experience, it is obviously biased to treat individual ants as independent beings.
It is true that individual ants, especially soldier ants and worker ants, lack some of the characteristics of an independent soul at some levels, such as the ability to think and act independently. But these traits do not exist in the queen ants and male ants, and these queens and male ants have even differentiated their personalities.
If individuals like male ants and queen ants are regarded as independent living entities and believe in realism, why can they sacrifice for the collective without any worries?
The only answer the protagonist can think of is collectivism.
Collectivism is an ideological theory and a spirit that advocates that individuals are subordinate to society and that personal interests should be subordinated to the interests of groups, nations and countries.
It is worth mentioning that collectivism in the modern context usually refers to proletarian collectivism, which is a concept opposite to the "individualism" of another group. Collectivism is one of the basic principles of communist morality and runs through the core of various norms of communist morality.
Collectivism is a philosophical, political, religious, economic, or social perspective that emphasizes the interdependence of each individual. It is a fundamental cultural element that culminates in the anti-individualism inherent in human nature and in some cases emphasizes the importance of organizational goals over the prioritization and cohesion of individual goals.
The difference between individualism and collectivism lies in values. Values are people’s overall evaluation and overall view of the meaning and importance of objective things around them (including people, things, and things). They are used by members of society to evaluate behaviors and things and to choose their own satisfactory goals from various possible goals. guidelines. These general evaluations and opinions, in the final analysis, reflect people's attitude towards interests. That is, values are benefits that people are aware of.
People's actual interests are diverse, and people's perceived interests are also diverse, so people's values are also diverse. Among the many interests, there are two basic interests, namely personal interests and public interests; at the same time, there are also two basic forms of value concepts, namely individualistic values and collectivistic values.
Therefore, from the perspective of the essential determining role of interests in values, it plays a dominant role in other values in the human value system. There are only two core values: one is individualism and the other is collectivism.
Therefore, collectivism is not a very new matter, it has been an element throughout history in many different and different types of governments and political, economic and educational philosophies. All human societies contain elements of both individualism and collectivism.
Collectivism can be divided into horizontal collectivism and vertical collectivism. Horizontal collectivism emphasizes collective decision-making among relatively equal individuals and is therefore usually based on decentralization. Vertical collectivism is based on the hierarchical structure of power and the consistency of moral culture and is therefore based on the concentration of power.
It was inspired by the spirit of collectivism that countless examples of brave sacrifices emerged in the Soviet Union during the Patriotic War and New China in the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea.
Ants are obviously creatures of another model that attach great importance to collectivism. They also have no concept of the afterlife and do not believe in heaven and hell after death. However, while pursuing this life, they also attach great importance to collective interests.
