Lowly Insects

Part of environmental ethics focuses on the value of non-human life and non-living objects. Objects with instrumental value, value given to things we can use, are easy to find. They include anything we can use, water, livestock, crops, etc. This can be extended beyond just readily usable objects as well. It also includes other things as well. Organisms useful for maintaining the biosphere (the ecosystem of the entire earth) which in turn maintains human life are instrumentally valuable. Things with aesthetic beauty such as a mountains and sunsets are valuable because we find them beautiful and pleasing to look at. Instrumental value however leaves out many things that could be seen as valuable. Take some rare jungle insect, found in the most remote forest known to man that has no use to humans and will have minimal to no effect on the environment should it be destroyed. Lets also say it is the most hideous, nightmarish creature ever observed. Its not dangerous, just ugly. Would it then be alright to destroy a creature? To wipe it off the face of the earth for some reason? (Note: we are not taking its environment with it, just the insect) Many people would not care and others would wish it dead but several humans would look at the poor ugly bug and believe it deserves to live. That it should not be destroyed because we cannot find use for it. Why would people go out of their way to save such a lowly creature? It has no use to us yet people find value in it. Thus it must have some form of value that is there whether or not it is useful, some form of intrinsic value. This value must be inherent in the creature. Even though we do not need it, our ugly bug deserves to exist. But if our bug deserves to exist, surely other things, whether instrumentally valuable or not are intrinsically valuable as well. Everything from beetles to whales, water to rocks, germs to people, would have intrinsic value. But where does this value come from? Is it objective, always having this value, or subjective, only having this value if someone believes its valuable. Well lets look at our bug again. I previously stated that it would be valuable because someone finds it valuable. This is definitely subjective value. But lets say a giant flaming ball of white hot rage comes and destroys this small group of people. No one else on the earth things this creature is worth living, and I mean everyone (It recently reached the international news right after the video of the rage ball). And no human on earth finds this creature valuable at all, even subjectively valuable. Does this creature then not have value? It has no right to life? But lets look at it differently. What if their were no human (or any other sentient creature) able to judge its value? Who would get to say its not valuable? Other animals, who don't have the cognitive power to recognize their own existence, much less judge the value of another existence? A deity, which would have needed to have placed it their in the first place? It exists so it must have the right to live. It must have value. Lets try one more example, what if that lowly insect was people. What if we were ugly lowly bugs in the eye of some great alien power? If they did not find us valuable or useful, then we would not have intrinsic value? Hopefully, next time we are able to judge something's value, we can think about what it would be like to be judged as invaluable. And maybe we can feel empathy for that being and realize that its right to existence is no different from our own.