ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the different consequences of different definitions, and the necessity of choosing among them. Human beings, in the first place, do not know what they are experiencing without some prior cultural definition of their actions and the consequences. To the degree, then, that human beings or any of their subsystem collectivities, such as nations, are interdependent, to that degree, the governing conception of what they are for needs to be the species as a whole, in its indefinite extension into the future. That is why the three conceptions of human purpose that define subsystems as what people are for selfish individualism, altruistic individualism, or nationalisms and their kindred are very risky for the long-term welfare of humanity. In the case of individualistic societies, the rules designed to channel people's selfish behaviours into socially functional outcomes are, of course, the classical rules of market economies and democratic polities.
