I appreciate the inherent value of every living thing.

Value that's inherent means it isn't earned, which is a harder idea than it sounds. We're trained to rank things — useful, beautiful, productive — and to quietly assume the ranking is the value.

A wasp does nothing for you. It has no admirers. It remains an extraordinarily complicated thing running a whole life without any of your help, and it would carry on being remarkable if no human ever noticed.

The reason this matters isn't the wasp. It's that the same logic covers people whose usefulness to you is zero, and eventually covers you, on a day when you produce nothing at all.