If humans were altruistic, then how much more do you think we would have progressed? Would you still be a misanthrope?

The problem is that that isn't necessarily possible. For the same reason it's not really possible for a population of mostly females to exist. In theory biologically speaking you only need one male to fertilize a large number of females, so lets say it would be most optimal for the birth rates to be such that for every male born there were 100 females. The measure of success is individual though in terms of biological fitness. Eventually there'd be a mutation which lead to the birth of more males, those males would still have a massive female population each and their biological fitness would be huge, as a result the mutation would spread. This kind of pattern maintains itself until the populations and birth rates are roughly 50/50 assuming the females of whatever species this is can't self fertilize.

The same is true with pure altruism, since it would really need to be some manner of biological imperative. If there is a largely altruistic behavior you'll eventually get a leech, just by random mutation. That leech will be massively successful because the majority of the population is altruistic and there for okay with supporting them as a result their genes will spread.

Humans suck but there's no reason to believe and other species forged in the same crucible would be any better.

/r/misanthropy Thread