HUMAN ‘RAISISM’: Speciesism and human supremacy in biology and culture is pushing planetary boundaries
Viewing humans as superior has consequences not unlike viewing one race as superior to others. We know the landscape of race and racism, and that one race is superior. The same parallels play out with species and speciesism. How you view yourself and what you think is real will impact your behavior. This is the historical and psychological reality that undergirds our present moment.
ROBERT SANDERS: It’s clear that humans have achieved a unique status in Earth’s history. We are the only creature that dominate all other organisms on the planet, from animals and fungi to plants and microbes. It remains to be seen whether humans can retain this dominance as we push the global climate to extremes while driving to extinction the very organisms that we climbed over to get to the top.
In a new book, a group of scientists and philosophers places part of the blame on an attitude prevalent among scientists and the general public — the false belief that species are uniquely real, and that some species are superior to others. To the researchers, this is analogous to racism — the fallacious belief that races exist as branches on the tree of life, and that some races are superior to others.
“People these days are very conscious of how evil it is for one group of people to think that they’re superior to another race, and yet the same people who are very woke about that are perfectly happy to say, well, humans are in charge of everything, so the rest of the world is ours to use as we see fit,” said Brent Mishler , professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-editor and co-author of the book with UC Berkeley Ph.D. recipient and former postdoctoral fellow Brian Swartz…
In their new book ‘Speciesism in Biology and Culture: How Human Exceptionalism is Pushing Planetary Boundaries’, Swartz, Mishler and nine other contributors argue that speciesism — the belief that species are real and that humans are the superior species — “leads to behavior that challenges our future on this planet.” They instead urge humans to remove themselves from their pedestal and treat all creatures as they would members of the human family by valuing and protecting their lives and habitats…
Mishler has argued for decades against considering individual species as the most important grouping, particularly when discussing conservation. He laid out his arguments in a 2021 book, What, If Anything, Are Species? (CRC Press), in which he proposed getting rid of taxonomic rankings altogether, including the binomial system for naming species that is used universally today…
Throwing out the concept of species would eliminate the artificial dividing line that helps justify the belief that some species are more important. Instead, the authors maintain that humans are just one part of a genealogy connecting all living things. This interconnectedness forms an ecological web that sustains the planet and us, and that deserves to be protected equally with humans…
More insidious is the common belief that some species — or even lineages — are superior to others. This has led to prioritizing humans and human culture over everything else and accepting that ecosystems and life within them should be destroyed to make way for humans. But perceived superiority depends on your perspective, Swartz said.
“Eagles have far better vision than humans, and bats are more maneuverable than any human-made machine. Adaptation is to the prevailing environment, which makes it hard to argue that whole organisms are ubiquitously and objectively superior to others. The world constantly changes, and the ultimate punchline is that we are all simply … different,” he said. “Those differences don’t necessarily correspond to superiority. They correspond to biology and extensions of biology — culture — that are adapted to the environment of the moment.” Yet, viewing humans as superior has consequences not unlike viewing one race as superior to others.
“To complete the analogy, races are to racism as species are to speciesism,” Swartz said. “We know the landscape of race and racism, especially when people think that races are branches on the human tree of life, and that one race is superior. The same parallels play out with species and speciesism. How you view yourself and what you think is real will impact your behavior. This is the historical and psychological reality that undergirds our present moment”…
Swartz and Mishler acknowledge that this means, ultimately, that eating animals poses philosophical challenges. While humans can harvest parts of plants, and those parts regenerate, this is not true of domestic animals… The authors are not expecting to change engrained attitudes overnight, but they hope to make people think about the implications of speciesism for the planet, not just for humanity.
“What we’re grappling with in the book is, if we take a broader view of family, where all of life is our family, then how do we deal with that?” Mishler said. “We’ve still got to live. We’ve still got to eat. But can we be more mindful of everybody else, all of our relatives, and try to do it in such a way that it doesn’t destroy what our relatives need to do to make their living”. SOURCE…
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