‘We Are Nature’: A new campaign wants to redefine the word ‘nature’ to include humans
‘We Are Nature’: A new campaign wants to redefine the word ‘nature’ to include humans
TOM OLIVER: What does the word nature mean to you? Does it conjure visions of wild places away from the hustle and bustle of people, or does it include humans too? The meaning of nature has changed since the word was first used back as early as the 15th century. Now a new campaign, We Are Nature, aims to persuade dictionaries to include humans in their definitions of nature… The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines nature as: ‘The phenomena of the physical world collectively; esp. plants, animals, and other features and products of the Earth itself, as opposed to humans […]
Reducing Speciesism: Interventions to change people’s attitudes and behavioral intentions
Reducing Speciesism: Interventions to change people’s attitudes and behavioral intentions
NICOLE BANACH: Why do we eat pigs, wear cows, and experiment on dogs when most people claim to love animals? Generally, people condemn animal suffering, yet they still harm animals either directly or indirectly. Humans use animals for consumption, medical studies, and entertainment. The abuse, exploitation, and mistreatment of animals relate to speciesism. Ryder define speciesism as “a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species”. This paper investigates the effectiveness of an intervention, wherein the roles of humans and animals are reversed, on […]
TAMING THE ‘KINGDOM’: What shall we do with our vainglorious aspirations?
TAMING THE ‘KINGDOM’: What shall we do with our vainglorious aspirations?
LEE HALL: The first human beings on Earth were bad ancestors. Our longing for redemption from the biblical Fall percolates through many generations of writings and arts. There’s Edward Hicks’s famous Peaceable Kingdom, with its echoes of Isaiah 11:6. The painting is contested artistic territory, because of the people in the background. “Hicks idealized the encounter between British colonists and Indigenous people,” says the Brooklyn Museum, “creating fictions of harmony.” The Isaiah story itself is riddled with idealized fictions of harmony. Lions and wolves lie down beside goats and lambs, evidently starving to live up to the “peaceable” ideal. Or […]
