Speciesism... look it up!

HUMAN CENTRIC, ANTHROPOMORPHIC, AND SPECIESISM

We all suffer from the human condition. Therefore, speciesism is to a certain extent definitional of what it means to be human. Still as Animal Liberation activists, Vegans and Earth defenders any steps forward we can take to recognize and uproot are own personal biases towards all life outside of the human world is a positive step to take. Our belief in our species supremacy is far larger than any other prejudice we harbor. It’s worth noting that even in our day to day speech we use so many derogatory terms for Animals that we eat but when it comes to wild and predatory Animals we like to pretend we are kindred souls (so says the ALF ‘Lone Wolf’). A gluttonous person may be referred to as a Pig, while a strong man may be equated with a Bear. A person of ill repute may be considered a low down dirty dog, while a courageous person is said to be lionhearted. There are so many of these negative connotations related to ‘food’ and ‘pet’ Animals and so many of these grand ones ascribed to wild predatory Animals that our supremacist mentality even bleeds through in our speech. Deep down we human beings view ourselves as the most fearsome and cunning predator, the most majestic of creatures. Unfortunately the actual evidence points more towards a scavenger and parasite among all other sentient life. We are a most successful cancer.

One time I was arguing with a flesh eater at a table where I was doing Vegan outreach. I said “your not a ‘meat eater’. Animals that eat meat do so on the spot of their kill. humans eat Animals that are several days dead that someone else killed and packaged! that is the definition of a scavenger!” I immediately saw the wind go out of this persons sails. ‘Meat eater’ sounds powerful and predatory. Whereas, scavenger invokes personal feelings of opportunism and mental pictures of buzzards. But it’s the truth nevertheless. Just like the white slave holders that profited off of slavery and death, they then turn around and attempt to magnify the brutality of others in a feeble tryst to assuage their guilt over their own insipid wickedness!

In this article I’m going to delve into the words and concepts of human supremacy, anthropomorphism and speciesism and many of the attitudes, behaviors and ways of thinking they encompass. I will be doing so not from a dictionary definition or a classroom tutorial of these words and concepts but from an Animal and Earth centric perspective. I am writing from the perspective of one that believes with every fiber of his being that Animals are better than people and I make no attempt at objectivity. On the contrary, I mean to assert the premise that the entire civilization as we know it along with it’s flesh eating human cancer are a plague…. Alright then, lets get started, shall we.

Human centeredness- is the mentality that most people have fashioned their outlooks around. We typically see things in terms of there relation first to ourselves, then towards the ones we love, then in larger and further reaching social circles such as our neighborhood, city, state, country or the entire human race. Where exactly we place our personal or cultural circles of compassion varies from person to person, place to place and from time to time. Inner species compassion seems to be as far as compassion goes for even the most altruistic of folks, even in theory. Truth be told, most people consider it a success to get themselves and their immediate family through each day in one piece. Contrary to our idealism the world is a dangerous place. Not only for us but for all that live. Survival dictates that even if we wish goodwill to all life, in all forms, it’s not really plausible to love all. Interests between one and another are often at odds, nature herself does not seem willing to allow the lion to lay with the lamb, hence struggle is the price of admission. That’s not to say that all is fight, fuck or flee. Cooperation, and random acts of kindness abound everywhere there is life. It makes good biological sense to get along to the greatest degree possible.

The problem with human centeredness is in it’s imbalance and ferocity. The human animal has become better than any other Animal at manipulating their surroundings. It is this collective ability alone that has made us able to completely dominate, confine and manipulate everything from the atom to the Animals. Having this amount of power along with the ability to ascribe ethical principles like ‘right and wrong’, or ‘good and evil’ gives us a far greater responsibility to consider future consequences to our actions. Do the negative ramifications vs. positive results of our encroachments exceed what is just and equitable to the other species inhabiting the area?  What will be the result to the next seven generations? Of course no one since the indigenous peoples populated the land has cared to live by such scruples, no. Today we are ready to murder every non human inhabitant on the planet and the planet herself for the most petty and ridiculous reasons. To try and understand why people get sad feelings (depression) we will support the absolute torture and sadism against primates to try and induce a similar response. If we had one scintilla of compassion for life we would not want anything to hurt like we hurt. Our self interest is so ravenous that most people would easily support the murder of 100,000 cats and dogs to save one human life, or even more accurately for the remote possibility of enhancing one human life. In short the problem with our species self centeredness is it’s the only one causing uncountable and unimaginable pain, suffering and destruction to everything in it’s path. Which in this case happens to be the entire Earth and everything on Her, in Her, and around Her.

Every contemporary school of thought, world religion and politic is oozing with human supremacy. Briefly skimming the works of the great evolutionist Charles Darwin’s we find in his book ‘The Descent of Man’, that for all his brilliant observations he has completely contrived a hierarchy of species where man is not only at the top but apparently white ‘civilized’ European man. Why our ability to think in the abstract or conceptualize is more wondrous than a Wolfs ability to smell disease or age in it’s preys paw print is never explained. Why our ‘complex’ language is anymore wondrous than a Dolphins ability to speak to another Dolphin miles away and underwater without the aid of device is never pondered, no. Everything human is just inherently spectacular. Actually our natural gifts and attributes are not spectacular, everything in existence has amazing abilities and talents peculiar to itself. The only thing amazing about humans is our capacity for cruelty. Much modern day science still adheres to the myth of humans as prime creatures. Ignoring the fact that brilliance is no precursor to any other ruling species that this planet has seen in it’s long, long history.

Politically, capitalism and communism have been the recently dominant ideologies of contemporary international society. Both are just two sides to the same coin. That coin being industrialism. everything in the natural world becomes a commodity or natural resource to slash, burn, compress, destroy and obliterate so that factories and business can continue buzzing along. In tandem with industry comes consumption. Consumerism is the belly that eats the products of Earth and Animal death. Industry is the supplier. Exploitation of human labor is the middleman between the two. Everything else about national and global politics is just which style of being fucked the people of that region enjoy the most. Politicians of every, and any ideology, will never save the Earth because they are all to busy with wholly human constructs.

Anthropocentric/Anthropomorphic – Anthropocentricism is when we equate things to a human understanding and aesthetic because we cant imagine the otherness of what we are looking at. Anthropocentricism is often a tactic we used to avoid the concentration, observation and time that it takes to truly empathize or understand a being with vast differences than ourselves. When we think that a snake should enjoy a piece of tofu because that’s what we enjoy and we really wish that all Animals would adhere to our Vegan ethics we are being anthropocentric. This actually is a very elementary example. More complex and much more responsible for our human supremist mentality is religion. The material universe is huge. Larger than any reasonable person can honestly fathom. We are  nowhere near unlocking  the mysteries that exist here on Mother Earth let alone the nearly infinite multiverse.

But thanks to anthropocentricism we have shrunk ‘god’ down to a grand babysitter and father figure to humanity. And conveniently enough god is usually depicted as a male human figure, at least in the world religions. Furthermore, so called holy books such as the bible and the quran go out of there way to highlight the absolutely sanctified and righteous place humanity has is the eyes of god. In the bible the very first chapter has Adam the alleged first man naming all the animals and being ordained by god to be their steward and do with them as he wishes. It goes so far as to say that’s the reason they were created! Everything was put here purposefully for our use, how convenient for us. Adams first children Cain and Abel end badly with Cain killing Abel. Apparently they were both sending burnt offerings to god and Cain’s was not accepted because his did not contain animal flesh, Abel’s was accepted because the sweet smell of burning death was pleasing to god.

In the quran Adam is brought to the heavens where all beings are told to bow down before him. The angels ask god if he seriously intends to hand the Earth over to a being that will surely destroy it. Quickly enough however they bow, all except for Satan. He, according to the tale was the only being in all creation that refused to bow down to man.

Still to this day devils are always depicted with Animal heads or cloven hoofed. The anthropomorphic subliminal message being that Animals equate with evil. While beings like cherubim are angelic happy human babies, always of european descent I might add.

In science, through philosophy into the realm of religion we see our imaginary ladder of species with us proudly at the top. Speicieism so clouds our judgment that we have an entirely warped and bias sense of empathy towards Animals. We think that ‘circus Animals’ (as if their purpose in existence is to amuse us) are happy because they get so much attention. A rape victim gets plenty of attention too. They both get negative attention and beaten if they do not perform correctly. We like to think that Animals at the zoo are lucky because they get free food and a place to stay. People say the same thing about us prisoners. Why we’re so lucky to be locked in cages we should just be praising our good fortune! as if the most basic of care is a substitute for freedom. We like to think that “service Animals” like the horses that drag fat ass tourists around city streets were bred for pulling and wouldn’t be happy otherwise. Just like they said about the African slaves in the south not to many years ago. We think things like; Cows and Chickens ‘give us’ their milk and eggs. Without even entertaining the thought of verification we assume that we are the good Samaritans alleviating the pressure in a cows utters with every drink of milk we take.

At the end of the day anthropocentricism and human centeredness are subsidiaries of what has come to be known amongst Animal Rights folks as specieism. we are not perfect either and hold many supremacist beliefs ourselves. For instance when we stop our activism with our Vegan diet we like to believe that we are saving hundreds of lives, blocking out the fact that 99 out of 100 children born will not become Vegan. Putting yourself as that one Vegan out of one hundred means that in actuality your diet didn’t even slow the tide of Animal cruelty. We like to believe that we are doing our part because we wore a shirt professing our Veganism and some people saw it, and maybe one day they will go Vegan because they witnessed Animal cruelty, and then remembered your shirt, and then found the humane society online and went raw Vegan, and then wrote a letter to their congressperson…. Then again they might just think ‘look a tree hugger in a powder blue ‘Vegan’ shirt.

Please don’t misconstrue, I know that those of us that have compassion, went Vegan, and are doing the hard work of real world activism for our furry friends are on the right path and we are doing infinitely more than the standard western consumer. The point I am asserting is that we have a vast amount of progress and ground yet to cover. Until the death toll of Animals in food production, fur, vivisection, entertainment and all other facets of human consumerism starts to level out and then begins to recede, none of us are doing enough. Combating the attitudes and nuisances of human centeredness is not just a matter of philosophy and word play, These streams of consciousness dictate our activist initiatives and the longer we fail to recognize them and root them out within ourselves the more susceptible we become as an entire movement to getting off track.

The human politicking and education that exists in the Animals Rights struggle is vital and necessary but must never become the collective primary focus! Saving actual Animals and making real world (their world) progress is our mandate. Remember, unlike other social justice causes that have preceded Animal/Earth Liberation, It’s not about us. To truly win against the holocaust that Animals suffer means a selfless form of sacrifice. A thankless form of activism that most people will not find fulfilling so long as they stay human centric. At times the tasks we have before us as the human fighters and voice for Animals put us in direct conflict with the human world, we become species traitors when we fight against our own. Of course it’s a small group of Animal activists that are even advanced enough in their understanding to know that what we stand for is diametrically opposed to human progress.

Most flesh eaters intuitively understand that to truly equate Animals with humans is to undermine the way practically everything is built, made, manufactured and understood. They find the whole premise absurd because to do otherwise would involve radical levels of change and destruction to the existing order. It’s perfectly commendable to keep your activism for Animals and the Earth as approachable to people as you can. As I said in the beginning it makes good biological, and in this case advertising sense to do so, but do not be fooled. Without underground resistance the Animals will always get sold out to human interests. Especially with the prestige that comes with being a board member or academic voice for the mainstream.

Those in the mainstream that openly bad mouth groups like the ALF and ARM have chosen property over life and human appeal over the critters they are suppose to represent. A notorious Vegan activist once said ‘It’s not a choice between a child or the dog’. And if it comes down to that it would only be reasonable to choose the child. I say if it’s a choice between humans and the Earth, to hell with the people and long live the planet! if a stranger and a dog are drowning, I’ll save the dog. In return I’m sure to get more loyalty, unconditional love and satisfaction for breaking the speciesist threshold.

From supportwalter.org