Traditionally, the riddle of human existence has been pondered through mythology and religion; today, however, we know that an adequate understanding of human nature depends on science. Although modern science ¯ like religion, philosophy, and literature throughout Western history ¯ has itself perpetuated pernicious errors and myths about human and nonhuman animals alike, this is beginning to change in certain sectors of knowledge. In recent decades, there have been dramatic breakthroughs in science that have advanced understanding of human evolutionary history, the development and nature of nonhuman animal species, and ecological systems. Molecular biology, anthropology, paleontology, genetics, and other scientific disciplines, as well as sophisticated computer technologies are revolutionizing our self-image through more accurate glimpses into the history and structure of life.
Ethology in particular has been progressive and liberating. It has shattered Cartesian and behaviorist views of animals as machines or simple pre-programmed organisms devoid of thought or intentionality, and is only now liberating us from the pre-scientific era of understanding animals. During the European “Age of Discovery,” “civilized” society debated whether the island peoples seen by Columbus were fully human and equipped with minds and souls, and whether African pygmies were human or sub-human in nature. From our “enlightened” and “progressive” positions in the twenty-first century, we may laugh at the racism and ignorance of such views, without appreciating the fact that until only a few decades ago, scientists and philosophers looked upon animals with similar crudeness, ignorance, bias, and a discriminatory speciesism as illicit and menacing as colonial racism.
Once we see what flimsy, fallacious, and corrupt constructs anthropocentrism and speciesism are, and how they are deeply embedded into the philosophies, values, and narratives of Western “civilization,” including the “radical alternatives” to modern capitalism, we can begin to grasp their destructive effects and implications. The systemic institutional changes needed to avert social and ecological catastrophe must be accompanied by a parallel conceptual revolution that involves the construction of new values and species identities.[43] Ethically progressive and truly inclusive, the new outlook ¯ not only post-capitalist, but also post-anthropocentric, post-speciesist, and post-humanist ¯ would also be scientifically valid, by accurately representing the true place of Homo sapiens in the sentient and ecological communities in which it finds itself enmeshed.
Although an intellectual avant-garde is pulling humanity out of the quicksand of ignorance, unenlightened views persist throughout all sectors of society and on the whole we are still in the Dark Ages of understanding other species and ourselves as well. While painful enough to contemplate the illiteracy and ignorance of the general population ¯ such that, for example, the majority of citizens in the US believe in angels, the Devil, and creationism ¯ it is particularly disturbing to see virtually all sectors of “progressive” liberal and Left cadres holding atavistic moral and scientific views toward nonhuman animals, as they lay claim to being the most “progressive,” “enlightened,” and secular sectors of society and who traditionally have championed science over dogma, superstition, and religion.
If humans have for so long failed to understand animal minds it is because their own stupidity, insensitivity, and deep speciesist bias have for so long blinded them. But now the blinders are coming off, and it is time Leftists take their own off and wake up to the fact of the ethological revolution and its profound implications for human identity, our moral relationships to nonhuman animals, and to politics. While it took the Left a good century to catch onto the importance of ecology, and to begin merging concerns such as justice and autonomy to sustainability and ecology, the Left has consistently devalued or ignored the plight of animals, failing to understand this as a profound moral issue in its own right, and as an indispensible lens for understanding the current global social and ecological crisis.
There can be no full and adequate debate of the systemic problems of capitalist society, of the origins and dynamics of hierarchy, and of a future rational, autonomous, ethical and ecological society until we address the ten thousand year legacy of speciesism and the domestication and exploitation of human over animal. We cannot understand instrumentalism, hierarchical domination (whereby separation of human from animal provided the philosophical basis to deny women and people of color rational and human status), or the current ecological crisis without engaging speciesism and the domination of humans over animals.
Until the Left engages the “animal question,” in short, it cannot reclaim the mantle of progressive thinking in the moral and scientific realms; it cannot advance the development of new values and identities; it cannot understand the origins and dynamics of hierarchy. Much of this work can begin once the Left overcomes the last remaining socially acceptable form of prejudice, discrimination, exploitation, violence, and mass slaughter ¯ such as stems from and is legitimated by speciesism ¯ and begins to address the scientific findings, and moral implications of, cognitive ethology.
By ignoring this recent and profoundly important scientific revolution, one that has direct moral implications and carries the potential for a new enlightenment and a comprehensive ethics of life, the Left has forfeited any claim it could possibly have to moral leadership, progressive values, and radical politics; it has become increasingly obvious that the deficiencies of Leftist thought toward the animal question vitiate its ability to address pressing social and environmental crises. And this is a tragic loss, for only radical theorizing and revolutionary politics of social movement can steer us out of the crisis that threatens humans too with extinction, but it is one that must grasp the systemic connections linking the exploitation and devastation of humans, nonhumans, and the Earth.
Dr. Steve Best is TPC’s associate editor. Associate professor of philosophy at UTEP, award-winning writer, noted speaker, public intellectual, and seasoned activist, Steven Best engages the issues of the day such as animal rights, ecological crisis, biotechnology, liberation politics, terrorism, mass media, globalization, and capitalist domination. Best has published 10 books, over 100 articles and reviews, spoken in over a dozen countries, interviewed with media throughout the world, appeared in numerous documentaries, and was voted by VegNews as one of the nations “25 Most Fascinating Vegetarians.” He has come under fire for his uncompromising advocacy of “total liberation” (humans, animals, and the earth) and has been banned from the UK for the power of his thoughts. From the US to Norway, from Sweden to France, from Germany to South Africa, Best shows what philosophy means in a world in crisis.
NOTES:
[1] On recent scientific and technological revolutions and their implications for human identity, see Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, The Postmodern Adventure: Science and Technology Studies at the Third Millennium (New York: Guilford Press, 2001).
[2] On the importance of mediating and combing animal, human, and Earth liberation movements into one “total liberation” struggle, see Steven Best, Animal Liberation and Moral Progress: The Struggle for Human Evolution (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, forthcoming).
[3] For a powerful analysis of the origins of hierarchy in the transition from hunting and gathering tribes to agricultural society, and the crucial role of the “animal question,” see Jim Mason, An Unnatural Order: Roots of Our Destruction of Nature (New York: Lantern Books, 2005).
[4] David Ehrenfeld provides a classic and still valuable critique of humanism in his book, The Arrogance of Humanism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981).
[5] Bruce Mazlish, The Fourth Discontinuity (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993).
[6] David Orr, cited at: click here
Ethology in particular has been progressive and liberating. It has shattered Cartesian and behaviorist views of animals as machines or simple pre-programmed organisms devoid of thought or intentionality, and is only now liberating us from the pre-scientific era of understanding animals. During the European “Age of Discovery,” “civilized” society debated whether the island peoples seen by Columbus were fully human and equipped with minds and souls, and whether African pygmies were human or sub-human in nature. From our “enlightened” and “progressive” positions in the twenty-first century, we may laugh at the racism and ignorance of such views, without appreciating the fact that until only a few decades ago, scientists and philosophers looked upon animals with similar crudeness, ignorance, bias, and a discriminatory speciesism as illicit and menacing as colonial racism.
Once we see what flimsy, fallacious, and corrupt constructs anthropocentrism and speciesism are, and how they are deeply embedded into the philosophies, values, and narratives of Western “civilization,” including the “radical alternatives” to modern capitalism, we can begin to grasp their destructive effects and implications. The systemic institutional changes needed to avert social and ecological catastrophe must be accompanied by a parallel conceptual revolution that involves the construction of new values and species identities.[43] Ethically progressive and truly inclusive, the new outlook ¯ not only post-capitalist, but also post-anthropocentric, post-speciesist, and post-humanist ¯ would also be scientifically valid, by accurately representing the true place of Homo sapiens in the sentient and ecological communities in which it finds itself enmeshed.
Although an intellectual avant-garde is pulling humanity out of the quicksand of ignorance, unenlightened views persist throughout all sectors of society and on the whole we are still in the Dark Ages of understanding other species and ourselves as well. While painful enough to contemplate the illiteracy and ignorance of the general population ¯ such that, for example, the majority of citizens in the US believe in angels, the Devil, and creationism ¯ it is particularly disturbing to see virtually all sectors of “progressive” liberal and Left cadres holding atavistic moral and scientific views toward nonhuman animals, as they lay claim to being the most “progressive,” “enlightened,” and secular sectors of society and who traditionally have championed science over dogma, superstition, and religion.
There can be no full and adequate debate of the systemic problems of capitalist society, of the origins and dynamics of hierarchy, and of a future rational, autonomous, ethical and ecological society until we address the ten thousand year legacy of speciesism and the domestication and exploitation of human over animal. We cannot understand instrumentalism, hierarchical domination (whereby separation of human from animal provided the philosophical basis to deny women and people of color rational and human status), or the current ecological crisis without engaging speciesism and the domination of humans over animals.
Until the Left engages the “animal question,” in short, it cannot reclaim the mantle of progressive thinking in the moral and scientific realms; it cannot advance the development of new values and identities; it cannot understand the origins and dynamics of hierarchy. Much of this work can begin once the Left overcomes the last remaining socially acceptable form of prejudice, discrimination, exploitation, violence, and mass slaughter ¯ such as stems from and is legitimated by speciesism ¯ and begins to address the scientific findings, and moral implications of, cognitive ethology.
By ignoring this recent and profoundly important scientific revolution, one that has direct moral implications and carries the potential for a new enlightenment and a comprehensive ethics of life, the Left has forfeited any claim it could possibly have to moral leadership, progressive values, and radical politics; it has become increasingly obvious that the deficiencies of Leftist thought toward the animal question vitiate its ability to address pressing social and environmental crises. And this is a tragic loss, for only radical theorizing and revolutionary politics of social movement can steer us out of the crisis that threatens humans too with extinction, but it is one that must grasp the systemic connections linking the exploitation and devastation of humans, nonhumans, and the Earth.
Dr. Steve Best is TPC’s associate editor. Associate professor of philosophy at UTEP, award-winning writer, noted speaker, public intellectual, and seasoned activist, Steven Best engages the issues of the day such as animal rights, ecological crisis, biotechnology, liberation politics, terrorism, mass media, globalization, and capitalist domination. Best has published 10 books, over 100 articles and reviews, spoken in over a dozen countries, interviewed with media throughout the world, appeared in numerous documentaries, and was voted by VegNews as one of the nations “25 Most Fascinating Vegetarians.” He has come under fire for his uncompromising advocacy of “total liberation” (humans, animals, and the earth) and has been banned from the UK for the power of his thoughts. From the US to Norway, from Sweden to France, from Germany to South Africa, Best shows what philosophy means in a world in crisis.
NOTES:
[1] On recent scientific and technological revolutions and their implications for human identity, see Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, The Postmodern Adventure: Science and Technology Studies at the Third Millennium (New York: Guilford Press, 2001).
[2] On the importance of mediating and combing animal, human, and Earth liberation movements into one “total liberation” struggle, see Steven Best, Animal Liberation and Moral Progress: The Struggle for Human Evolution (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, forthcoming).
[3] For a powerful analysis of the origins of hierarchy in the transition from hunting and gathering tribes to agricultural society, and the crucial role of the “animal question,” see Jim Mason, An Unnatural Order: Roots of Our Destruction of Nature (New York: Lantern Books, 2005).
[4] David Ehrenfeld provides a classic and still valuable critique of humanism in his book, The Arrogance of Humanism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981).
[5] Bruce Mazlish, The Fourth Discontinuity (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1993).
[6] David Orr, cited at: click here
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
