UG#606 - Flight From Meaning 1 (The Superior Human, Debt in The Axial Age)
Robin Upton | 12.01.2013 12:21 | Analysis | Animal Liberation | Social Struggles | Sheffield | World
The first of a two part series, we consider the bigger question of meaning in life. In our first hour we look at a prejudice shared by many people of differing backgrounds and inclinations - the notion that human beings are somehow innately superior to all other life forms - with a radio adaption of the 2012 film The Superior Human. We conclude our second hour by resuming reading from David Graeber's Debt, The First 5000 Years where we left off in episode 597.
Are humans superior to other life forms? Is it OK that we kill and eat them for food? Or that we use them for medical research? Do they suffer pain? Do their lives have any value, or are they on earth for humans to do with as they will? We begin this week's show with a radio adaptation of the The Superior Human, which looks at 18 reasons why people think that humans are somehow special and superior to other life forms:
A Large Population
Having Long Lifespans
Creating Art
Building
Living in Houses
Having Opposable Thumbs
Using Tools
Using Reasoning
Walking Upright
Living in Societies
The Ability to Kill (almost) All Other Life Forms
Teaching and Learning
Language
Other Life Forms Rely On Instinct
Culture
Being At The Top Of The Food Chain
Intelligence
Consciousness and Autonomy
Reviewing topics such as Cartesian dualism, this film looks at the debate over whether animals feel pain and whether it is moral to consider their welfare or whether humans are somehow innately 'superior'. Speakers include Bernard Rollin on why he coined the word 'speciesism', Gary Yourofsky and Richard Ryder.
The film continues into our second hour, noting that Darwin thought it absurd to think of some animals as higher than others. It concludes with Steve Best looking at the close connection between speciesism and racism.
We then take something of a sideways step and look a unique feature of homo sapiens - their propensity to money psychosis. We resume reading Chapter 8 of David Graeber's Debt, The First 5000 Years where we left off in episode 597. Concluding this chapter we make a good start on Chapter 9, The Axial Age, noting that the strategy of military expansion was using in ancient Greece as a way to tackle debt crises, but that it solved nothing since when military expansion reached its limits, the essential problem (the abject poverty of the masses) remained unaddressed.
Thanks to Ultraventus for publishing such a beautiful film .
A Large Population
Having Long Lifespans
Creating Art
Building
Living in Houses
Having Opposable Thumbs
Using Tools
Using Reasoning
Walking Upright
Living in Societies
The Ability to Kill (almost) All Other Life Forms
Teaching and Learning
Language
Other Life Forms Rely On Instinct
Culture
Being At The Top Of The Food Chain
Intelligence
Consciousness and Autonomy
Reviewing topics such as Cartesian dualism, this film looks at the debate over whether animals feel pain and whether it is moral to consider their welfare or whether humans are somehow innately 'superior'. Speakers include Bernard Rollin on why he coined the word 'speciesism', Gary Yourofsky and Richard Ryder.
The film continues into our second hour, noting that Darwin thought it absurd to think of some animals as higher than others. It concludes with Steve Best looking at the close connection between speciesism and racism.
We then take something of a sideways step and look a unique feature of homo sapiens - their propensity to money psychosis. We resume reading Chapter 8 of David Graeber's Debt, The First 5000 Years where we left off in episode 597. Concluding this chapter we make a good start on Chapter 9, The Axial Age, noting that the strategy of military expansion was using in ancient Greece as a way to tackle debt crises, but that it solved nothing since when military expansion reached its limits, the essential problem (the abject poverty of the masses) remained unaddressed.
Thanks to Ultraventus for publishing such a beautiful film .
Robin Upton
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13.01.2013 00:10
Having Long Lifespans - Tortoises are longer.
Creating Art - Birds flocking ARE art.
Building - Termites, ants, birds, moles, mice and lots more build biodegradable homes.
Living in Houses - is living in a home.
Having Opposable Thumbs - So do monkeys and apes.
Using Tools - Monkeys, apes, chimpanzee's, some birds and mammals [Squirrels, chipmunks] all use tools.
Using Reasoning - Anybody that has a common dog will tell you they can use reasoning in relations with humans.
Walking Upright - means nothing, walking is useless underwater...or in the air.
Living in Societies - ants, termites, rabbits, dogs, many mammals including bovine all do this.
The Ability to Kill (almost) All Other Life Forms - including ourselves. Species suicide is not a survival gambit.
Teaching and Learning - All animals do that without speaking, their young learn just as well and just as efficiently.
Language - is pointless, words do not gain you food nor do they select you a partner.
Other Life Forms Rely On Instinct - Not so, large mammals like Elephants think.
Culture - means nothing, culture could dissapear tomorrow and nothing at all would change. Culture is a luxury, an addon, an 'App'.
Being At The Top Of The Food Chain - tell that to parasites and viruses. They have the capacity to extinguish humans by the industrial tonnage, continent-wide for years at a time.
Intelligence - works best when the user is in a group, in individual cells, intelligence is a handicap.
Consciousness and Autonomy - everything is conscious, and humans are the very worst creature on this green earth at showing autonomy. Only humans have a self destructive inner 'mob'.
So I suppose it all comes down to the value of maintaining all these qualities together. It is only humans who perceive themselves to be the sole owner of ALL these attributes. And for that, humans believe themselves to be special. In other words, everything that can be considered as being important, are the self same qualities that humans will naturally want to possess and take ownership of. The emphasis here is on the 'taking ownership' part.
If you look at human history, it is one where a specific trajectory is in motion. We barely know or understand this. That trajectory is one of eradication of variability. We do this because ALL human endeavour can be described as being the search for complete safety of existance on this planet. We wish to defeat disease, we wish to defeat crop failure, we wish to find the panecea of renewable energy production, we wish to find the secret to arresting the aging process. All our collective endeavours, are geared exclusively toward species safety. Not individual safety, but species safety.
In food production, we will attain seed that has had all variables removed and will grow identically providing that fertilisation, pesticides and environment are identical. In disease, we will attain complete control of all disease vectors because we will have removed variability of contagion from our bodies. In energy, we will attain energy production security by developing permanent non-degradeable energy material and in life expectancy, we will attain the ability to control and arrest genetic generational development. Our tendency to want to take control and to take ownership of everything we consider to be of value...will ultimately kill us all.
No individual human being will be responsible for this...it will be a collective thing, it will be herd instinct.
Nature does not tolerate non-variability. Non-variabilty, is inherently dangerous. In a straight contest between nature and non-variabilty, there is no mathematical model or numbering system which can calculate how overwhelming is the percentage that non-variability loses by. There isn't enough zero's to depict the odds against non-variability winning.
The problem is what it has always been. We live on this planet in a sustainable way, or we are simply moving towards general species failure.
Either one of which, is quite normal from natures point of view.
anonymous