One of the seven assigned readings for LFS250 yesterday was the above-titled article (only available by purchase … though if you contact me it just might *magically* appear in your inbox). I just read it today (and I still have four articles to go before I’m caught up), the way I do most of the assigned readings: having my partner read it aloud, frequently interrupted by his interjections and sarcastic comments. But this was the first for which he had no sarcasm. Murdy gets it right.
I’d like to highlight some of his successes.
Murdy first identifies the need for an understanding and acceptance of humans’ anthropocentric tendencies, as natural as the “arachnocentric” tendencies of spiders. We must care more about our own well-being than that of other life-forms because otherwise we will die. Nature won’t care for us if we don’t; every organism must tend to its own well-being, and does. This avoids all the weird conundrums we put ourselves in, when we realize that our very existence requires that we each take from the world outside of ourselves. It is not inherently wrong to do so. What is wrong is the mentality (called Strong Anthropocentrism by some) that these external organisms, resources, and systems exist solely for our benefit. Murdy is right to point a finger at the Christian (among others) division between humans and nature, the duality that allows for this mentality. It is, in fact, entirely possible for us to see ourselves as a part of nature, while also striving to put its resources to our benefit. I guess the difference is in acknowledging that we have no more a claim to them than any other life-form. We make claim to it by brain or brawn, not by right.
But Murdy goes further, and this is where he really strikes gold. He acknowledges a difference between humans and most other animals, in the presence of a cultural history, by which we pass information from generation to generation, cumulating and developing. Having this resource (which has allowed us to advance technology over generations) comes with a responsibility for the knowledge accumulated. And what we know, what each person in this society and most societies around the world knows, whether we face it or not, is that humans have the power to damage the earth far beyond the power of even all other organisms combined. We know how damaging our mentality to this date has been. At the same time, human culture has a great and unique capacity for creativity, beauty, and grace. These values have evolved faster than our physical bodies, over the tens of thousands of years homo sapiens sapiens have existed in social groups. As the best of the products of our highly evolved intelligence and sociality, this is our greatest product of evolution. “An anthropocentric belief in the value, meaningfulness, and creative potential of the human phenomenon is considered a necessary motivating factor to participatory evolution,” says Murdy. But being the sole producers of these values, we are also the sole keepers of them:
“Our greatest danger is not that the human species will become extinct, which is unlikely…,
but that the cultural values that make us human will become extinct.”
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