Science Article Castigates “Human Supremacy”

Wesley J. Smith

Environmentalism is growing darkly anti-human. That misanthropy has also seeped into science.

Vivid case in point: Science, one of the world’s most prominent scientific journals, just published a screed directed against anti-human exceptionalism. The author, Eileen Crist, has a PhD in sociology, not in any of the natural sciences. She writes to warn that the end is nigh — and the reason for the pending catastrophe is “human supremacy.” From “Reimagining the Human”:

This worldview esteems the human as a distinguished entity that is superior to all other life forms and is entitled to use them and the places they live. The belief system of superiority and entitlement — or human supremacy — manifests in a range of anthropocentric commonplace assumptions, linguistic constructs, institutional regimes, and everyday actions of individual, group, nation-state, and corporate actors.

Crist doesn’t just attack human exceptionalism, but also the West — which she and her publisher seem to forget is the source of so much scientific advancement:

It is crucial to recognize that human supremacy is neither culturally nor individually universal, nor is it derived in any straightforward way from human nature. However, western civilization has elaborated its most forceful, long-standing expression, and through the West’s ascendancy the influence of this worldview has spread across the globe.

And thank goodness for it. Western civilization created unprecedented liberty and general prosperity. The problem in our world is too little of “the West,” not too much.

An “All-Species Commonwealth”

But nihilism strikes a beat. Crist calls on us to reject “human hegemony” and  embrace an “all-species commonwealth”:

By operating on all these levels, the worldview of human distinction-and-prerogative obstructs the capacity to question human hegemony for the sake of Earth’s inherent splendor and in the service of a high-quality human life within a downsized, equitable global civilization nested in an all-species commonwealth.

Just how would an “all-species commonwealth” work, anyway? I know! By granting “rights” to “nature” and animals — already happening and threatened — with the interests of non-humans and geological features represented in halls of power and courts by ideologues like Crist.

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