The Myth of Human Supremacy

by Derrick Jensen

  38 Ker Than, “Wooly Bear Caterpillars Self-Medicate: A Bug First,” National Geographic News, March 13, 2009, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/03/090313-self-medicating-caterpillars.html?source=rss (accessed September 4, 2014).

  39 http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/avedgeworth/?num=10&start=10 (accessed January 4, 2014).

  Chapter Four

  Complexity and its Opposite

  I believe nature is intelligent. The fact that we lack the language skills to communicate with nature does not impugn the concept that nature is intelligent. It speaks to our inadequacy for communication.

  PAUL STAMETS

  Science deals with but a partial aspect of reality, and . . . there is no faintest reason for supposing that everything science ignores is less real than what it accepts. . . . Why is it that science forms a closed system? Why is it that the elements of reality it ignores never come in to disturb it? The reason is that all the terms of physics are defined in terms of one another. The abstractions with which physics begins are all it ever has to do with.

  J.W.N. SULLIVAN

  Physical science will not stop short of a reduction of the universe and all it contains to the basis of mechanics; in more concrete terms, to the working of a machine.

  CARL SNYDER

  Throughout this discussion I can’t stop thinking about one of the most important passages I’ve ever read. In Neil Evernden’s life-changing book The Natural Alien, he describes how some vivisectionists “adopted a routine precaution: at the outset of an experiment they would sever the vocal cords of the animal on the table, so that it could not bark or cry out during the operation. This is a significant action, for in doing it the physiologist was doing two other things: he was denying his humanity, and he was affirming it. He was denying it in that he was able to cut the vocal cords and then pretend the animal could feel no pain, that it was merely the machine Descartes claimed it to be. But he was also affirming his humanity in that, had he not cut the cords, the desperate cries of the animal would have told him what he already knew, that it was a sentient, feeling being, and not a machine at all.

  “That act is an appropriate metaphor for the creation of a biological scientist out of a nature-lover. The rite of passage into the scientific way of being centres on the ability to apply the knife to the vocal cords, not just of the dog on the table, but of life itself. Inwardly, he must be able to sever the cords of his own consciousness. Outwardly, the effect must be the destruction of the larynx of the biosphere, an action essential to the transformation of the world into a material object subservient to the laws of classical physics. In effect, he must deny life in order to study it.”40

  •••

  In the late 1970s and early 1980s a few scientists discovered what trees have known for a very long time, that plants communicate. In one study, a scientist from the University of Washington fed leaves from Sitka willows being eaten by tent caterpillars and webworms to captive insects, and learned that the insects grew more slowly than normal. The willows were altering the composition of their leaves to stunt the growth of the predators. Next, he found that leaves from other willows nearby—those not themselves being eaten—also caused the insects to grow more slowly. The nearby plants were changing their leaf composition as well. Around that same time, a couple of scientists from Dartmouth discovered that poplar and sugar maple seedlings were also capable of similar communication.

  The response by the scientific community to even this slight threat to human supremacism—the threat being that trees may share a trait with us41—followed the pattern that believers in supremacisms often follow when their supremacisms are threatened. Out came the tautologies and poor thinking, the clutching at straws, the bullying. Plants don’t have nervous systems, and therefore they must not be able to do those things that in animals require nerves (never mind that there could be, and evidently are, other means by which others achieve these ends). Just as Cleve Backster must have had wires (or screws) loose, or must have shuffled his feet across the carpet then zapped the plant with static electricity, the researchers from Dartmouth must have designed their studies poorly, and the researcher from the University of Washington must have in some unspecified way accidentally spread some unspecified disease to the captive insects. The UW researcher couldn’t get funding to replicate his study—that’s certainly one way to guarantee a lack of repeatability—and eventually left science altogether to run a bed and breakfast.42

  Let’s jump forward to 2013, when at least a few scientists are learning something else that plants have known more or less forever, that plants of different species communicate. If you harm sagebrush, for example, it gives off signals to which tobacco plants respond. Harming cucumbers causes responses by chili peppers and lima beans. As one journalist says, “It turns out almost every green plant that’s been studied releases its own cocktail of volatile chemicals, and many species register and respond to these plumes.” This same writer calls these chemical communications “a universal language.” And it’s not only other plants who respond. That journalist continues, “Plants can communicate with insects as well, sending airborne messages that act as distress signals to predatory insects that [who] kill herbivores. Maize attacked [sic] by beet armyworms releases a cloud of volatile chemicals that attracts wasps to lay eggs in the caterpillars’ bodies. The emerging picture is that plant-eating bugs, and the insects that [who] feed on them, live in a world we can barely imagine, perfumed by clouds of chemicals rich in information. Ants, microbes, moths, even hummingbirds and tortoises . . . all detect and react to these blasts.”43

  And did I mention that plants communicate not only through these volatile chemicals, but also with “electrical pulses and a system of voltage-based signaling that is eerily reminiscent of the animal nervous system”?44

  The response by human supremacists continues to be much the same as it ever was. One supremacist calls plant intelligence “a foolish distraction,” while another says discussions of it are “the last serious confrontation between the scientific community and the nuthouse on these issues.” A third says that those who discuss plant intelligence are suffering from “over-interpretation of data, teleology, anthropomorphizing, philosophizing, and wild speculations.”45

  When a supremacism of any sort is one of the unquestioned beliefs acting as a real authority of that culture, defenders of that supremacism nearly always perceive any questioning of any part of that supremacism as a “foolish distraction.” They generally portray themselves—and quite often perceive themselves—as defenders of reasonableness and sanity, and perceive those questioning their supremacism as having come from “the nuthouse.” This is as true of human supremacists today as it was of defenders of race-based chattel slavery and as it was of defenders of the witch trials. And because the beliefs that underlie their supremacisms are unquestioned, proponents of supremacisms can say without intentional irony that they’re not philosophizing or participating in wild speculations. Because their supremacist perspective is unquestioned—and the supremacists would prefer it remain that way—all questioning of that supremacism by definition will be classed as speculation, and all speculation on that subject will be discouraged. Of course, speculating about ways to escalate the ability of one’s superior class to exploit all inferior classes is seen as innovation, creativity, and a sign of one’s intelligence and superiority. So, discuss your perception of nonhuman sentience, and you’re a foolish distraction from the nuthouse who is speculating; figure out a way to use cyanide to extract gold from rocks and leave behind a poisoned landscape, and you’re a fucking hero and a shining example of human ingenuity.

  Teleology is one of those philosophical buzzwords that mechanistic scientists often throw out to try to nerd-bully into silence those with whom they disagree. It’s analogous to a Christian telling you that you’ve just said something blasphemous: in each case, the real message is that you’re expressing an o
pinion that violates dogma.

  In the case of plant communication, and of this modest attempt to help people remember that this world really does have a voice, or rather uncounted millions of voices, there’s a sense in which the scientist’s use of the word is an attempted slur, a sense in which it’s an attempt to limit discourse, a sense in which it’s unintentionally ironic, and a sense in which it’s indicative of a destructive mindset.

  It’s obvious that teleology was thrown out as a slur, and not to promote discourse, because it’s irrelevant to the specific discussion of whether plants do or don’t communicate. One dictionary defines teleology as “the explanation of phenomena by the purpose they serve rather than by postulated causes.”46 Another states, “A teleological school of thought is one that holds all things to be designed for or directed toward a final result, that there is an inherent purpose or final cause for all that exists. It is traditionally contrasted with metaphysical naturalism [sic], which views nature as lacking design or purpose. In the first case form is defined by function, in the second function is defined by form. Teleology would say that a person has eyes because [s]he has the need of eyesight (form follows function), while naturalism [sic] would argue that a person has sight simply because [s]he has eyes, or that function follows form (eyesight follows from having eyes).”47 Some definitions suggest that a teleological perspective implies the existence of a God or gods, or some sort of design to nature. Most definitions contrast human actions, which may under this rubric have purpose, from nonhuman actions, which under this rubric may not. Here’s a not atypical example: “Within material reality, only human artifacts possess intelligent form and intelligent functionality or purpose. Measurable biological patterns lack intelligibility in themselves. Similarly, biological functionality is not truly functionality, but merely resembles the functionality of human engineering.”48

  Really? That’s a lot of narcissistic assumptions and self-glorifying tautologies packed into less than forty words.

  The point here is that in a discussion centered on whether or not plants communicate, it’s not really important whether plants needed to communicate, and then evolved ways of doing so (form followed function); or whether plants gave off scents, and the plants who perceived these scents had a greater chance of survival (function followed form). In both explanations the plants communicate. Any discussions of final causes or intelligent designers are just as irrelevant to the question of whether plants communicate as they are to whether humans communicate. We don’t need final causes. We don’t need a designer. To teleologize or not to teleologize, that is not the question.

  His use of the word teleology is limiting not only for the obvious reason that it was an attempt to discourage research into plant communication—and maybe if he was lucky the researchers would quit science altogether and start running a bed and breakfast—but also because even if we take the word teleology to not be a slur, but at face value, and merely presume the scientist meant that teleology, philosophizing, and speculation are, without value-judgment, to be deemed no part of science, then that by definition still limits exploration. Scientific philosopher Richard Dawkins would probably be surprised to learn that philosophizing should never be associated with science. And just because the scientific philosophy and speculations espoused by this human supremacist scientist claim to disallow teleology—just because an anti-teleological science has as one of its central tenets that the world has no intelligent form or functionality or purpose, and that only humans are able to create intelligently—doesn’t mean that there are no other ways to know or understand anything. And we will never know those ways so long as we’re not allowed to explore them.

  The scientific philosopher Francis Bacon—and I guess we can presume that this means he philosophized, and presumably speculated, so I guess it’s only those researching plant communication who aren’t supposed to do those things—spoke of putting nature on the rack and torturing her to extract her secrets. Evidently it is only nature we are supposed to examine closely, not the assumptions of mechanistic science.

  But that shouldn’t really come as a surprise.

  Bacon was very clear about why he wanted to torture nature. He wrote, “My only earthly wish is . . . to stretch the deplorably narrow limits of man’s dominion over the universe to their promised bounds.” Human supremacists want this same thing today. He also wrote, “I am come in very truth leading you to Nature with all her children to bind her to your service and make her your slave. The mechanical inventions of recent years do not merely exert a gentle guidance over Nature’s courses, they have the power to conquer and subdue her, to shake her to her foundations.”49

  And this is exactly what science and technology—all guided by human supremacism—have done.

  Given what Bacon wrote, it shouldn’t surprise us that scientists have argued so strongly against nonhuman sentience; the last thing any slavemaster wants is to consider the possibility that his slaves have lives of their own, and do not wish to be bent to his will.

  At least Bacon, whom I hate more than almost any other Western philosopher, had enough integrity—and it’s certainly not much—to explicitly acknowledge he wanted to torture nature. Nowadays they’re not always so direct. As they in all truth shake nature to her foundations, scientists call it hydraulic fracking or geophysical exploration, or, to speak of another foundation being shaken, genetic modification.

  The scientist’s use of the word teleology is also unintentionally ironic, for a couple of reasons. The first is that if we use as our definition of teleology “the explanation of phenomena by the purpose they serve rather than by postulated causes,” then a lot of science is pretty damn teleological. Physicists don’t know precisely what causes gravity, or for that matter light or electricity. Instead they’ve developed equations that describe how these phenomena function. And it’s not just physics. Medical researchers don’t actually know how the majority of medicines work. In many cases they don’t understand the causal connections, but merely understand that when they give medicine A to patient B, symptoms C and D subside, and in six percent of cases the patient gets side effects E through J. So they understand the drugs in terms of their purpose. And then there are geology and paleontology, where scientists as a matter of course take end points and then work backwards to postulate what might have caused this rock formation or that fossil. I know that the use of the word purpose is still strictly forbidden, since one of the commandments of human supremacist science is that in all the universe, only humans and their projects are allowed to be described as having purpose, but my point is that it seems that when we aren’t talking about nonhuman sentience, it’s perfectly acceptable in science to work backwards from known effects to “speculate” as to causes, so long as these causes continue to support the notion that humans are the only ones with agency, so long as the causes continue to support the Great Chain of Being.

  When scientists use the word teleology as a slur, they show that they’ve forgotten the difference between an assumption and a fact. It is taken as a given by much of the scientific community—and indeed, much of this human supremacist culture—that nonhumans can’t communicate, can’t think, don’t appreciate life, and so on. But this is merely a given, and is not in any non-tautological way shown. This is all ironic, given science’s self-proclaimed status as a bastion of open and free inquiry.

  And as I said at the beginning of this book, this assumption of human supremacy is killing the planet. I’m certainly not the first to write of how the so-called Enlightenment and its applied twin the industrial revolution have combined to become a possibly fatal disaster for life on earth. The former has destroyed our perception of the world as full of life and meaning and purpose and wild sentiences; the latter has used the tools of the former to accomplish this destruction in the real, physical world. The former provides the philosophical foundation and methods for the latter.

  Recall what that journalist from
Nature [sic] online said to me: “If nature were to cease to exist, nature itself would not notice, as it is not conscious (at least in the case of most animals and plants, with the possible exception of the great apes and cetaceans) and, other than through life’s drive for homeostasis, is indifferent to its own existence. Nature thus only achieves worth through our consciously valuing it.” He has obliterated his perception of the natural world and replaced it with his own dead projections. He has cut the vocal cords of his own empathy and, in his own perception, of the world. And how much easier is it to destroy some other we do not perceive as having inherent meaning, some thing that does not (in this supremacist’s perception) even care if it lives or dies?

  Further, if you accept teleology as a slur, then you presumably accept the dreadful notion that “only human artifacts possess intelligent form and intelligent functionality or purpose. Measurable biological patterns lack intelligibility in themselves. Similarly, biological functionality is not truly functionality, but merely resembles the functionality of human engineering.” And if you accept that “biological functionality is not truly functionality,” then you can come to disbelieve that, for example, salmon have irreplaceable and true functionality regarding forests, or that rivers have irreplaceable and true functionality regarding salmon, and so forth. And if you come to disbelieve in these biological functionalities, it means, well, for one thing it means you’re insane, since you’re not believing in physical reality, and for another, you may come to believe that you can kill off the salmon without harming the forest, or that you can murder a river without harming the salmon. You may come to believe that as the only one who is able to create true functionality, you can destroy, as modern humans are doing, the “biological functionality” of the oceans to metabolize carbon dioxide into oxygen, and a) survive; and b) replace this functionality by one of your own creation, which would, of course, be the only true functionality. You may come to believe that forests can’t manage themselves, but that you can manage forests. You may come to believe that after you destroy glaciers, you can create your own and replace their evidently untrue functionality with a true functionality of your own.50 You may come to believe that the world cannot survive without your interference, while the truth is that the world cannot survive your arrogant interference.