The Myth of Human Supremacy

by Derrick Jensen

  All of which is a long way of asking, which is a better way of storing food for the winter: one in which you deplete the topsoil, destroy the landbase, create and support authoritarian power structures, then conquer other landbases and destroy them, too; or one in which by your very act of storing food for the winter you guarantee the health of your home and its future for your own children and those of the other species who share this larger body that is the biome?

  The squirrels are helping out the trees, who are helping out the squirrels, who are helping out the trees. . . . What did Richard Dawkins call beings who acted like this? Oh, yes, Suckers.

  What do I call them? Life being life.

  It would be easy enough to do what I’ve done so often, and simply make a snide comment about who is more intelligent between human supremacists and squirrels (I’d say the squirrels, since they generally hide the nuts, instead of valorizing them as respected philosophers), but the first point I really want to make here is that both nonhuman and human cultures have come up with a near infinitude of “solutions” to this particular “problem.” So it’s nonsense to say that humans—or let’s just say what we mean and say non-Indigenous humans—are superior because of our ability to solve problems. Further, these other solutions have had the necessary elegance of not only not destroying their landbases—what they rely on to, you know, live—but rather improving their landbases, all of which would seem to me to be the number one consideration for whether a solution is or is not superior.

  But there’s a deeper problem here. When human supremacists talk about human superiority being based on human capacity for problem-solving, or innovation, or technology, or even epistemology or religion, nearly always the exemplars of this superiority are not merely clever pieces of technology, but are instead authoritarian technics.

  Recently The Atlantic “assembled a panel of 12 scientists, entrepreneurs, engineers, historians of technology, and others to assess the innovations that have done the most to shape the nature of modern life. The main rule for this exercise was that the innovations should have come after widespread use of the wheel began, perhaps 6,000 years ago. That ruled out fire, which our forebears began to employ several hundred thousand years earlier. We asked each panelist to make 25 selections and to rank them, despite the impossibility of fairly comparing, say, the atomic bomb and the plow.”104 Given the destructiveness of each, I’d say comparing the atomic bomb and the plow is dead easy. Both are weapons of war. And here’s a simple comparison: the amount of energy used for agriculture each year in Iowa (including the energy used to create fertilizers and pesticides) is equivalent to 4,000 Nagasaki bombs.

  They called their list, “The 50 Greatest Breakthroughs Since the Wheel.” Let’s start with a caveat: many of their entries weren’t actually human breatkthroughs or innovations at all. For example, they listed penicillin, anesthesia, nitrogen fixing, and electricity as human innovations, which I’m guessing would cause fungi, plants, other plants, and matter itself to do the equivalent of shrugging and muttering, “Fucking typical.” It shouldn’t surprise us that they didn’t credit nonhumans. They didn’t even credit Indigenous peoples. I’m sure the Indigenous humans who have had long relationships with coca, poppy, and cannabis plants, among many others, would be surprised to learn that anesthetics were invented in 1846.

  Now, to the point: essentially all of the “greatest breakthroughs” were authoritarian technics, and have had the effect of increasing the ability of those in power to exploit. For example—and remember, they are listing these as the “greatest breakthroughs,” not “the most horrible inventions”—number thirty-two was the cotton gin, because it, and this was the entirety of the reason given for its inclusion, “Institutionalized the cotton industry—and slavery—in the American South.” I’m not sure enslaved persons would have agreed that this was one of the “greatest breakthroughs” in history, any more than German Jews circa 1942 would have agreed that the technics involved in death camps were a great breakthrough. And please note that some of the “scientists, entrepreneurs, engineers, historians of technology, and others” involved in making this list said explicitly that they chose what innovations to include by asking themselves, “What would I miss more if it didn’t exist?” Gosh, would I have missed cotton gins? If my loyalties were with the slaveowning class, then certainly yes. If my loyalties were with the enslaved, then of course not. Please note also that although the write-up made some obligatory noises about how “progress” might carry with it some potential downsides, the overall tone of the write-up was self-congratulatory and “optimistic.” Indeed, the most significant part of the exercise, according to its author, was to help us understand much about “why technology breeds optimism.” Do you think the invention of the cotton gin engendered optimism among the enslaved? The author states in the introduction that the list is intended to reveal much to us about “imagination, optimism, and the nature of progress.” I think he’s right; the list does reveal almost everything we need to know about imagination in a culture in thrall to authoritarian technics, and what optimism means in a culture based on slavery, and about the nature of progress in this culture; just not in ways the listmakers meant. Another of the “greatest breakthroughs” was oil drilling, about which these “optimists” stated that it “fueled the modern economy, established its geopolitics, and changed the climate.” Once again, I’m not sure victims of the modern economy, those whose blood has been spilled for oil, or victims of global warming would be eager to jump on this bandwagon. Yet another breakthrough was radio, because it was “the first demonstration of electronic mass media’s power to spread ideas and homogenize culture.” In other words, one of their “greatest breakthroughs” is a tool for those who own the media to spread propaganda and reduce or eliminate cultural variation. Of course another of their “greatest breakthroughs” is television, which “brought the world [sic] into people’s homes,” by which they really meant: “The most effective propaganda tool yet devised for spreading the ideas of those in power.” But from within a supremacist worldview, “the world” actually already means “the ideas of those in power.” No more, no less. That is what the world must consist of. Another was the assembly line, because it “turned a craft-based economy into a mass-market one.” Yes, that same assembly line that was part of the efficiency movement about which Frederick Winslow Taylor famously wrote, “In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first.” You couldn’t really ask for a better description of what authoritarian technics do to a society, and of what has gone wrong with this culture. Number twenty-one was nuclear fission, because it “Gave humans new power for destruction, and creation [sic].” I’m sure I’m not the only person who, when human supremacists extol nuclear power, finds himself thinking of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and Mickey Mouse’s misuse of the spell to harness the power of broomsticks. I find myself thinking that, like Mickey Mouse, humans are creating a terrible mess by using this power they can never understand or control. Unlike Mickey, however, because of this error we (and everyone else) will receive much more than a swat on the butt. And we will deserve it. The other members of the planet will not.

  And the fourteenth “greatest breakthrough” was gunpowder, because it “outsourced killing to a machine.”

  Think about that.

  I hope you’re beginning to see the pattern: each of these is an authoritarian technic. Each of these has among its effects the centralization of power. Each of these is useful from the perspective of those who are interested in increasing power at the expense of nonhuman and human communities and communal variability. Most of those that are not strictly authoritarian technics are supported by counterfactual claims, such as number 47, the nail, which they say “extended lives by enabling people to have shelter.” Really? Nobody had shelter before nails? Indigenous peoples the world over have never had shelter? Huh? But the real point is that in none of the cases, not even anesthesia, which I
would call a good (except, of course, that, just as with electricity, penicillin, nuclear fission, and nitrogen fixing, humans didn’t invent it), do the listmakers count the cost of these great “breakthroughs.” For crying out loud, they don’t seem to be particularly broken up about the costs of gunpowder, nuclear fission, and the cotton gin, so why would we expect them to care about the fact that the production, consumption and excretion of birth control pills (number twenty-two) has caused terrible hormonal changes among fish who live in rivers where the hormones eventually end up? Why would we expect them to care about the costs of any of these inventions? Why would we expect them to care that the overwhelming majority of these innovations have been terrible disasters for the real world?

  In fact, in most of the lists like this one, a primary precondition for some innovation being considered one of the “greatest breakthroughs” is that the “breakthrough” consolidate power, that it further enslave nonhumans (and humans), that it make ever more matter and energy jump through ever more hoops on command. That it centralize control.

  When you begin to question human supremacism, such that it no longer is the real authority of your own mind, these lists begin to look much different than they did before. They seem to be lists made by those who don’t consider themselves to be part of the earth. Instead, these are lists compiled by those who are at war with the world itself, with life itself. Suddenly it makes sense that plows and gunpowder and atomic bombs are all included in a list of greatest innovations.

  * * *

  102 Kendall F. Haven, 100 Greatest Science Inventions of All Time (Santa Barbara: Libraries Unlimited, 2005), 18.

  103 Nic Fleming, “‘Cunning’ Squirrels Pretend to Bury Their Food,” The Telegraph, January 16, 2008, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/3322101/Cunning-squirrels-pretend-to-bury-their-food.html (accessed July 6, 2014).

  Many other species also store food in ways that help the landbase. For example, “When food is plentiful, late summer and fall, the chickadees hoard food. They stash food under bark or in patches of lichen. A single chickadee may stockpile hundreds of food items in a day; placing each item in a different spot. Chickadees can remember thousands of food hiding places. They can retrieve the food item with almost perfect accuracy 24 hours later. Some birds can even remember the location of their cache for up to 28 days after hiding.” From “Black-Capped Chickadee,” Holdenarb, http://www.holdenarb.org/resources/Black-cappedChickadee.asp (accessed December 10, 2014).

  104 James Fallows, “The 50 Greatest Breakthroughs Since the Wheel,” The Atlantic, October 23, 2013, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/innovations-list/309536/ (accessed July 4, 2014).

  Chapter Eleven

  Beauty

  Art is implicit in nature.

  ALBRECHT DÜRER

  Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

  CONFUCIOUS

  Here is my own informal list of what I think are a few really great innovations, inventions, and creations, this from a perspective that is at least an attempt to not be human supremacist, and that does not take as a given that what humans create has meaning and what anyone else creates does not. I’m not going to claim that these are the most foundational creations, or most important, or anything else other than that they are pretty great.

  There is matter, space, and time. Without them there is nothing.

  There is nuclear fusion, developed by the sun and other stars. Without it we’d all be very cold.

  There is gravity, and other forms of attraction. Without it things would fall apart rather quickly.

  There is motion, developed by the first entities who moved.

  There is electricity, which was not in fact developed by humans.

  There is sunshine, which feels really good on a nice fall day. Don’t you love how it warms you all over?

  There is homeostasis. How great is that?

  There is fire, which also was not developed by humans, but by fire itself.

  There is water, and there is ice, and there are clouds. There is rain. There are oceans. There are rivers. There are springs. I remember as a child marveling at a huge bubbling spring that birthed a river fully formed, and wondering how it never ran out of water. There is the whole hydrologic cycle.

  There are rocks, like water their own beings, in many cases long lived. They are foundational.

  There is metabolism. Eating is a good thing, is it not?

  There is cell division.

  There is oxygen combustion.

  There is sexual reproduction. There is reproduction without sex. There is sex without reproduction.

  There are butterflies. Moths. There are leaf insects. There are grasshoppers who bury their clutches of eggs, like tiny sea turtles.

  There are fireflies.

  There are the fall colors of trees.

  There is that light green of new growth on trees.

  There is the sound of feet on dry leaves on a forest floor.

  There are feet.

  There are cilia.

  And there are eyes. Can you imagine anything so brilliant? Who came up with that?

  Or what about the sense of touch? Is this more brilliant than vision? Smell. Hearing. Taste. Which is the most brilliant? Don’t ask me; I’m certainly not smart enough to figure it out. They’re all good. And what about other senses unknown to humans?105

  Fruits and berries. One of the most brilliant ideas ever: putting your seeds in attractive, nourishing packaging which will lead someone to consume your seeds, deliver them elsewhere, and plant them in a bed of manure, which, it ends up, is, in another burst of brilliance, food for your child. Everybody wins! Is this a great idea, or what?

  Proprioception. Have you ever wondered how hard life would be if this innovation had never taken place?

  And while we’re talking about bodies, isn’t medicine amazing? Of course, humans didn’t invent the practice of the “diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease.”

  There are anglerfish and whale sharks. There are algae.

  Spider silk, echolocation, beaver dams, birds’ nests, flowers.

  Color.

  Lichen.

  Pheromones.

  There are families of wolves, families of baboons, families of elephants, families of chimpanzees, families of bees, families of alligators, families of frogs, families of plants, families of bacteria, multispecies families, like forests, like rivers, like you. There are families.

  Friendship is a wonderful innovation.

  Love.

  There are roots to nestle deeply into soil. There are roots who wrap around each other to hold up friends and comrades and lovers.

  Wings. There are wings for flying and wings for swimming.

  Fat. Isn’t that a marvelous way to store energy and to keep you warm?

  Muscle. Who invented muscles? They’re extraordinary.

  Blood. Sap. Water.

  Dreams.

  Silence.

  Beauty.

  Harmony.

  Anger.

  Sorrow.

  Joy.

  I could go on and on, but perhaps it’s best if you come up with your own.

  •••

  It also bothers me that human supremacists believe that only humans create art.

  What about lightning?

  Thunder?

  Ocean waves. Their sound, their smell, their sight.

  Have you ever seen seals body surfing?

  Clouds.

  Toroidal bubbles.

  Non-toroidal bubbles.

  The wind in the trees, from soft sighs to groans to creaks to the clashing of branches. Don’t you think a light breeze in a deciduous forest is the best sound in the world? Or no, maybe that would be a heavier wind in redwoods. Or maybe a ful
l-blown storm in a pine and fir and cedar forest, where storm and forest together sound like the sea.

  Or maybe it’s the sound of meadowlarks.

  Or maybe an interspecies chorus of frogs.

  Or maybe the sound of a herd of bison running as fast as they can.

  Or maybe the hundreds of songs of mockingbirds.

  Or maybe the sound of a cave breathing.

  I love the four seasons. No, not the cover version by Vivaldi, much as I like it, but the original. The original came much earlier, and is much better.

  Snow.

  Fog.

  Frost.

  Larches in fall.

  Maples in fall.

  Willows in spring.

  The look in a dog’s eyes when it’s happy.

  A deer’s eyes. The eyes of a jumping spider.

  Octopi, some of the world’s best actors.

  Snakes. Aren’t they beautiful?

  Egrets.

  Alders.

  Canyons.

  The wings of a dragonfly.

  Iridescent beetles.

  Non-iridescent beetles.

  Skin.

  Jellyfish tentacles.

  Chanterelles, Amanita muscaria, earthstars, bridal veil stinkhorns, puffballs.

  Murmurations of birds or fish.

  Snowflakes.

  Raindrops.

  Water-sculpted rocks. Wind-sculpted rocks.