The Myth of Human Supremacy

by Derrick Jensen

  Here’s how it works regarding this ark for the Sociopocene: we gain the benefits, and now we’re pretending that we face this terrible dilemma as to which of our victims we’re going to save (for now). But that’s not really a dilemma. Let’s pretend I’m going to kill either you or your best friend. And no matter whom I kill, I’m going to take everything you both own and everything you hold dear. I gain and both of you lose, including, for one of you, your life. I choose which one dies. That’s not a dilemma for me. To qualify as a dilemma I have to have something at stake. Instead of a dilemma, it’s murder and theft.

  But from a supremacist perspective, I’m not a murderer and thief. I’m a savior. I saved one of you from certain death (admittedly, at my own hands, but still). And being this savior is more evidence of my superiority. A lesser being might have mindlessly killed you both. Gosh, aren’t I great? And since I’m so smart, maybe I can come up with all sorts of criteria by which today I’ll make my decision as to which of you I’ll kill. Then tomorrow, I’ll make another decision based on these or whatever other criteria I want as to whether to kill the survivor from today or your second-best friend. And the day after, I’ll make this decision again with someone else you love.

  I find it deeply troubling that at least some members of this culture can feel even remotely good about themselves for choosing who lives and who dies, if they don’t also work toward stopping the actual cause of the murders. It’s analogous to a guard at a Nazi death camp feeling like a hero for giving Sophie the choice as to which of her children he won’t murder (tonight).

  Once again, the murder of the planet is not some tragedy ordained by fate because we’re too damn smart. It is the result of a series of extremely bad social choices.

  We could choose differently. But we don’t. And we won’t. Not so long as the same unquestioned beliefs run the culture.

  Don’t get me wrong. Anyone who is working to protect wild places or wild beings from this omnicidal culture is in that sense a hero. We need to use every tool possible to save whomever and wherever we can from this culture. But it’s ridiculous and all-too-expected that while there’s always plenty of money to destroy the Tongass and every other forest, and there’s always plenty of money for various weapons of mass destruction (such as cluster bombs or dams or corporations), somehow, when it comes to saving wild places and wild beings, we have to pinch pennies and “make difficult decisions.”

  Also, I need to say that the whole ark metaphor doesn’t work. In the original story, God saved two of every species (as He, like the humans who created Him, destroyed the planet). Here, modern humans are going where even God didn’t tread, and explicitly not saving every species, but instead deciding which species to save, and which species to kill off. This is, of course, both pleasing and flattering to human supremacists: they’re making decisions on questions even God punted.

  How cool is that?

  There’s an even bigger problem than all of these, though, which is that this culture is systematically and functionally killing the planet. All the wonderful and necessary work of every activist who is fighting as hard as she or he can to protect this or that wild place won’t mean a fucking thing so long as this culture stands. And all this fine work that goes into creating decision-trees as to whom we deem worthy of saving and whom we will drive extinct is meaningless when we completely fail to address the cause of the murders in the first place.

  Until civilization collapses, the murder of the planet won’t stop.

  Picture this. A gang of sadistic, vicious, insane, entitled, sociopathic murderers has taken over your home, and is holding everyone you love captive. They are systematically pulling your loved ones from the room and torturing them to death. What do you do? Do you make decision-trees to help you make “difficult decisions” as to which of your loved ones you’ll hand over next? Maybe you do. But I have to tell you I’d be more focused on stopping the murderous motherfuckers in their tracks, stopping the murders at their source.

  From the perspective of human supremacists, though, it is easier, more pleasing, and certainly reinforces one’s own identity as superior, to “reluctantly” make “difficult decisions” as to who will be driven extinct. So long as we never, ever, ever question the supremacism and the culture that is driving them extinct. And so long as we never forget to go along with Mumford’s “magnificent bribe.”

  We know on which side our bread is buttered.

  •••

  Let’s drop the rhetoric. The op-ed broke my heart, not only because the murder of the planet breaks my heart; and not only because the op-ed discussed which creatures to let go drive extinct without talking about which technics to let go get rid of; and not only because, of course, they mentioned which species are most useful to us, but entirely absent among their criteria for saving species was that of which beings best serve life on earth (and, of course, missing entirely was any discussion of what technics serve life and what harm life); but even more so because it completely ignored what is in many ways the only thing that matters: stopping the primary damage. The truth is that these other beings wouldn’t need to be saved if civilization wasn’t killing them. The truth is that they can’t be saved so long as civilization is killing the planet. And the truth is that in this culture there are certain topics which must never be discussed, certain self-perceptions and perceived entitlements which are never negotiable. We would rather kiss ourselves and the entire planet good-bye than to look honestly at what we have done, what we are doing, and what we will, so long as we have this supremacist mindset, continue to do.

  •••

  Another big problem with the idea of an ark for the Sociopocene is that it’s based on and promotes this culture’s harmful and inaccurate view of the natural world, that you can take a creature out of its habitat and still have the complete creature, that a prairie dog is just a bundle of DNA in a fur and skin sack, and not part of the larger body of the prairie.

  This culture seems to believe—completely anthropomorphically—that the world is like a machine or a chair. Some human artifact. Something where the whole is no more than the sum of the parts. You can take apart a chair and swap out some parts, then put the chair back together, and you still have a chair (except that this culture would steal a bunch of screws, two legs, and the seat, then wonder why they can’t sit in it; but don’t worry, it’s just been “reorganized”). But that’s not how life works, whether we’re talking about a human body or the body of a river or a prairie. The whole is more than the sum of the parts. And if you don’t think so, have a surgeon take you all apart and put you back together. Call me when they’re done. I’ll have my Ouija board set on vibrate.

  You can’t remove a wolverine from its habitat and still have a wolverine. You have something that looks and smells like a wolverine. But the wolverine is also the scents it picks up on the breeze and the soil under its feet. Without the weather patterns and everything else about where it lives, it would not have become the being it is.

  Yes, the Franklin’s bumblebee must be saved, as must the Hunter’s hartebeest and the Chinese bahaba and the Galapagos damselfish.

  But they don’t need arks. What they need is a living planet. What really need to be protected are the larger bodies who are their homes, the oceans, the forests, the rivers, the lakes, the entire larger communities.

  •••

  I’m not saying we should never intervene. Obviously every being intervenes at all times: salmon affect forests, trees affect salmon, prairie dogs bring rain (and no, I’m not being hyperbolic; they do). What I’m saying is that we learn to play our proper role, and that we intervene with humility. Charles Mann was wrong when he said that “Anything goes.” We need to act in ways that improve the health of the land on its own terms.

  I live in far northern California. The local National Forest District is one of the most well-managed I’ve ever encountered. Why? Because there is
no timber sale program, so here the Forest Service has as one of its primary goals not the theft of trees to serve the timber industry, but rather the righting of old wrongs, such that the District removes a lot of old mining and timber roads, and works to help the local rivers and forests the best it can.

  Likewise I have a friend who teaches at a state university in New York. The university “owns” a forest. Unfortunately, because wolves and mountain lions have been eliminated from the region, the forest is being overrun with white-tailed deer. Neither young trees nor underbrush survive, which also means amphibians and rodents and ground-dwelling birds don’t survive. To save the forest, the university needs to either kill some deer, or better, reintroduce mountain lions or wolves.

  Lots of human supremacists say that because American Indians affect the land where they live, that somehow this means that “anything goes.” But that’s simply an excuse for abhorrent behavior. The truth is that Indigenous peoples traditionally lived in place, and made decisions with the understanding that they were going to be living in that place for the next 500 years. If you are planning on living in place for the next 500 years, your community will make far different land-use decisions. You won’t destroy the rivers. You won’t destroy the forests or grasslands. You won’t drive off predators. You won’t poison the land, water, and air. You won’t harm the natural communities of whom/which you are a part.

  It is not okay to manage a natural community for extraction. It is not okay to manage a natural community for a sense of self-aggrandizement. It is acceptable to try, with humility and with the understanding that you are going to be living in place for the next 500 years, to right the wrongs of the human supremacists who surround you.

  And, of course, it is acceptable to stop these human supremacists from causing more harm.

  •••

  I recently did a benefit for the Buffalo Field Campaign, a great organization trying to protect the last free-ranging herd of genetically pure bison in the United States, in Yellowstone National Park. In order to serve the financial interests of a few cattle ranchers, the Montana Department of Livestock and the United States Park Service shoot hundreds of these bison each year, and otherwise manage them to death. Buffalo Field Campaign is the first, and often last, line of defense against this management murder. Mike Mease is BFC’s co-founder, and has been doing this work for seventeen years. He’s a force of nature.

  We were chatting after the benefit, and he said something that ties directly into this book. The Park Service had orphaned a bison calf, and removed it from the herd. Mike asked the Ranger, now that the calf had been separated from his family, who was going to teach the calf how to become a bison. The Ranger said, “I will.”

  This is everything I’m talking about in this book in two small words. He knows how to teach this child to become an adult bison. Of course. Good luck teaching him how to deal with other males during rut.

  Perhaps the notion of humans attempting to manage the natural world reveals more than anything else the complete insanity of human supremacism, and this supremacism’s near-absolute invulnerability to counter-evidence. This culture has critically harmed or destroyed every single biome it has managed, and yet the managerial ethos gets stronger every day. Forests: managed to death. Yet still the managers claim to know what is best for forests. Wetlands: managed to death. Yet still the managers claim to know what is best for wetlands. Rivers: managed to death. Yet still the managers claim to know what is best for rivers. Oceans: managed to death. Yet still the managers claim to know what is best for oceans.

  Maybe bison know best how to raise a bison child, and forests know best how to raise and maintain forests, and wetlands know best how to build and maintain wetlands, and oceans know best how to keep themselves alive and healthy. They’ve been doing this for quite a while.

  If a doctor killed or injured every single patient he saw, would you trust your life to this doctor? If a cop bungled every single case she handled, would you want her investigating (or preventing) the death of your loved one? If every single bridge built by a certain engineer collapsed, would you want him building bridges over which you and those you love will travel? If a financial advisor gave you bad advice every single time she opened her mouth, would you trust her with your financial future?

  Yet this is the track record of human supremacists.

  It’s of course even worse, because “management” in human supremacist terms really means “stealing as much as possible” from the one being “managed.” So as well as being completely insufficient to the task, the doctor is stealing organs from his patients, the cop is busy killing relatives of the dead and cutting rings off their fingers, the engineer not only steals building materials to re-sell, but also loots the homes of those who die in the collapses, and the financial advisor’s real goal all along was to gain access to your assets.

  In each case, the managers do fine. Their victims, not so much.

  In our own lives, no one would entrust anything to these thieves and murderers—to these thieves and murderers who, even if they weren’t thieves and murderers, would still be incapable of performing up to their claimed abilities—yet, time and again, we entrust the source of all life to them.

  Part of the reason, of course, is Mumford’s magnificent bribe. We have sold whatever native intelligence and integrity and empathy and common sense we have in exchange for our cut of the swag. I hope you enjoy your share of the money we got for the ring that used to be on our big sister’s finger. I know I sure did. I bought myself a new computer. And Mom’s liver paid this month’s electricity bill.

  Another reason we’re all so stupid about this has to do with our enslavement to authoritarian technics. The technics say we can manage anything we turn our minds to, and who are we to question the all-wise and all-knowing technics? Technics, by the way, that brought me this damn computer, and electricity itself, without which life would be unimaginable, so you keep your mouth shut about any of your so-called “downsides” to this technology. Jesus. Fucking ingrate.

  With apologies again to Upton Sinclair, it’s hard to make a man understand something when his entitlement depends on him not understanding it.

  Rationalized theft really is a big part of it. Robert Jay Lifton wrote that before you can commit any mass atrocity, you have to have what he called a “claim to virtue,” that is you have to convince others and especially yourself that you are not in fact committing an atrocity, but instead performing some virtuous act. So the Nazis weren’t committing mass murder and genocide, but rather purifying the Aryan “race.” The Americans weren’t committing mass murder and genocide, but rather manifesting their destiny. And are, of course, still doing so. Members of the dominant culture aren’t killing the planet, they are “developing natural resources.” And it’s not mass murder, theft, and ecocide, it is “managing” forests, wetlands, rivers, and so on.

  Lifton was not the first to observe this role of self-delusion in the perpetrating of atrocities. I’m sure some humans have been decrying this as long as other humans have been doing it. In the late fourteenth century, for example, Timur, sometimes known as Tamurlane the Great, initiated military campaigns that killed about seventeen million people, or 5 percent of the human population at the time. About this he said, “God is my witness that in all my wars I have never been the aggressor, and that my enemies have always been the authors of their own calamity.” Historian Edward Gibbon responds, “During this peaceful conversation [when Timur said this] the streets of Aleppo streamed with blood, and reechoed with the cries of mothers and children, with the shrieks of violated virgins. The rich plunder that was abandoned to his soldiers might stimulate their avarice; but their cruelty was enforced by the peremptory command of producing an adequate number of heads, which, according to his custom, were curiously piled in columns and pyramids.”133 Gibbon also comments, with his usual dryness, “For every war a motive of safety or revenge, of
honor or zeal, of right or convenience, may be readily found in the jurisprudence of conquerors.”134 And that is certainly true today in the war on the natural world (which means, the war on life itself).

  It seems as though most of the time we use most of our intelligence not to solve problems, but rather to rationalize our atrocities. Certainly this is one of the primary functions of Western philosophy, science, religion, economics, popular culture, “news,” political theory, and so on.

  And yet another reason we keep pretending, against all evidence, that we can manage the natural world (and, in fact, that we keep pretending that evidence showing we can’t manage the natural world doesn’t exist), has to do with that core unquestioned belief of human supremacism: humans have intelligence, and nobody else does. Humans have function and purpose and meaning, and nobody else does. Remember, the human brain is the most complex phenomenon in the universe. So of course humans can manage a forest, and humans can manage the oceans, and can manage rivers and whatever else we want to manage. How hard can it be?

  Well, I’ll tell you what would be very hard for us, which would be for us to acknowledge that from the very beginning we have been wrong. If we were to acknowledge that our management failed—and I don’t mean just one time where we made mistakes we are learning from and next time will do better, but instead the ubiquitous and functional failure of the entire managerial ethos—we would have to acknowledge that perhaps we aren’t as omniscient and omnipotent as we believe. We would have to acknowledge that the totality of our human supremacist mindset is based on the lie that we are intelligent and they are not.