The Myth of Human Supremacy

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The Myth of Human Supremacy Page 34

by Derrick Jensen


  I often think about the mysterious absence of intelligence among human supremacists.

  He continues, “Humans have yet to undertake an exhaustive, or even vigorous, search for extraterrestrial intelligence, of course. But we have gone a great deal further than a casual glance skyward. For more than 50 years, we have trained radio telescopes on nearby stars, hoping to detect an electromagnetic signal, a beacon beamed across the abyss. We have searched for sentry probes in our solar system, and we have examined local stars for evidence of alien engineering. Soon, we will begin looking for synthetic pollutants in the atmospheres of distant planets, and asteroid belts with missing metals, which might suggest mining activity.”

  And there you have it: a sure sign of intelligence is pollution. And another is mining, which is the second most destructive human activity after agriculture (which means, of course, that it also must not be inherently destructive). How much clearer does it have to be?

  I guess the Indigenous humans who didn’t produce air pollution and who didn’t mine must not have been intelligent. Just as the nonhumans who don’t produce air pollution and who don’t mine must not be intelligent.

  No wonder some of these human supremacists perceive intelligence as destructive. That’s how they’ve defined it.

  To be clear: when scientists search for signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life, they are actually searching for signs of authoritarian technics. But authoritarian technics is not the same as intelligence. Worse, because these authoritarian technics are not sustainable—as even Musk accidentally acknowledges when he speaks of searching for pollution—all these scientists are wasting their time looking for civilizations (not “intelligent life”) that couldn’t possibly have lasted very long. For all that scientists love to talk about “nature’s laws,” they seem to think these “laws” don’t apply to us (and when do supremacists ever think any laws apply to them?); you can’t convert a planet to machines and expect to live on it.

  He continues, “The failure of these searches is mysterious [no, it isn’t, for the reason I just gave], because human intelligence should not be special. [It isn’t.] Ever since the age of Copernicus, we have been told that we occupy a uniform Universe, a weblike structure stretching for tens of billions of light years, its every strand studded with starry discs, rich with planets and moons made from the same material as us. If nature obeys [sic] identical laws [sic] everywhere, then surely these vast reaches contain many cauldrons where energy is stirred into water and rock, until the three mix magically into life. And surely some of these places nurture those first fragile cells, until they evolve into intelligent creatures that band together to form civilisations, with the foresight and staying power to build starships.”

  And there we go again: intelligence is defined as creating civilizations and starships. Left unsaid is the process of murdering the planet that inheres in civilizations. But the point remains: intelligence is here defined in action as theft from landbases for use by the “intelligent.” But that’s not intelligence. That’s just theft. And when that theft harms the planet that keeps you alive, that’s really stupid.

  Musk says, reinforcing the Great Chain of Being theme, and once again giving away the whole rotten game that is human supremacism, “At our current rate of technological growth, humanity is on a path to be godlike in its capabilities.”

  That’s what we’ve wanted from the beginning, right?

  He also says, “You could bicycle to Alpha Centauri in a few hundred thousand years, and that’s nothing on an evolutionary scale. If an advanced civilisation existed at any place in this galaxy, at any point in the past 13.8 billion years, why isn’t it everywhere? Even if it moved slowly, it would only need something like .01 per cent of the Universe’s lifespan to be everywhere. So why isn’t it?”

  Because civilizations aren’t sustainable. Ernst Mayr’s comment about intelligence being a lethal mutation would be true if we changed it to: Authoritarian technics are lethal social constructs.

  The self-worship continues, “It’s possible that we are merely the first in a great wave of species that will take up tool-making and language. But it’s also possible that intelligence just isn’t one of natural selection’s preferred modules. We might think of ourselves as nature’s pinnacle, the inevitable endpoint of evolution, but beings like us could be too rare to ever encounter one another. Or we could be the ultimate cosmic outliers, lone minds in a Universe that stretches to infinity.”

  This is just the same narcissistic insanity as the astronomer who said we needed to explore Mars “to answer that most important question: are we all alone?” as this culture destroys life on this planet.

  The exact same insanity shared by nearly everyone in this culture.

  It’s extraordinary to me that people who say that evolution is based on random mutations can at the same time say that we are the pinnacle. If the mutations are random, there is no pinnacle. If the mutations are random, there is no inevitable endpoint. Although in the case of this planet, human supremacists are guaranteeing that we are the endpoint by stopping all evolution. And please note, yet again, how all through this he is naturalizing the destruction of the planet.

  It’s all based on the unquestioned belief that we are more intelligent than nonhumans. It is based on the unquestioned belief that we are superior to nonhumans. It is based on the unquestioned belief that intelligence is manifested by destructiveness.

  In the rest of the interview Musk talks about his plans to get a million people to Mars in the next hundred years on 10,000 space ships (presumably built by his company at taxpayer expense), shooting these transports into space at rates “that would convert Earth’s launch pads into machine guns, capable of firing streams of spacecraft at deep space destinations such as Mars.” He talks about mining Mars, like this culture has mined the earth. He talks about how the entire universe might be a giant computer simulation.

  It’s all nuts. And it’s nearly always couched in terms that are Biblical, magical, childish, or all three. The journalist repeatedly talks about the “sacred mission” of space colonization, and he describes Musk’s “cathedral-like rocket factory,” then finishes his description by saying, “The place felt something like Santa’s workshop as re-imagined by James Cameron.”

  The Biblical/magical/childish imagery continues, as here we go again with the Noah metaphor: “It’s possible to read Musk as a Noah figure, a man obsessed with building a great vessel, one that will safeguard humankind against global catastrophe [except, of course, that only humans will survive, but then again, “Fuck Earth”]. But he seems to see himself as a Moses, someone who makes it possible to pass through the wilderness—the ‘empty wastes,’ as Kepler put it to Galileo—but never sets foot in the Promised Land.”

  The article concludes: “He is a revivalist, for those of us who still buy into cosmic manifest destiny. And he can preach. He says we are doomed if we stay here. He says we will suffer fire and brimstone, and even extinction. He says we should go with him, to that darkest and most treacherous of shores. He promises a miracle.”

  •••

  All this talk of miracles and preaching and fire and brimstone and sacred missions is not coincidental. The technotopian vision is just a secular version of the same monotheistic conceit that life on Earth is a vale of tears and the real glory is in heaven. It doesn’t much matter whether you believe the only meaning comes from a God who looks like an old man with a beard, or the only meaning comes from things created by man, you’re still saying that the earth is meaningless. You’re still showing contempt and hatred for the earth. And it doesn’t much matter whether the God you created tells you that you should have dominion over the earth, and all creatures on earth should fear you, or whether you believe it is human’s manifest destiny to convert the earth into machines and pollute the earth (cuz that’s what intelligent beings do), and you not only make all creatures fear you, you drive
them extinct, you’re still destroying the place. It doesn’t matter whether you have the God you created tell you that you are the Chosen People (or Chosen Species), or whether your own delusions tell you that your vast intelligence is “a single candle flame, flickering weakly in a vast and drafty void,” you still think your chosen stature allows you to exploit and/or exterminate all those you perceive as lesser than you, which is everyone. And it doesn’t much matter whether you believe heaven is way up in the stars where God lives, or whether you believe heaven is way up in the stars where you want your space ships to go, you still don’t believe that the earth is a good place to live.

  There are some differences though. One is that it used to be that at least God was more powerful than Man. Now, though, we’ve gotten rid of that silly God talk and it is we who are on the path to becoming godlike in our capabilities. Another is that in the olden days the Heaven to which the hell on earth was contrasted was at least marginally pleasant, so long as you like harps, and petting zoos that contain both lambs and lions. This new heaven on Mars promised by Musk sounds more like hell: “If you were to stroll onto its surface without a spacesuit, your eyes and skin would peel away like sheets of burning paper, and your blood would turn to steam, killing you within 30 seconds. Even in a suit you’d be vulnerable to cosmic radiation, and dust storms that occasionally coat the entire Martian globe, in clouds of skin-burning particulates, small enough to penetrate the tightest of seams. Never again would you feel the sun and wind on your skin, unmediated. Indeed, you would probably be living underground at first, in a windowless cave, only this time there would be no wild horses to sketch on the ceiling.”

  It gets even better: “Cabin fever might set in quickly on Mars, and it might be contagious. Quarters would be tight. Governments would be fragile. Reinforcements would be seven months away. Colonies might descend into civil war, anarchy or even cannibalism, given the potential for scarcity. US [sic] colonies from Roanoke to Jamestown suffered similar social breakdowns, in environments that were Edenic by comparison. Some individuals might be able to endure these conditions for decades, or longer, but Musk told me he would need a million people to form a sustainable, genetically diverse civilisation.”141

  So basically the heaven he’s promising us is worse than the worst prison cell in the U.S. penal system. At least those in solitary confinement get an hour a day to walk in a walled-in exercise area where they can see the sky and breathe outside air. At least there is outside air.

  But from the perspective of capitalists—and more broadly, that of an authoritarian technics—this really is heaven. Recall that a central point of agriculture has been to make people dependent on those in power for their food: if you control someone’s food, you control their lives, which means you control their labor. The people in Musk’s heaven would be dependent on those in charge for the very air they breathe. The God of capitalism/Authoritarianism is smiling.

  •••

  This is the endpoint of human supremacism.

  No, the endpoint of human supremacism is what we see around us: the complete insanity of those who suffer the mental illness of human supremacism; and the extermination of all those who don’t.

  •••

  I want to mention a few headlines.

  “Trees vs. Humans: In California Drought, Nature Gets to Water First.”142 The article argues that because forests naturally retain water (which is a good thing, in terms of forest and river health, and flood, siltation, and landslide prevention, but which this article calls a “sin of nature”), and because California’s reservoirs, which are by definition unnatural and are necessary for agriculture, have been depleted by drought (and by agriculture), the solution, brought to you by your friendly corporate foresters, is to cut down the trees. I’m not kidding. And yes, I often wonder at the lack of intelligence in this culture.

  A forest activist friend of mine responded to this: “Why don’t they just cover the hills in Visqueen and be done with it?”

  The next headline: “Texas’ Top Toxicologist: EPA’s New Smog Regulations Unnecessary, Just Stay Indoors.” A relevant quote: “Ozone is an outdoor air pollutant because systems such as air conditioning remove it from indoor air. Since most people spend more than 90 percent of their time indoors, we are rarely exposed to significant levels of ozone.”143

  The next headline (with pull-quote): “Drive to Mine the Deep Sea Raises Concerns Over Impacts: Armed with new high-tech equipment, mining companies are targeting vast areas of the deep ocean for mineral extraction. But with few regulations in place, critics fear such development could threaten seabed ecosystems that scientists say are only now being fully understood.”144 Where have we seen this before, where “development could threaten” natural communities (and inevitably does)? Oh, that’s right, it would be everywhere this culture has “developed.”

  And the next: “Public Forests Sacrificed to the Biomass Industry.”145

  And while Elon Musk feeds at NASA’s public trough, another headline: “After 42 Years of Charting the Health of Our Seas, Scientist’s Studies Now Face the Axe.”146

  Or this headline: “The Surprising Reason Abandoned US Mines Haven’t Been Cleaned Up.” The “surprising” reason? “No one really cares.”147

  Recall what Mumford said about the priorities of a culture driven by authoritarian technics: “As with the earliest forms of authoritarian technics, the weight of effort, if one is to judge by national budgets, is toward absolute instruments of destruction, designed for absolutely irrational purposes whose chief by-product would be the mutilation or extermination of the human race” life on earth.

  The next headline: “Dead Babies Near Oil Drilling Sites Raise Questions for Researchers.”148 Yes, you read that correctly. Babies are dying near oil drilling sites, and the response by this culture is not to stop the murders, but that the murders merely “raise questions for researchers.”

  Or: “Fracking or Drinking Water? That May Become the Choice.” The article begins: “Fracking for oil and natural gas—or having enough water to drink. That’s the possible dilemma facing a number of countries including the United States, according to a new report released by the World Resources Institute last week—though experts disagree on the real implications of the report and what should be done about it.”149 Yes, it is perfectly sane to consider the choice between having water to drink and oil and gas from fracking a dilemma, and it is perfectly reasonable for “experts” to disagree as to what should be done about this. Of course since pollution is one of the discernible measures of intelligence, fracking is the only intelligent choice.

  And we all see the relationship between those last two articles, right? Although experts may disagree on the implications of this relationship.

  Another headline: “We’re Damming Up Every Last Big River on Earth. Is That Really a Good Idea?”150

  Followed by: “Hydropower May Be Huge Source of Methane Emissions.”151

  And only two more. First, “Amazon Rainforest Losing Ability to Regulate Climate, Scientist Warns.” It begins, “The Amazon rainforest has degraded to the point where it is losing its ability to benignly regulate weather systems, according to a stark new warning from one of Brazil’s leading scientists.”152 The article also talks about the collapse of the forest if the weather changes.

  And we all know this culture’s response to that emergency, which is given in the final headline: “Amazon Deforestation Picking Up Pace, Satellite Data Reveals: Data indicates 190% rise in land clearance in August and September compared with same period last year.”153

  * * *

  135 Elizabeth Douglass, “Q&A With SolarCity’s Chief: There Is No Cost to Solar Energy, Only Savings,” Inside Climate News, October 17, 2014, http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20141017/qa-solarcitys-chief-there-no-cost-solar-energy-only-savings (accessed November 4, 2014).

  136 This paragraph is mostly put together
from:

  “Rare-Earth Mining in China Comes at a Heavy Cost for Local Villages: Pollution is Poisoning the Farms and Villages of the Region That Processes the Precious Minerals,” The Guardian, August 7, 2012, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/aug/07/china-rare-earth-village-pollution (accessed November 4, 2014).

  Jonathan Kaiman, “Rare Earth Mining in China: The Bleak Social and Environmental Costs,” The Guardian, March 20, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/rare-earth-mining-china-social-environmental-costs (accessed November 4, 2014).

  137 Max Wilbert, personal communication, October 30, 2014.

  138 From Ozzie Zehner, Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012).

  139 “Toward a Just and Sustainable Solar Energy Industry,” Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, January 2009, page 1, http://svtc.org/wp-content/uploads/Silicon_Valley_Toxics_Coalition_-_Toward_a_Just_and_Sust1.pdf (accessed November 7, 2014).

  140 And keep in mind the contempt and hatred that necessarily accompanies any supremacism, and the contempt and hatred of nature that necessarily accompanies human supremacism.

  141 Ross Anderson, “Exodus: Elon Musk Argues that We Must Put a Million People On Mars if We Are to Ensure That Humanity Has a Future,” Aeon, http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/the-elon-musk-interview-on-mars/ (accessed November 13, 2014).

  142 Mark Koba, “Trees vs. Humans: In California Drought, Nature Gets to Water First,” CNBC, October 17, 2014, http://www.cnbc.com/id/102094056# (accessed December 1, 2014).

 

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