Eileen Crist: Confronting Anthropocentrism
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- čas přidán 28. 08. 2024
- Eileen Crist, Ph.D. was one of 45 leading scholars, authors and activists who convened at The Great Hall of Cooper Union, New York City, on October 25-26, 2014, for the public presentation: "Techno-Utopianism and the Fate of the Earth." Speakers discussed the profound impacts-environmental, economic and social-of runaway technological expansionism and cyber immersion; the tendency to see technology as the savior for all problems. For more info, see ifg.org/techno-... .
Eileen received her Bachelor’s from Haverford College in sociology in 1982 and her doctoral degree from Boston University in 1994, also in sociology, with a specialization in life sciences and society. She has been teaching at Virginia Tech in the Department of Science and Technology in Society since 1997. She is author of Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and Animal Mind. She is also coeditor of Gaia in Turmoil: Climate Change, Biodepletion, and Earth Ethics in an Age of Crisis, Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation, and most recently Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth. Eileen is author of numerous papers and contributor to the late journal Wild Earth. More about her work can be found on her website, eileencrist.com.
I can't believe that after all this time I never came across this video that truly explains how I feel about humans and nature. Love this video
Wow. Just. Wow. Brilliantly put into words.
This has to make a difference.
Thank you, Madame. This is absolutely essential !
Bravo!
. . . To cooperate on the higher level is a harmony inaudible to men, as if it were not. . . . What a miracle to behold were we to see through each others eyes for an instant.
Thank you! Be Vegan!! Respect the other Earthlings!!
yeah, cause plants are less than other especies?
@@DiegoHaro11 Plants do not possess a central nervous system. They actually don't have any neurons at all. Therefore, they have no experiential valence. Meaning that no organisms within the plant kingdom can feel either pleasure or pain.
The vast majority of organisms classified as animals do possess a CNS, do have the capacity for experiential valence, and thusly can feel either pleasure or pain.
So it isn't that plants are _lesser_ than animals. I'm not sure what that even means. It's merely that their biology doesn't entail moral consideration. Animals (homo sapiens included, amongst millions of other species) have the capacity to suffer, and therefore should logically be included in our moral circle.
“The question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?" - Jeremy Bentham
Can plants suffer? No. Can animals suffer? Yes.
Both in nature and in agriculture, they suffer severely.
@@stanleyweasel8931 There’s no evidence proving that plants don’t suffer. You can only conclude saying that we lack evidence that plants have minds in the sense relevant for morality or that we lack evidence about plants having conscious mental states. But, you are missing a point, even if a plant lacks of CNS, a plan it´s a living organism, so they have an intrisic value, and their life need a moral consideration. You are differing between organisms that have CNS and organism that not, which it´s just a kind of especism. However, I don’t even consider this is the core point of the problem. Any natural predator gets its food from other animals that do have the capacity to suffer. The cycle of life has worked under those principles during millions of years. The problem is the corruption of that natural order, and treating life as a mere productive entity. I firmly believe that humanity is corrupting life, and life includes all of us, all its forms. With or without CNS. By this I don’t mean I am against vegetarianism or veganism. However I think that behind those decisions there is something much more fundamental. We renounce meat because there is a brutal and unnecessary overproduction that destroys any right to life and the dignity of the species. If this overproduction did not occur and the cycle of life was respected, then there would be no moral implications in a human eating meat, just like a lion eats a gazelle.
This is old, but veganism is not the point of the video (although it is a valid option for those who care about the environment). Predator-prey relationships are built in to nature, so when we eat meat, we are just practicing that relationship. The issue lays with our methods of production including industrialized agriculture that destroys the planet and abusive animal farms. Best solution? Buy local, know where your food is coming from. Meat is fine as long as it is properly sourced :)
@@stanleyweasel8931 The point is not to be vegan. The point is respect. Lions eat Zebras because they absolutely have to or they will die. They don't herd Zebras and breed them so they can sell them a be rich and live in Monte Carlo. My point is the same regarding Plants. You can cut a tree if you really need, but not to be rich or because you don't like the way that tree looks.
The natives weren't VEGAN, they were omnivorous but because they respected nature you don't see them destroy the environment nor make a species disappear.
The Capitalism world works like a Cancer cell, it grows for the sake of growth and kills the host then dies.
We are not above nature. The sooner we understand that the better.
Now what we need to face here is how dumb (or blind ) anthropocentrism is.
I mean for the only being on the planet that perceives itself as superior in intelligence we are the only ones DUMB ENOUGH not to get that we are a part of a living organism that exists the way it does for a reason we don't understand and we should respect that balance and do not mess with it.
But that is a problem, because mankind has a big EGO and wants to be the most important. Wants to be homodeus! So we are facing an uphill battle if we are to tackle anthropocentrism, but if we don't we are doomed.
Adjustment to last entry:
1st stanza . . . Nor that, lo, -- that's enough without we, . . .
Last stanza . . . what might we call -- all expansive, magnanimous,
"All All in All".
Yes!
"Every man is the lord of a realm beside which
the earthly empire of the czar is but a petty state. . .
"We can cooperate on a higher level, as well as a lower.
Both mean getting our living together. . . .
"Rather than political economy, we need first learn the economy of living --
the art of life. "
---Henry David Thoreau
You know . . . .
Anthropocentrism expressed as numbers of different species of great apes:
Bonobos 20,000
Orangutans 100,000
Chimpanzees 300,000
Gorillas 300,000
Humans 8,000,000,000
And we think this is normal.
Before i get into the actual content, the title appears to be unnecessarily confrontational. We'll see..
Anthropocentrism puts us at the center of everything, it doesn't mean anything not in the center shouldn't be also well-treated and well cared for. It's a tool, like eugenics, and like any tool that doesn't aim for a particular goal, can be used for good or ill.
Yes
You can't be this naive or dumb.
@@VelhaGuardaTricolor No, but you can for me.
"Anthropocentrism": Euphemism for self-centredness, -- "self"-ishness. It's a moral
issue for we alone, the self-aware animal who by far most inborn be -- with innate capacity to develop a conscience.
Fuk off traitor
We aren't animals
@@udith Dumb!
Humanity first!
Ah, conscience. Comes with the territory of our evolutionary story, to perhaps propel us upward and onward.
"Our lives are startlingly moral. There's never an instant's truce between virtue and vice." --- Henry David Thoreau
Anyone who did not take Darren Aronofsky's 'Mother!' seriously should watch this video.
--- Henry David Thoreau
i jiggleing and twerking when i heard so hard to this song when i was , i need to twerk i cant stop it auuuggghhhh I NEED TO TWERK Edit: im being sent to a mental hospital whats that?"your being sent to a mental asylum" -🤓
Yep. Human-centric we are, indeed.
Such as it be on this though all in al kind, one of a kind earth
For grievous plight on its own to befall, can't ignore. Nor that,, lo, Lo, -- that's enough without we, not so kind human kind, so
Uncalled for be adding all the more -- more and more -- to it all.
More and more -- explosively now -- mega-charged, we; hustled,
Played and sped on as be: By some all but enshrined market
Scheme, that by stealth and cold calculation -- to our very bane serves
But to fiendishly fashion a laced false wealth, but in fact ill gain, all in all.
It savvy, yet savage -- a mammon scheme; that plies and abets,
Turns into greed, raw need thus twisted to corrupt as well blunt us --
No less to ravage the defenseless all about us; to cast an abysmal
Pall of disruption, affliction, -- and wanton destruction:
"It", a terror that begets terrot. All a vile warped jihad, all in all.
And us. In all betaken and beholden to a false lustrous
Consumer-merchant-domination-nation overtaken by warped
Amped up needs -- that us coaxes to covet and possess:
While naked possession itself overswollen roused up feeds;
More and more -- and lock stock all on us all, face it, all in all.
And us. In all crass with heart stunted while ego-stuffed
And over-fed; yet empty, over-spent, wasted. All this, as all
Jaded we joust for a grim cut of rank spoil; we, who soul-faded yet
All maddened sow to but reap a mad toll; -- As ill-fated we waste This though sacred yet now all disgraced earth and all, all in all.
And that's as we, in all, . . . all but shun the plain and clear sense -- that
It's not just about us, as sacred as are we each all: But about -- all live
And sacred existence; what might we call all expansive, magnanimous,
Adjustment to last entry:
1st stanza -- . . . Nor that, lo, -- that's enough without we, . . .
...
It just has to.
Ironically, this is one of the most anthropocentric ideologies I've ever heard.
Humans are clearly "superior" in every way that matters. Using our big brains to invent technologies, we can outdo any animal in any way. And as a matter of course whoever has the most power, humans or otherwise, will rule things for their own benefit primarily. This does not in any sense entail inherent harm to lesser creatures. Resources being for our use doesn't mean Exclusively for our use, and our uses include the good of everything around us anyhow. This appears to be turning into one big straw-man argument. If you want to argue against people MIS-using nature, that's not about anthropocentrism, that's about assholism, as seen through a lens of anthropology. "Sanctioning man's use of everything beneath him", again, does not imply harm. Attacking a tool or ideology without showing that it leads to the harms you attribute it, or caring to define it in a way that your audience is known to agree with, both render your argument meaningless.
Are you sure that we humans with our big brains and inventions outdo nature? A ravaging cyclone or a pandemic like the Coronavirus can show clear how our asses are.
@@momentsofjoy6396 "Outdo nature" is a good deal more than i said but in every respect but scale (hurricanes) and time (we haven't gotten around to fixing everything yet), yes. My point isn't that humans are great, but that we have greater potential than any other beings in the universe, as far as we know, whether it's used for good or ill. The anthropocentric fallacy isn't one.. not to be confused with the anthropomorphic fallacy, which is one.
How can humans be superior if you are the only creatures so stupid and moronic to miss the most obvious and biggest truth there is? Humans are one species amongst millions of species belonging to the same living organism. we all function in a perfect symbiotic fashion, even when to humans it seems otherwise.
@@VelhaGuardaTricolor We don't all miss that point, but Only humans ever get that point.
@@havenbastion Your EGO blinds you! Humans are not intelligent. If they were they wouldn't create the monstrosities they do, for the dumbest of reasons.
I believe that what makes us different is that we are created in the image of God, and that we have souls.
+Will Buckley Something you´d have to believe for it to be true
No matter how much someone believes that they were "created in the image of god", that can't make it TRUE. Whether or not something is true is completely unaffected by whether no one, or one person or a billion people believe in it.
Will Buckley wrote "...we are created in the image of God, and that we have souls".
*Which* "god" are you referring to? And what reliable, objective evidence is there for the existence of a "soul"?
ALL live and sacred existence is in the image of "God" . . . as he firstly it imagined.
As he was the "word" who gave rise to all creation, -- which was ALL "good".
Don't make "God" in man's egoistic image.
Spirit, "soul", is in ALL creation.
There you have it. "We need to get good at being God." - Eileen Crist.
Tower of Babel all over again uniting language with numbers. Man being mindful of his surroundings, next step with man being his surroundings. Bridging the mind-body gap with nanotechnology becoming consciousness. "All is one, All is God, All is Brahma."
Either Jesus is God or you become God.
+Quercuspetr
"So far we've been reckless gods, so we need to become better at being God." She even wrote on her slide that being God like was a positive thing. Don't try to lie when the evidence is right before me.
Even if she disagrees with that mindset it was Friedrich Wilhelm Nietszche who said, " Will we not have to become gods to become worthy of such an act? God is dead, we have killed him."
If the spirit is dead, that leaves paradise and hell to be none other than the earth. Sounds a lot like environmentalism today, as the utopianists continue to shed fiscal blood.
There is no stopping Nanotechnology from merging to our planet. I'm sorry if you disagree but Deepak Chopra has made it clear that the pantheist believes nature to be God.
???
"Be a master, like me", Jesus said. I.E., Overcome our inherent egoism, narcisism;
So to overcome the world, i.e., it's untoward temptations.
@@chrisepperson5597 Nietzsche was just a sociopathic spoiled upper class brat. What do you expect would come out if his egotistic selfish little big head?
😂
There's enough room in the universe for all forms of life, we need to get them spaceships working
"Explore within. That's what requires the eye and the nerve." --- Henry David Thoreau