I sometimes hear people making muddled statements, for the best of motivations sometimes, and I want to try to clear it up a bit. Some environmentalists might say, "How dare you be human-centric and selfish at such a critical time for the environment of the planet?" Others, perhaps an obese insurance salesman munching a hormone-laden deathburger in between words, might say, "Of course I'm human-centric, duh. I'm a human, we are above the rest of the environment. We rule. Go back to the commune, tree-hugger." Both comments are fundamentally based in the same disordered concepts that has been contributing to the environmental problem to begin with.
Let's get something out there at the get-go. Human beings are mostly selfish pricks because BEINGS are mostly selfish pricks. Nature is not cute and cuddly bears eating honey from pots, talking to their tiger friends with springy tails. Nature is grizzly bears eating your asshole because you went into a part of the forest where you didn't belong and weren't prepared to survive in. Over and over again you see organisms doing some really sick shit to one another to get by. We are a product of Nature, we come by our prickishness honestly.
No, I want to suggest that what we are doing, this modern civilization, isn't human-centric to begin with. It's power-centric. You can't tell me that a population eating mostly unhealthy mass-produced food, grown in such a manner as to just bring the crop to market with no effort given for the nutritiousness of said food, is human-centric. In our civilization, people generally either have to spend huge chunks of their lives paying for a house that was very poorly designed for living (designed for someone elses priorities, not yours), or else they live their whole lives as serfs on someone elses property, constantly being bled dry for rent: you can't tell me that this is a human-centric system. Most people work tedious or demeaning jobs where they are treated like objects and where their actual performance and hard work typically only circumstantially affects their standard of living. They also live in constant insecurity because they can lose their jobs at any time: you can't tell me this is human-centric. It's not. It was never intended to be.
Let's get something out there at the get-go. Human beings are mostly selfish pricks because BEINGS are mostly selfish pricks. Nature is not cute and cuddly bears eating honey from pots, talking to their tiger friends with springy tails. Nature is grizzly bears eating your asshole because you went into a part of the forest where you didn't belong and weren't prepared to survive in. Over and over again you see organisms doing some really sick shit to one another to get by. We are a product of Nature, we come by our prickishness honestly.
No, I want to suggest that what we are doing, this modern civilization, isn't human-centric to begin with. It's power-centric. You can't tell me that a population eating mostly unhealthy mass-produced food, grown in such a manner as to just bring the crop to market with no effort given for the nutritiousness of said food, is human-centric. In our civilization, people generally either have to spend huge chunks of their lives paying for a house that was very poorly designed for living (designed for someone elses priorities, not yours), or else they live their whole lives as serfs on someone elses property, constantly being bled dry for rent: you can't tell me that this is a human-centric system. Most people work tedious or demeaning jobs where they are treated like objects and where their actual performance and hard work typically only circumstantially affects their standard of living. They also live in constant insecurity because they can lose their jobs at any time: you can't tell me this is human-centric. It's not. It was never intended to be.
Yes, this same system, Western Civilization, has also brought us many wonders such as the smallpox vaccine (all of my grandmother's many siblings died of smallpox) and many other things, and I am happy for that and don't want all those things to go away, but attending to the health of human beings or doing pure scientific research for the sake of knowledge and other such beneficial things is a drop in the bucket of this society's overall activity, most of which is very much directed elsewhere, and not actually to human benefit except in the most trivial sense. If I cage a gorilla and make it so that when he pulls a lever he gets a banana, yes he is engaging in work for his own benefit but the whole scheme isn't at all to his benefit. That is very analogous to our situation: we get a banana, and are told that the price of the banana is the cage.
There is another factor too, one that animists are directly involved in. Yes we may be pricks and Nature may be full of pricks too, but like it or not we are part of a whole continuous ecosphere and we can't be well and happy without a natural relationship with that larger organism. All we assholes are in it together. ;) The modern human in the developed world is typically not a happy organism. The bonds between individuals, never mind between individuals and their environment, are constantly being eroded; sociopathic behavior is on the increase; we eat plenty of food but it is covered in chemicals and grown in factory-like conditions in which the plant or animal is almost a ghost of a healthy natural life form. A zombie organism, a sick sad organism. This is our food. Obesity is on the increase because unhappy constantly stressed people eat too much and make poor food choices, and diabetes and cancer follow in its wake. People pay lots to psychologists and self-help gurus to try to counteract the obvious: your way of life is sick and has a malignant effect on your body, mind and spirit. How is all this human-centric?
Of course our life is not just sick physically, it is sick mentally and intellectually. The ecosystem of ideas and thoughts is overrun with invasive organisms. The most immediately visible manifestations of these invasive parasites? Spend some time actually watching and paying close attention to television commercials sometime. What are they saying between the lines? What is their worldview? What is it teaching? Fear, the desirability of status-seeking, the omnipotence of the individual and paradoxically also fear of your inferiority, desire, greed, luxury and pleasure in a narrowly defined way extracted of everything real, and the absolute imperatives of power over others and money. The news now reports sensation, spectacle, scandal and personalities in place of actual information. And you know what? Any of these things confined to their own neat little container in the garden of the world would not be a problem. Real people are greedy sometimes. Real people act and think shallow sometimes. The problem is that this invasive ideological organism has taken over EVERYTHING. If you don't think like them, you're the freak, not them. Economic and technological forces act to separate people in their own separate domains, cubicles and apartments, looking at their own televisions and monitors, and works against any real common cause or any real community. There is probably no Illuminati conspiracy behind this, it is simply a measure of what our culture actually values, which is power. Of course, although everyone pursues it, only a few really get it. And strangely, when they actually get it, they may not be all that happy with it because they too have become a sick, diseased, alienated organism.
Our system, our worldview, our civilization is not human-centric, because if it were it would realize that you cannot abstract a creature from an ecosystem and hope that it will prosper. It won't.
There is another factor too, one that animists are directly involved in. Yes we may be pricks and Nature may be full of pricks too, but like it or not we are part of a whole continuous ecosphere and we can't be well and happy without a natural relationship with that larger organism. All we assholes are in it together. ;) The modern human in the developed world is typically not a happy organism. The bonds between individuals, never mind between individuals and their environment, are constantly being eroded; sociopathic behavior is on the increase; we eat plenty of food but it is covered in chemicals and grown in factory-like conditions in which the plant or animal is almost a ghost of a healthy natural life form. A zombie organism, a sick sad organism. This is our food. Obesity is on the increase because unhappy constantly stressed people eat too much and make poor food choices, and diabetes and cancer follow in its wake. People pay lots to psychologists and self-help gurus to try to counteract the obvious: your way of life is sick and has a malignant effect on your body, mind and spirit. How is all this human-centric?
Of course our life is not just sick physically, it is sick mentally and intellectually. The ecosystem of ideas and thoughts is overrun with invasive organisms. The most immediately visible manifestations of these invasive parasites? Spend some time actually watching and paying close attention to television commercials sometime. What are they saying between the lines? What is their worldview? What is it teaching? Fear, the desirability of status-seeking, the omnipotence of the individual and paradoxically also fear of your inferiority, desire, greed, luxury and pleasure in a narrowly defined way extracted of everything real, and the absolute imperatives of power over others and money. The news now reports sensation, spectacle, scandal and personalities in place of actual information. And you know what? Any of these things confined to their own neat little container in the garden of the world would not be a problem. Real people are greedy sometimes. Real people act and think shallow sometimes. The problem is that this invasive ideological organism has taken over EVERYTHING. If you don't think like them, you're the freak, not them. Economic and technological forces act to separate people in their own separate domains, cubicles and apartments, looking at their own televisions and monitors, and works against any real common cause or any real community. There is probably no Illuminati conspiracy behind this, it is simply a measure of what our culture actually values, which is power. Of course, although everyone pursues it, only a few really get it. And strangely, when they actually get it, they may not be all that happy with it because they too have become a sick, diseased, alienated organism.
Our system, our worldview, our civilization is not human-centric, because if it were it would realize that you cannot abstract a creature from an ecosystem and hope that it will prosper. It won't.
Spiritually, we generally either worship otherworldly absolutist gods that are far away or no god at all, and in the former case we become susceptible to various absolutist idiocies and in the latter case we lose any reverence for life that goes beyond an intellectual exercise. Intellectual wonder is a nice thing, but it isn't what we are really lacking. We are lacking wonder, awe and reverence on a gut, body level, a wholly encompassing level that includes all parts of us, not just the tiny rational part. Even the largest proportion of pagans/neopagans in the West are following a system descended from Western Hermeticism, which is infected with just the same diseases as the rest of Western society. The love of power. The almighty ego.
We don't actually have a human-centric society and we won't, not until we actually focus on making humans happy as actual organisms in a physical, emotional, mental and spiritual relationship with an actual ecosystem (including a right relationship with a community of other humans), which is ultimately the only way they will ever be happy. Right now we're not a human-centric civilization. We were never even really trying to be.
We don't actually have a human-centric society and we won't, not until we actually focus on making humans happy as actual organisms in a physical, emotional, mental and spiritual relationship with an actual ecosystem (including a right relationship with a community of other humans), which is ultimately the only way they will ever be happy. Right now we're not a human-centric civilization. We were never even really trying to be.
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