(DIR) Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
True Left
(HTM) https://trueleft.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
(DIR) Return to: Ancient World
*****************************************************
#Post#: 532--------------------------------------------------
Antropocentricism: The Most Dangerous Ideology in the World
By: guest5 Date: July 26, 2020, 12:15 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Anthropocentrism: The Most Dangerous Ideology in the World
[quote]Anthropocentrism, philosophical viewpoint arguing that
human beings are the central or most significant entities in the
world. This is a basic belief embedded in many Western religions
and philosophies. Anthropocentrism regards humans as separate
from and superior to nature and holds that human life has
intrinsic value while other entities (including animals, plants,
mineral resources, and so on) are resources that may justifiably
be exploited for the benefit of humankind.
Many ethicists find the roots of anthropocentrism in the
Creation story told in the book of Genesis in the
Judeo-Christian Bible, in which humans are created in the image
of God and are instructed to “subdue” Earth and to “have
dominion” over all other living creatures. This passage has been
interpreted as an indication of humanity’s superiority to nature
and as condoning an instrumental view of nature, where the
natural world has value only as it benefits humankind. This line
of thought is not limited to Jewish and Christian theology and
can be found in Aristotle’s Politics and in Immanuel Kant’s
moral philosophy.
Some anthropocentric philosophers support a so-called
cornucopian point of view, which rejects claims that Earth’s
resources are limited or that unchecked human population growth
will exceed the carrying capacity of Earth and result in wars
and famines as resources become scarce. Cornucopian philosophers
argue that either the projections of resource limitations and
population growth are exaggerated or that technology will be
developed as necessary to solve future problems of scarcity. In
either case, they see no moral or practical need for legal
controls to protect the natural environment or limit its
exploitation.
Other environmental ethicists have suggested that it is possible
to value the environment without discarding anthropocentrism.
Sometimes called prudential or enlightened anthropocentrism,
this view holds that humans do have ethical obligations toward
the environment, but they can be justified in terms of
obligations toward other humans. For instance, environmental
pollution can be seen as immoral because it negatively affects
the lives of other people, such as those sickened by the air
pollution from a factory. Similarly, the wasteful use of natural
resources is viewed as immoral because it deprives future
generations of those resources. In the 1970s, theologian and
philosopher Holmes Rolston III added a religious clause to this
viewpoint and argued that humans have a moral duty to protect
biodiversity because failure to do so would show disrespect to
God’s creation.
SIMILAR TOPICS
Renaissance man
Prior to the emergence of environmental ethics as an academic
field, conservationists such as John Muir and Aldo Leopold
argued that the natural world has an intrinsic value, an
approach informed by aesthetic appreciation of nature’s beauty,
as well as an ethical rejection of a purely exploitative
valuation of the natural world. In the 1970s, scholars working
in the emerging academic field of environmental ethics issued
two fundamental challenges to anthropocentrism: they questioned
whether humans should be considered superior to other living
creatures, and they also suggested that the natural environment
might possess intrinsic value independent of its usefulness to
humankind. The resulting philosophy of biocentrism regards
humans as one species among many in a given ecosystem and holds
that the natural environment is intrinsically valuable
independent of its ability to be exploited by humans.
Although the anthro in anthropocentrism refers to all humans
rather than exclusively to men, some feminist philosophers argue
that the anthropocentric worldview is in fact a male, or
patriarchal, point of view. They claim that to view nature as
inferior to humanity is analogous to viewing other people
(women, colonial subjects, nonwhite populations) as inferior to
white Western men and, as with nature, provides moral
justification for their exploitation. The term ecofeminism
(coined in 1974 by the French feminist Françoise d’Eaubonne)
refers to a philosophy that looks not only at the relationship
between environmental degradation and human oppression but may
also posit that women have a particularly close relationship
with the natural world because of their history of
oppression.[/quote]
(HTM) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYpjoEPwiUA&t=3s
Notice how the narrator in the above video makes the correct
argument that anthropocentricism can easily lead to a racist and
supremacist worldview and then mistakenly lumps Hitler into that
category, when in truth Hitler waged war against anthropocentric
western civilization. Furthermore, should we be all that
surprised that Aristotle was also racist? And, of course Judaism
is patriarchal:
(HTM) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sistine_Chapel_ceiling#/media/File:Creaci%C3%B3n_de_Ad%C3%A1n.jpg<br
/>
(HTM) http://aryanism.net/wp-content/uploads/anthro.png
Eileen Crist: Confronting Anthropocentrism
[quote]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.[/quote]
(HTM) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZkFj9uPKXo&t=2s
Non-Human Animals: Crash Course Philosophy #42
(HTM) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3-BX-jN_Ac
————
Compare the Anthropocentric worldview of Jews and Judaism to the
teachings of Jesus and Mohammed:
[quote]Why hunt ye these creatures of God, which are more noble
than you? By the cruelties of many generations they were made
the enemies of man who should have been his friends. —
Jesus[/quote]
[quote]There is not an animal on the earth, nor a flying
creature on two wings, but they are people like unto you. —
Mohammed[/quote]
#Post#: 3498--------------------------------------------------
Re: Homo Hubris
By: guest5 Date: January 19, 2021, 10:36 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Empathy, Morality, Community, Culture—Apes Have It All
[quote]Primatologist Frans de Waal takes exception with human
exceptionalism.[/quote]
[quote]The title of his previous book offers a keen summary of
his outlook: Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals
Are?[/quote]
[quote] “Let me start off with a radical proposal: emotions are
like organs,” he writes. “They are all needed, and we share them
with all with other mammals.”[/quote]
[quote]De Waal’s body of work adds up to a sustained argument
against human exceptionalism. His 2013 book, The Bonobo and the
Atheist, takes aim at critics and dissenters—anthropologists,
behaviorists, Christian fundamentalists—and at the “strident
atheism” of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. De Waal, a
non-believer himself, sees religion as an offshoot of our
biological drive to do good. The interview below was conducted
on the heels of the release of The Bonobo and the Atheist. De
Waal was an amiable conversationalist with a sly sense of humor.
He was a fast talker, bursting with ideas, displaying the
self-assurance of a prominent scientist who’s fought his share
of intellectual battles. [/quote]
[quote]There is no part of the human brain that is not present
in a monkey’s brain. [/quote]
[quote]Why are so many people wedded to the idea that humans are
special?
We’re raised with those ideas. It’s an old [JUDEO-GRECO]
Christian idea that humans have souls and animals don’t. I
sometimes think it’s because our religions arose in a desert
environment in which there were no primates, so you have people
who lived with camels, goats, snakes, and scorpions. Of course,
you then conclude that we are totally different from the rest of
the animal kingdom because we don’t have primates with whom to
compare ourselves. When the first great apes arrived in Western
Europe—to the zoos in London and Paris—people were absolutely
flabbergasted. Queen Victoria even expressed her disgust at
seeing these animals. Why would an ape be disgusting unless you
feel a threat from it? You would never call a giraffe
disgusting, but she was disgusted by chimpanzees and orangutans
because people had no concept that there could be animals so
similar to us in every possible way. We come from a religion
that’s not used to that kind of comparison.[/quote]
(HTM) https://getpocket.com/explore/item/empathy-morality-community-culture-apes-have-it-all?utm_source=pocket-newtab
#Post#: 5417--------------------------------------------------
Re: Antropocentricism: The Most Dangerous Ideology in the World
By: guest5 Date: April 8, 2021, 9:53 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
The joy of being animal
[quote]Human exceptionalism is dead: for the sake of our own
happiness and the planet we should embrace our true animal
nature[/quote]
[quote]Today, our thinking has shifted along with scientific
evidence, incorporating the genetic insights of the past
century. We now know we’re animals, related to all other life on
our planet. We’ve also learned much about cognition, including
the uneasy separation between instinct and intention, and the
investment of the whole body in thought and action. As such, we
might expect attitudes to have changed. But that isn’t the case.
We still live with the belief that humans, in some essential
way, aren’t really animals. We still cling to the possibility
that there’s something extrabiological that delivers us from the
troubling state of being an organism trapped by flesh and death.
In the words of the philosopher Derek Parfit, ‘the body below
the neck is not an essential part of us.’ Many of us still deny
that human actions are the result of our animal being, instead
maintaining that they’re the manifestation of reason. We think
our world into being. And that’s sometimes true. The trouble
comes when we think our thoughts are our being.
There are real-world consequences to these ideas. Having a
humanlike mind has become a moral dividing line. In our courts,
we determine what we can and can’t do to other sentient beings
on the basis of the absence of a mind with features like ours.
Those things that look too disturbingly body-centred, like
impulse or agency, regardless of their outcomes or role in
flourishing, are viewed as lower down on the moral scale.
Meanwhile, the view that physical, animal properties (many of
which we share with other species) have little significance has
left us with the absurd idea that we can live without our
bodies. So it is that we pursue biological enhancement in search
of the true essence of our humanity. Some of the world’s largest
biotech companies are developing not only artificial forms of
intelligence but brain-machine interfaces in the hope that we
might one day achieve super-intelligence or even mental
immortality by downloading our minds into a synthetic form. It
follows that our bodies, our flesh and our feelings – from
laughing with our friends to listening to music to cuddling our
children – can be seen as a threat to this paradigm.[/quote]
Entire article:
(HTM) https://aeon.co/essays/to-be-fully-human-we-must-also-be-fully-embodied-animal?utm_source=pocket-newtab
[quote]The difference between the Jewish soul, in all its
independence, inner desires, longings, character and standing,
and the soul of all the Gentiles, on all of their levels, is
greater and deeper than the difference between the soul of a man
and the soul of an animal, for the difference in the latter case
is one of quantity, while the difference in the first case is
one of essential quality. — Abraham Isaac Kook, founder of the
yeshiva and the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of British Mandatory
Palestine[/quote]
(HTM) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentile
Jews and Judeo-Christians\Western culture are all proud humans.
#Post#: 5469--------------------------------------------------
Re: Antropocentricism: The Most Dangerous Ideology in the World
By: guest5 Date: April 10, 2021, 11:04 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Apparently, Dolphins know how to puff-puff-pass too, who would
have thunk it? (Poor pufferfish!!)
Dolphins Seem to Use Toxic Pufferfish to Get High
[quote]Humans aren't the only creatures that suffer from
substance abuse problems. Horses eat hallucinogenic weeds,
elephants get drunk on overripe fruit and big horn sheep love
narcotic lichen. Monkeys' attraction to sugar-rich and
ethanol-containing fruit, in fact, may explain our own
attraction to alcohol, some researchers think.
Now, dolphins may join that list. Footage from a new BBC
documentary series, "Spy in the Pod," reveals what appears to be
dolphins getting high off of pufferfish. Pufferfish produce a
potent defensive chemical, which they eject when threatened. In
small enough doses, however, the toxin seems to induce "a
trance-like state" in dolphins that come into contact with it,
the Daily News reports:
The dolphins were filmed gently playing with the puffer,
passing it between each other for 20 to 30 minutes at a time,
unlike the fish they had caught as prey which were swiftly torn
apart.
Zoologist and series producer Rob Pilley said that it was
the first time dolphins had been filmed behaving this way.
At one point the dolphins are seen floating just underneath
the water's surface, apparently mesmerised by their own
reflections.
The dolphins' expert, deliberate handling of the terrorized
puffer fish, Pilley told the Daily News, implies that this is
not their first time at the hallucinogenic rodeo.[/quote]
(HTM) https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dolphins-seem-to-use-toxic-pufferfish-to-get-high-180948219/
I suppose in regard to this topic we should be thankful
Westerners still believe they are better than all other animals
or else the "war on drugs" may have cost countless Dolphin lives
as well by now....
#Post#: 6598--------------------------------------------------
Re: Antropocentricism: The Most Dangerous Ideology in the World
By: rp Date: May 22, 2021, 12:57 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Continuing from this post:
[quote author=90sRetroFan link=topic=25.msg5834#msg5834
date=1619262322]
"I believe that Aryans who would be so appalled at animal
slaughter might think that non-Aryans can defeat them because
they possess more lightning than Aryans, i.e. the non-Aryans can
bring themselves to kill humans because they have no compunction
in killing innocent animals, but Aryans cannot bring themselves
to kill humans since they do have such compunction."
Precisely because I am so appalled at animal slaughter, I have
no problem bringing myself to kill humans who have no
compunction in killing innocent animals. Did Cain think Abel
could defeat him because Abel had no compunction sacrificing
lambs to Yahweh? Cain is our rolemodel.
[/quote]
Ok, but then why did Siddhartha and Mohammed (allegedly) eat
meat? Or is that simply a rumor?
#Post#: 6599--------------------------------------------------
Re: Re: Firearms
By: 90sRetroFan Date: May 22, 2021, 1:16 am
---------------------------------------------------------
(HTM) http://aryanism.net/blog/aryan-sanctuary/support-zakia-belkhiri/comment-page-1/#comment-170868
#Post#: 6600--------------------------------------------------
Re: Antropocentricism: The Most Dangerous Ideology in the World
By: rp Date: May 22, 2021, 1:41 am
---------------------------------------------------------
"
(HTM) http://aryanism.net/blog/aryan-sanctuary/support-zakia-belkhiri/comment-page-1/#comment-170868"
[quote]
@gloom
“However, on the same website we read:”
On Wikipedia it also says the ‘Holocaust’ happened. Does this
imply that every piece of information on Wikipedia is false?
As a matter of fact, there are also records of Siddhartha eating
meat; he advocated freeganism among his original sangha:
(HTM) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeganism
Nevertheless this has not prevented Buddhism from increasingly
aligning with veganism after Buddhism became established within
the economy (freeganism only works economically when the rest of
society is non-freegan, whereas veganism can work economically
for an entire society, therefore veganism is not a deviation
from Buddhism, but the correct application of Buddhist ethics in
conjunction with the instruction to spread Buddhism). This is
the path that we are in the process of encouraging Mohammedanism
to take also. We treat the article you linked to with the same
contempt that we treat articles that argue that Siddhartha’s
meat-eating makes meat-eating in general acceptable for
Buddhists.
On our own main site we explicitly include the quote:
“An extended chapter of our talk was devoted by the Fuehrer to
the vegetarian question. He believes more than ever that meat
eating is wrong. Of course he knows that during the war we
cannot completely upset our food system. After the war, however,
he intends to tackle this problem also.” – Joseph Goebbels
(HTM) http://aryanism.net/culture/veganism/
Like Hitler, Mohammed was preparing for and then fighting a war
until the end of his life, therefore the same practical
considerations would have applied. War is hell. This does not
mean that veganism should not be rigorously pursued as soon as
this can be done without jeopardizing strategic objectives.
Besides, I suggest taking the Bukhari hadiths with a grain of
salt:
The Shi’a consider many Sunni transmitters of hadith to be
unreliable because many of them took the side of Abu Bakr, Umar
and Uthman in preference to Ali (and the rest of Prophet
Muhammad’s family) and the majority of them were narrated
through certain personalities that waged war against Ahlul Bayt
or sided with their enemies such as Aisha that fought Ali at
Jamal, or Muawiya who did so at Tiffin.
(HTM) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Books
The sooner we end Islamophobia as a whole, the sooner we can
start selectively criticizing corruptions existing within
present-day and historical Islam, such as:
“Eid-ul-Adha”
It honors the willingness of Ibrahim (Abraham) to sacrifice his
son
(HTM) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eid_al-Adha
We of all people can be trusted to de-Judaize Islam, as we have
repeatedly promised to do. If you truly cared about animal
welfare, you would be helping us instead of attacking us.
“here we can gaze at the promotion of veganism/aryan values at
the Nuremberg rally”
“I know that somebody must come forth to meet our situation. I
have sought him. I have found him nowhere. And therefore I have
taken upon myself to do the preparatory work, only the most
urgent preparatory work. For that much I know: I am not He. And
I know also what is lacking in me.” – Adolf Hitler
Thank you for demonstrating who is trying to build on National
Socialist Germany by championing its ideals and who is trying to
drag it down by zooming in on its imperfections.
[/quote]
I agree that it is impractical to overhaul the food system
without winning the war first. But shouldn't the leaders at
least possess the ethical judgement to individually avoid meat
themselves? Or are you saying that meat obtained through
freeganism is more ethical than vegan food obtained through a
food system that will end up benefiting the meat-eaters and
other violence doers indirectly (economically or otherwise)?
If the latter, I kind of do agree with you. Pacifist Jains, for
example, who refrain from wearing silk but end up working at
silk textile factories indirectly perpetuate violence as their
labor benefits the violence doers. The same could be said of
pacifist False Leftist "White" vegans (to say nothing of "Jewish
Vegans").*
But since I would assume this only applies to freegans, are you
saying that Siddhartha and Mohammed were both freegans, as
opposed to being regular meat eaters? I would object to
following a regular meat-eater as a "religious" leader, whatever
the case is.
*Although the last two are oxymoronic, and therefore not even
vegan
#Post#: 6601--------------------------------------------------
Re: Re: Firearms
By: 90sRetroFan Date: May 22, 2021, 3:21 am
---------------------------------------------------------
"are you saying that meat obtained through freeganism is more
ethical than vegan food obtained through a food system that will
end up benefiting the meat-eaters and other violence doers
indirectly (economically or otherwise)?"
Yes. Freeganism is just another term for scavenging:
(HTM) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scavenger
[quote]Scavengers are animals that consume dead organisms that
have died from causes other than predation.[1] While scavenging
generally refers to carnivores feeding on carrion, it is also a
herbivorous feeding behavior.[2] Scavengers play an important
role in the ecosystem by consuming dead animal and plant
material. Decomposers and detritivores complete this process, by
consuming the remains left by scavengers.
Scavengers aid in overcoming fluctuations of food resources in
the environment.[3]
...
Ecological function
Scavengers play a fundamental role in the environment through
the removal of decaying organisms, serving as a natural
sanitation service.[8] While microscopic and invertebrate
decomposers break down dead organisms into simple organic matter
which are used by nearby autotrophs, scavengers help conserve
energy and nutrients obtained from carrion within the upper
trophic levels, and are able to disperse the energy and
nutrients farther away from the site of the carrion than
decomposers.[9]
Scavenging unites animals which normally would not come into
contact,[10] and results in the formation of highly structured
and complex communities which engage in nonrandom
interactions.[11] Scavenging communities function in the
redistribution of energy obtained from carcasses and reducing
diseases associated with decomposition. Oftentimes, scavenger
communities differ in consistency due to carcass size and
carcass types, as well as by seasonal effects as consequence of
differing invertebrate and microbial activity.[4][/quote]
"are you saying that Siddhartha and Mohammed were both freegans"
It is impossible to prove either way, but any other
interpretation to achieve consistency would open even larger
cans of worms. Basically, the choices we have are:
1) All their teachings against violence towards non-humans are
fabrications. (And if so, what else has been fabricated?)
2) The teachings are real, but they were just grifters who
themselves didn't believe what they taught. (Then why not teach
something easier to follow?)
3) They were freegan.
#Post#: 6604--------------------------------------------------
Re: Antropocentricism: The Most Dangerous Ideology in the World
By: rp Date: May 22, 2021, 4:28 am
---------------------------------------------------------
"Freeganism is just another term for scavenging"
Unfortunately, this is what illiterate modern-day "Buddhists"
think constitutes "scavenging":
(HTM) https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-arent-all-buddhists-v_b_9812362#:~:text=As%20I%20explained%20in%20the,and%20his%20monks%20ate%20meat.&text=Buddhism%20is%20widely%20known%20for,%2Dviolence%2C%20even%20towards%20animals.
[quote]I remember one Theravada monk explain this to me using a
pretty good example. Suppose a tiger was to kill a deer, and
then ate part of it and left. Then, a vulture flies by and eats
the remainder of the deer. Is the vulture responsible for the
deer’s death?
Long story short, there is no bad karma in being the scavenger
in Buddhism, but there is in being the hunter. The act of eating
meat is separate from the act of killing, and you don’t
necessarily have to kill to eat meat. In the Amagandha Sutta,
the Buddha recalls his predecessor making this very point about
these two acts being separate, and whether or not you’re a
vegetarian will have no effect on bringing you closer to
achieving Nirvana.
This is the basis of why it is okay to eat meat in Buddhism.
Buying meat at the market constitutes being a scavenger, and
it’s better to make use of the meat rather than having the
animal die just to have its flesh thrown away.
As for those who say not buying meat reduces the killing of
animals, this is a good point to make, but not an
all-encompassing point. There is a famous story in the Buddha’s
life where he was at a festival as a child. During the festival,
the young prince caught a glimpse of a farmer plowing his field
to plant crops. The observant prince noticed that as the farmer
plowed the field, it exposed and killed numerous worms and
insects in the ground, causing the prince to feel great
compassion for the small creatures. [/quote]
So creating demand for meat by consuming it is ok, because the
animal was killed anyway and shouldn't be "wasted"? WTF? You are
directly not only incentivizing the butcher to kill more animals
but are also indirectly lining his pockets! The butcher would
have no incentive to produce meat if you did not buy it in the
first place! FYI, the production of meat also includes the
violence involved with the production of crops, as the livestock
would have to be fed crops before being butchered.
Continuing:
[quote]While the supply and demand effects of buying less meat
would shift killing away from livestock, the consumption of
crops also leads to the loss of life, even if accidental or
indirectly. Not to mention, in today’s world many farmers use
pesticides to protect their crops, a deliberate act of killing.
Horrible as it may be, this is just the world we live in, and
it’s best not to focus too much on things out of our control.
Being a vegetarian doesn’t make you good, and not being one
doesn’t make you bad.
[/quote]
Maybe, being a vegetarian doesn't make you good, but not being
one certainly makes you bad (unless you are a scavenger/vegan).
As for pesticides and the killing of insects, see the previous
paragraph. Also, and I can't believe I need to say this, two
wrongs don't make a right!
BTW, seeing that the Buddha condemned even the killing of
insects, I agree that he was probably a freegan. What other
reason would there be for him to do this if he did not actually
believe what he was teaching? It would have just made him look
like a contradictory buffoon and he would have had no followers!
Of course, if some "Buddhists" misinterpret his teachings and
use it to justify their non-Aryan dietary habits, that's on
them.
#Post#: 6605--------------------------------------------------
Re: Antropocentricism: The Most Dangerous Ideology in the World
By: rp Date: May 22, 2021, 4:38 am
---------------------------------------------------------
"2) The teachings are real, but they were just grifters who
themselves didn't believe what they taught. (Then why not teach
something easier to follow?)"
Exactly! If he was simply trying to lead people astray, and was
bashing Brahmanism out of envious spite, wouldn't it have been
easier for him to just teach his followers to accept the
beef-eating, cow-sacrificing, Vedics as the rightful rulers?
What reason would he have to oppose them? He was a Kshatriya
after all, so he would have had high status in the hierarchy.
And his followers could have still retained their non-Aryan
habits and be accepted among them.
*****************************************************
(DIR) Next Page