Reason and exceptionalism
Reason’s most significant characteristic (and greatest crime) has been convincing those of us who have it that we are somehow exceptional – elevated above other beings and the world, having no responsibility for or to them. Humans are very fond of calling themselves exceptional among all creatures (and creation) and never tire in finding new ways to express this. Examples abound:
· Man is the rational animal
· Man is the symbolic animal
· Man is the political animal
· Man has self-consciousness
· Man is the tool-making animal
· Man is the god-making animal
· Man is the art-making animal
· Man is the religious animal
· Man is the economic animal
And so on. All attempts to define humans as exceptional ultimately come back to our faculty of reason. We admire it in ourselves as we admire ourselves for having it: and we constantly seek new ways to articulate and congratulate ourselves for it.
Exceptionalism underwrites the historical narrative of the human species: a tale of expansion and ascendance at the expense of other species. Megafauna populations on all major land masses decreased and then for the most part became extinct after the arrival of homo sapiens.[1] The advent of agriculture meant ecosystem transformation and destruction, when combined with logging also deforestation. Mining added erosion and ecological contamination, and industrialization and plastics have inundated the world with toxic waste – all of which have contributed to mass extinction and loss of biodiversity. Explosive human population growth has come at the expense of habitats for all other species. Human consumption has depleted ocean stocks and requires massive livestock and agricultural operations that have their own negative consequences for other species and the environment. The human species doesn’t like to co-exist with its inferiors.
Yet exceptionalism doesn’t imply reciprocity with like kinds either: humans love to destroy each other as well. There are no aboriginal peoples who survived contact with ‘civilization’ intact. Warfare, slavery, genocide, starvation –the history is long and the variety astounding of the atrocities humans commit on each other. This is not a function of survival or environmental fitness. Any pretense – skin color, religion, language, culture, behavior, nationality, sexuality, etc. – suffices to justify the annihilation of individuals or groups of humans by other humans. We directly and indirectly destroy other species and our own.
Nor does our self-regard prevent us from turning our destructive tendencies against ourselves. Humans systemically and in moments of stress engage in self-destructive behavior. Suicide is the obvious exemplar: substance abuse, over consumption, ignorance of health being several examples among many that also prove the point.
This is the evidence presented by human history. We humans believe we have something other animals do not: reason. We believe having this makes us somehow different – superior – to them. Whether or not we consciously justify our actions by appeal to our supposed superiority, human action results in destruction to the other animals, each other, and the planet, to the point of annihilation.
At the same time, this human consciousness that has reason programmatically subverts that reason, making us ignore, deny and forget its destructive consequences. We divorce ourselves from the present realities of what we do through abstract thinking and we ignore our (necessary) emotional connection to others and world. It is a mistake to think rational and irrational are in opposition and that our behavior is a deficiency in the former. We are functioning as designed. Rather, we need to acknowledge the nature of our consciousness and the way it operates: motivating and justifying destructive behavior through a superiority complex and then enabling us through a disconnection from our emotional present to elide it from our memory and history.
This is Cassandra’s legacy. We know what we are and what we do – our truth - and we don’t believe it. What follows is an attempt not to reconcile or overcome this, but to acknowledge and make sense of it. What can we learn by embracing the reality that we destroy and deny? Is there response that isn’t an attempt to reconcile or overcome who and what we are? Or are we destined to annihilation at our own hands, all the while watching it happen with despair or indifference?
[1] https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.aao5987; https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abb2313