{"id":61651,"date":"2022-01-27T09:53:04","date_gmt":"2022-01-27T14:53:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61651"},"modified":"2022-01-27T09:53:04","modified_gmt":"2022-01-27T14:53:04","slug":"the-ideology-of-human-supremacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61651","title":{"rendered":"The Ideology of Human Supremacy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Ideology of Human Supremacy<\/a><\/h3>\n

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The somber truth is that the vast bulk of nature\u2019s staggering abundance has already disappeared. We live in a world characterized primarily by the relative silence and emptiness of its natural spaces. Underlying this devastation is the ideology of human supremacy\u2014claiming innate superiority over nonhuman forms of life. But is human supremacy innate to humanity, or rather something specific pertaining to our dominant culture?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Excerpted from\u00a0The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe<\/strong>\u00a0(<\/em>published\u00a0<\/em>in June in the UK<\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0and available July 13 in the US<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

Shifting baseline syndrome<\/strong><\/p>\n

The nonhuman creatures with whom we share the Earth are being systematically annihilated by the Great Acceleration, as they lose their habitat, get hunted down, or poisoned by our pollution. There has been a 68 percent decline in vertebrate populations worldwide since 1970, with freshwater species such as amphibians registering a jaw-dropping 84 percent loss. Insects have been faring just as badly, with reports of \u201cinsectageddon\u201d from some areas that have seen populations crashing toward extinction levels\u2014such as the Monarch butterflies that migrate annually from Mexico to the United States, and have declined by 98 percent over the past thirty years.<\/p>\n

There have been five mass extinctions of life in Earth\u2019s history, caused by cataclysms such as volcanic eruptions or meteorite impact. Scientists warn that human activity is now causing species to go extinct at a thousand times the normal background rate, and that if we continue at this rate for a few more decades, we will have triggered the Sixth Extinction. Leading experts in the field, such as biologist E. O. Wilson, predict that half of the world\u2019s estimated eight million species will be extinct or at the brink of extinction by the end of this century unless humanity changes its ways.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Ideology of Human Supremacy The somber truth is that the vast bulk of nature\u2019s staggering abundance has already disappeared. We live in a world characterized primarily by the relative silence and emptiness of its natural spaces. Underlying this devastation is the ideology of human supremacy\u2014claiming innate superiority over nonhuman forms of life. But is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[17745,16819,2715,6665,32576,31344],"class_list":["post-61651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-human-supremacy","tag-jeremy-lent","tag-mass-extinction","tag-resilience-org","tag-supremacy","tag-web-of-meaning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61651"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61652,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61651\/revisions\/61652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}