As I reminisce about my childhood, I realize my parents gave me culture and religion but none of what Western parents do: take their kids on fishing trips, to museums, science exhibitions, theatrical performances, Disneyland, road trips, church (if they got unlucky) and perhaps occasional trips to foreign countries. Parents strive their best to make their children into what they consider a good human ought to be. A child is born free but immediately following birth, he/she belongs to the religion that their parents practice. A child is taught to believe in God and revere His images. As they mature, some continue to revere such representations obediently without questioning and others mull about the relevance of religion in their lives, our humanity and the very existence of God at all. This post is not about religion because enough ink has dried writing for or against this topic already. Although my stance on religion or God is irrelevant to this post, I want to quote something from a philosophical book I recently read that struck really hard on how humans see God, irrespective of religion or faith. On topic of love, J. Krishnamurti writes,
When you say you love God what does it mean? It means that you love a projection of your own imagination, a projection of yourself clothed in certain forms of respectability according to what you think is noble and holy; so to say, ‘I love God’, is absolute nonsense. When you worship God you are worshipping yourself – and that is not love.
This quote hits home, in my opinion. It is a blow to any religion in the world that advocates worship of any human figure, an idol or portraits that resemble humans because all of them do, even the Hindu gods and goddesses with a dozen arms with different weapons in each hand or ones with half human or half animal bodies. Krishnamurti hits the bull’s eye when he proclaims that worshipping God is a form of ego boost. Every God, oddly enough looks like a human. If it were truly so, is there no God for lizards, dung beetle, pigeons and aliens? Why would God resemble like a human?
To question whether or not God exists is a deeply personal quest for curious minds but the fact that all representations of Gods resemble human like figures is hardly a concern for those who have accepted God’s existence. It almost seems natural and justified to see the world from an anthropocentric view because is there another way to see the world and cosmos?
In his book, Ishmael, Daniel Quinn points out anthropocentric view of evolution and our world systems. We take pride, almost unanimously in superiority of human race and contend that we are the most advanced and intelligent beings to have ever inhabited the Earth. Quinn points out that we see humans as the pinnacle of human evolution. In other words, the process of evolution progressed to produce intelligent beings like humans and then it stopped. Because, what else can come after humans? Do we ever entertain the idea of humans being an intermediate species along the spectrum of evolution and that the evolution process is still active? If Homo Sapiens evolved from Homo Habilis and them from some other apes, will Homo Sapiens evolve into something else, something unhuman? That appears unthinkable, in some ways, doesn’t it?
We go about our daily activities with a firm belief that this is our Earth, the resources belong to us, the land, the water, the forests and the minerals are all there for our use so that we can prosper further, build more cities and taller skyscrapers. Because that is development, that is progress. Humans have a destiny and it is progress. Quinn makes a distinction between two groups of people: one who believe in coexistence with other species and sharing the Earth with them and the other that treats other species as resources whose existence is merely for the benefit of humans. The latter is evidenced by industrial scale animal farms humans have developed where millions of animals are reared, fed using industrially grown genetically modified crops, fattened using growth hormones, kept alive using antibiotics, mass slaughtered using machines, sanitized using radiation, packaged neatly and distributed at retail grocery stores for human consumption. This process epitomizes, sadly enough, an anthropocentric view of the world where other species are not treated as equal to humans. The suffering and existence of other species is overlooked merely because the appetite of carnivorous humans matters more. The reverse process is unimaginable to us. Apart from the movie, The Matrix, where machines rear human babies and harvest energy from them for survival, it is unthinkable that cows and chicken would one day operate industrial farms where human babies and adults were caged, reared and sliced into bite size pieces for purchase at their markets or restaurants.
Another trend that has been on the rise is pet ownership. I know this is a very sensitive topic for many because often they adore and spend more time with their pets than any other thing including humans, with the exception of their cellphone. Do pets have names? Humans have deluded themselves for generations into believing that they have a name which they proudly taunt until their death. They have transferred this delusion onto their pets as well. Is pet ownership a form of anthropomorphism? Is any form of ownership anthropocentric? A Native American saying goes, “The Earth does not belong to us, we belong to the Earth” and rightly so. Starting from a single-celled zygote, we consume the Earth’s resources and grow into a few feet tall human being at which point we start claiming ownership over a piece of land, a house built using materials from the Earth, a shiny metal enclosure we call car, crops grown from the Earth and animals we acquired from a friend or a pet store in exchange for some paper or goodwill. Can we ever own another being, no matter how much paper we exchanged it for or no matter how much we claim to love it? Most humans love their pets only so long as their pets love them back. For instance, the moment a dog barks which is its instinct, the human owner yells at it to behave itself and not do it again. A pet is trained to perform its biological processes including excretion at scheduled times, namely after the human owner returns home from work. It is further trained to entertain its human owners with acrobatic moves in lure for delicious food called treats. Most often, a human uses its pets to hide its own shortcomings, whether it is lack of a human companionship, a sense of personal void, boredom or specialized skills such as a hunting companion, guarding one’s premises or policing purposes. Humans are quick to adopt and equally so at leaving their pets behind, sometimes permanently so when they migrate, travel or simply get tired of them.
Whether we domesticate animals to get milk, meat, use them as beasts of burden or as loyal companions, they are not treated as equal to humans. By using them for our benefit without giving the respect that they deserve, we have universalized anthropocentric view of existence of other species for benefit of humanity. Are other species worthy of their existence irrespective of humans?
Is Earth the only planet with living species in this Universe? Are all alien life forms a danger to human existence? With the exodus of human beings from rural areas to concentration in cities and resulting light pollution has already disconnected most of us from experiencing a starry night in darkness. Many of us are perfectly happy to spend our evenings and nights before a television screen and have stopped looking at what lies beyond. The various media sources deliver instant updates about various happenings around the world right into our living room and at our fingertips. We should thank them for updating us about the number of passengers killed in a plane crash in some country, number of ISIS beheadings the day before, what gadget Apple is working on, what bills are being passed in the Congress (if any) and which stock is hot. This bombardment of updates overwhelms our puny brain and gives it very little room to think that all of this is happening as we are hurtling in space on a sphere. Instead of getting some perspective on the minuscule size of our planet or its problems, what to speak of human beings, we ignore that we are just another planet in this incomprehensible and vastly unexplored cosmos. Even as the night falls, instead of looking up with curiosity (and reverence) at the heavenly bodies or inwards into our soul for questioning why we mistreat other species and humans, we seek refuge in more distractions, whatever they may be.
For one day, if we stop looking at the world & the universe through our anthropocentric lens, what will the world look like? In Quinn’s words, will there be hope for a better world?