“When god became lonely he created men,
Or was it,
When man become lonely he created god”
An intellectual challenge, a disregarded philosophical objective, bred from laziness and narcissism, our ecosystem is dying and once again, humanity is obsessed with submission. Often weak, weaned off in the late stages of early childhood, the human deceives itself by creating a warped sense of power, instilled by their innate agility, possible flexibility, until the muscle broadcasted on their arms assembles a mental hierarchy where they think they can wield a weapon faster than the bite of a lion. An ego thoroughly compromised and inherently neurotic to its very core, the psychological debasement of the human ego1 has driven clear distinctions of dismantling ecosystems and institutions highly regarded to human wellbeing. Looking at Animism and Anthropocentrism, the latter can be concluded as a harmful, marring objective humans slipped into to create a similar power dynamic they have with their own god, which is to say they like being at the centre of things, especially in the realm of this universe.
To quickly digress into both conceptions, it becomes clear how Animism and Anthropocentrism are antitheses to each other when practiced upon. The former, developed by Edward Tylor in 1871, can be identified as “the general doctrine of souls and other spiritual beings in general,” also known as- everything that exists in nature has a soul and to bruise, destroy, mutilate, or kill such organisms would be in relation to killing the soul of another human being. The whole practice is a needed route for humans to understand empathy past the borders of their own convoluted consciousness but also redirect their immediate desire for power to a relative understanding that equality is a shared commonplace between himself and nature.
In my strenuous moments of chaos surrounding this topic, the primary reason for deficiency was our vicious ego. Self-centered, arguably psychopathic, the Ego is an undemanding answer and simple at best when speaking of ourselves. Twisting the simple connection of Ego to emotional irregulation or unethical reasoning, independent ideas are rather a common motivator for change, especially when the self is promised undeniable good. To be clear, Religion was the ‘promised undeniable good.’ Having been born with free Sunday schedules, and even fewer modest dresses, the infiltration of religious ideology never shaped self-defining fears, moral perspectives, and the self-mutilation that occurs when you exist outside of principles built on ‘eternal love.’ Given this statement, my opinions have not wavered after obscure church services I went to at eight years old in order to have a sleepover the night before or to please your relatives who attended church on Christmas Eve with no knowledge of the contents of the bible. So from my standpoint, the Ego exists as such due to the infection of religion that has strewed ritualistic social contracts, existing baselines of ethical reason, even the simple, concise action of death – a practice centred around the existence of one man. To take Animism to the now-present form of Anthropocentrism, the many facets surrounding religion hold reasonable cause to many warped perceptions, the main cause being the savior complex.
When thinking of ethical, a complicit synonym can be ‘good.’ It prescribes that on the baseline of given values, to be ethical is ‘to be more than’ and the ‘good’ would then surpass the goodness of just one person to all of the natural world. And so, to define anthropocentrism as ethical, it defaults to a weak claim, as the idea deviates from utilitarianism, the considered benefits for the greater good fail to include the natural world or any division of nature, but rather the comfort of humans. The innate complex humans have to protect their species from those with the same quality to life can be dedicated to an Ego that has developed over centuries when diseases can be cured, food is not aligned with hunting, buildings hold beds and working lights during the night. We have evolved, along with our conscious, bone structure, emotional intelligence, and knowledgable ego considerate of the power we could potentially wield not only against other species but toward ourselves. Our demise is centered on a natural feeling, a dopamine rush and a satisfactory smile of our ability, yet a deform can be detected in the brain and the triggers, once related to empathy wither, and we end up like the conclusion of the Stanford Prison Experiment.
For a brief moment, the development of the ego and religious consciousness will be explained in reference to one’s relationship with Biblical faith so that explanations toward Intrinsic Value and Environmental Ethics hold appropriate connotations. Cobb explains the detriment well, writing, “Where Biblical faith has dominated, pure autonomy can be attributed only to God. The human ego develops and gains heroic independence from the world through its relation to God. The relationship is purely dialogical. God calls, and the ego responds. The ego that is formed in this dialogue need not cut itself off from emotion and from caring about what happens in the world, for in its relation to God it transcends the world while sharing God’s concerns for it.” The psychological phenomenon is easily digestible, the relationship more one-sided in terms of physical attributes, yet the ego is starving, only able to assert itself on its own fear and isolation, eventually becoming power hungry when its contents cannot be reached by those around them. It is in itself another person, rid of a body and powered by perceptions until autonomy is established and its decision moves one’s hands and feet. In short, if the ego is fed from an external force, the mind will no longer be conscious of its own autonomy, rather reverting such power to said external being until actions are dictated on being led and acceptance of immoral ideologies become a knowing practice. The key part lies in religion being psychological, leaving the involvement of another body outside of the followed being, will not be heard as ‘the God calls, the ego responds‘
Intrinsic Value
An anthropocentric value theory (or axiology), by common census, centres intrinsic value on human beings and regards all other things, including other forms of life, as being only instrumentally valuable i.e valuable only to the extent that they are means or instruments which may serve human beings.
Callicott, 1984:299
Value is subjective, no? Should we place a baseline, say that as humans we are inherently more valuable than inanimate objects, than constructive ideas and social determination, but naturally below anything holy whether that be a church, biblical words, and of course, their god. You see, hierarchies are how we establish the prominence of wealth, love, power, tenacity, to redefine our personal identification of position in society. While a lot of this is unconscious, our brain programmed out of fear and rejection, creates a multitude of bias, redistribution tactics, a sort of filing cabinet where we can dissect each document to our present status, our well-being, and our personhood. This intimate breakdown is how we form an identity, which in turn develops the ego, and we continue this cycle of influence by way of our relationship to religion, language, appearance, experiences, political affiliation, etc. as they begin to confirm not only a basis of thought but an allowance to pamper our own personal desires. Loneliness will always become a feeding ground for needed power.
Running with Callicott, anthropocentrism redefines intrinsic value, which if we are to play ‘devil’s advocate one might say, ‘it’s good to put yourself first, healthy even’ in which I [unfathomably, might I add] desire to reply, ‘who was disrupting us from being healthy, but ourselves?’ But I must go quietly in this sense and elaborate that considering yourself for your own benefit is not classified as redefining your species as the center of the universe due to an increased power-hungry ego that slowly mutilates your relationship with nature and all that exists around you for the simple benefit of security? comfort? pre-planning for world domination against animals? The fact of the matter remains: deliberately denying the natural world an equal spot on the food chain not only wreaks havoc on our own perception of ourselves but allows for the destruction of ecosystems and the foundation of our existence to continue without an ounce of empathy.
Now, this all seems fairly reasonable in terms of innumerable ideologies we have ingested, thrown up, and redesigned as personality traits, so when dealing with our pesky ego it is to be addressed that we have thought ourselves superior, enduring, beings and our biblical relationships show for it. God’s warriors had a ring to it a couple of centuries ago, spurred by war, torture (and the terrifying methods developed from this feeling), of course, power, men have managed to redefine their identity as humans to transcend spiritual dimension (or psychosis, whichever seems more edgy), and be in close relation to their own god. As mentioned above, ‘when God calls, the ego responds,’ the human mind grapples with this secret knowledge of holy connection, leaving to a development in their mindset, one Callicot defines as, “[…] rules not only over the body, the emotions, and women2, but also over the rest of creation [and eventually history].” A clear separation is formed in which humans do not view themselves as being part of the environment but rather as a contributor or even the centre of it. They cannot humanize nature to hold the same weight of existence that would require empathy and the lack of interference toward its growth.
That is all to say a level of hypocrisy has to exist. If we are to start with animism, slowly venture into barely pulsing societies, unaware of trade or even the existence of other empires, where in the timeline did we digress fundamentally, morally, ethically? There are still waves of animism in spiritual religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, so maybe it is a colonizing form of Western thought, overruled by religion? Yet, if one is to believe in anthropocentrism, rather ‘being the center of the universe,’ your placement in the natural world, you naturally reprimand your own kind [the natural world] for their inability to gain power. This seems far off in hindsight, that from a very broad scope, animals and plants are inherently different than us as humans. To many who don’t believe in evolution, while I am worried, the clause that we didn’t originate here as told in the Bible or by conspiracy theorists is only the millennium-long era of storytelling us humans adapted from language, simply nothing more. We are nature by birth, by ability, by heartbeat, and by existence.
To ramble once more, our current inability to quantify the intrinsic value of the “priceless” life-supporting services of ecosystems might be due to our reliance on valuation approaches that are simply not capable of representing their economic worth4. As the Ego becomes stretched loose, a boundless pit, impetuous to external systems dissimilar to themselves or God, necessary emotions are replaced, leaving submission a mandatory action expressed in religious ideation and projection of obedience to intersect the relationships humans have with the natural world. This is often a starting point of war.
Environmental Ethics
We shall continue to have a worsening ecologic crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man.
Lynn Townsend White, Jr.
All forms of life modify their contexts. Human civilization has become a breeding ground of negative impacts, particularly on biodiversity and needed ecosystems. There are newspaper articles, particularly long novels on our careless actions, photographs, movies like Rio, Finding Nemo, Avatar, protests, etc. depicting the emergent crisis of our climate. Bleaching coral, overfishing, pesticides, urban development, fast fashion, fossil fuels, deforestation, pollution – The list can and will continue. Yet, the call to action is minute, rather a complicity stunt often negative in proposals deemed worthy enough of possible reversal to our actions. We could say the easiest solution is to revert back to before the Industrial Revolution, turning all major cities into cottages and forests, rejecting modern materials and STEM practices to follow a much more ‘natural’ way of life. I can feel the eye roll from here. I bear no possible solution given the rather strenuous upkeep of the population, of notable crisis in every single institution, of continuing wars decades later, of the forgotten homeless, foster care, and asylum sectors, any conclusion could only account for a small few with a mere billion strapped to their last name.
To keep this short, Lynn White, an American historian, develops his claim that Christianity was ‘the most anthropocentric religion in the world’ and as such it bears a ‘huge burden of guilt’ for our current ecological climate. An essay widely acknowledged in Christan rebuttals and testimonies, his claims in 1967 still spark debate decades later and for good reason, especially when he writes, “Both our present science and our present technology are so tinctured with orthodox Christan arrogance toward nature that no solution for our ecologic crisis can be expected from them alone.” Ending on the route of religion, I digress on a few mere fragments of opinion. Everything that exists, has existed, or will come into being in the future subsist in a system. Under the conditions of submission, obedience, and control, we are in our being, a system controlled by another system. Not only does this drive the foundation of anthropocentrism, but it allows us to be weak-kneed vessels sustaining one fundamental while derailing another. In this drawn-out argument, my words have been concise on the matter of the constrained relationship between religion and the ego and its damaging effects on the environment, yet I could have dropped such subject for the industries that test on animals, meat manufacturing that abuses chemicals to fatten and redesign, the 700+ species that have become extinct during our period of existence on just historical data alone, the fashion industry and the considerable damage it produced to landfills, and every single industry that has capitalized on the environment to have a little change in the bank account of their seventh company. The argument will stay the same, the evidence tedious and lingering, the environment still depleting.
I would argue for ecocentric5 values in the same manner I argue for women. Which is to say, no scale or relationship should deem its importance or role for its mere existence. Like most conclusions I tend to have, my opinions lack room for argument but rather a place of expression to make claims. I saw points of intersection as Lynn White did six decades prior, and in one conclusion to the many in our environmental crisis, a factor can be the implementation of Christianity. In every end, it is merely what people do to their ecology that portrays what they think about themselves in relation to all that surrounds them.
Recognising the ego as “me,” as embodying and representing an authentic, private, unique selfhood that is most genuinely my own, is tantamount to misrecognizing that, at root, the ego ultimately is an alienating foreign introject through which I am seduced and subjected by others’ conscious and unconscious wants and machinations
(Stanford Encyclopaedia)
1: Jacques Lacan, Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy
2: The submissive role of women is a common role established by the church evolving from their rival with the Pagans. Callicott opens the Ego with: “To obtain his masculine identity, the boy child must break this bond. Whether the departure from this “home” is physical or psychical, it is the basic crisis of growing up. Anxiety about falling back into infantile dependence generates in men fear and even hatred for women. Yet biological need and social pressure demand an adult relation to women. This is achieved by aggression and domination. By turning women into possessions, the male deals with his dear of being possessed. Thus the hero, or the male ego, has as his primary task breaking from the dominance of the female and returning to dominate her. This gives primacy to the need for heroic independence or autonomy, and it leads to a difference between the self-understanding of men and women in out society” (74).
3: After Lynn White: Religious Ethics and Environmental Problems, JSTOR
4: Farrell KN, National Library of Medicine
5: Nature has value in its own right, independent and separate from human uses, and would not rely on any scale nor relationship to deem its importance. Nature would then inherent value even if it does not directly or even indirectly benefit humans. National Library of Medicine.
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