The myth of human supremacy, a phrase from the writer Derrick Jensen, is the belief that humans are superior to all other beings and so have the right to use the Earth as we please. It is a spell, one of the central stories of Taker cultureTaker culture. Daniel Quinn’s term for the totalitarian agricultural, owning, surplus-driven way of life that takes everything and leaves nothing, and calls itself ‘civilisation’. Cultural, not innate, which is why it can be changed. Used interchangeably with ‘Fallen culture’. Read the full answer and at the heart of our separation from nature. Animism answers it with a round table, where no being is above another and we humans are the youngest of the PeoplesThe Peoples. The Animal People, Plant People, Standing People (the Trees) and Stone People: our elder kin, of whom the Human People are the youngest and least wise. A family, not a hierarchy. Read the full answer, with much to learn.
What is the myth of human supremacy? #
The belief that we are the superior species. It is a spell “that most of us are under, one that is enormously powerful and damaging”: “It is the idea that, as humans, we are superior. It is the myth of human supremacy.”1 It is the story “that, because we are the “highest” life form, we have the right to use the earth and all other life forms to our benefit.”2 “Most people do not question the idea of human supremacy, but take it, unquestioningly, as ‘fact’. Whereas actually, it is a myth.”3
Where does the phrase come from? #
From the American author and radical environmentalist Derrick Jensen. Paul Francis counts Jensen amongst his heroes, and his bibliographies list several of Jensen’s books. He calls Jensen’s The Myth of Human Supremacy “powerful, compelling and paradigm-shifting”, a book in which, “like a shaman waking their apprentices, Jensen demolishes this notion that humans are superior to other beings”.45
Why does it matter? #
Because we cannot heal our relationship with nature whilst we believe it. “This myth is one of the central stories of Taker society. It is at the heart of our modern-day separation from nature. It is so fundamental to Taker thinking that we cannot truly heal our disconnection if we continue buying into it.”6 Until we name it and dismantle it, and think like animists instead, “we cannot be in a healthy, animist, right-relationship with the other beings we share this world with.”7 See What is right relationship and reciprocity?
How did the myth arise? #
With the turn to farming and ownership of the land. “We decided to elevate ourselves above and beyond all other beings. We elevated ourselves to gods, deciding what lives and what dies, and lost our compassion and empathy for the non-human.”8 The idea is bound up with the belief that up is good and down is bad, and with the language of being the ‘highest’ or most ‘evolved’ species: “an assumption that we are the pinnacle of evolution, the most highly evolved species.”9 See What are Leaver and Taker cultures, the Great Forgetting and the Great Remembering?
Is the evidence for human superiority sound? #
No, the tests are rigged in our favour. As Jensen argues, if we define intelligence, self-awareness and communication in human terms, humans will come out on top. The tests are biased, so the result is “garbage in, garbage out”: blinkered and nonsensical.10 We assume our own kind of consciousness is best: “We think that our kind of consciousness”, self-awareness, “is the “highest” form of consciousness.”11 And our behaviour hardly shows superior intelligence: “There is nothing intelligent about what we are doing to the environment on which we depend.”12
Science is showing a wider picture. Jensen explores evidence of the intelligence and sentience of other beings, and the degrees to which they cooperate and communicate, in ways that are just different to us but not inferior to us.13
Not every scientist sees it this way. In his book The Gap (2013), the psychologist Thomas Suddendorf accepts that animals are cleverer than was once thought, but thinks that two abilities still set humans apart: imagining many possible futures, and a strong urge to link our minds with one another.14 The primatologist Frans de Waal, in his book Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? (2016), sees it differently. Many of the tests, he says, are built around human abilities, and each species needs to be studied through its own body, senses and way of life.15
How does animism answer it? #
With a round table rather than a ladder. In animism there is no spiritual hierarchy. Humans are not seen as ‘better’ or more evolved than other beings; animism is a spiritual ‘round table’ where all beings are equal and treated with respect. “Humans are not superior to animals. Animals are not superior to plants and stones. Everything is equal and deserving of equal respect, not just when journeying, but in day-to-day life.”16 See What is animism?
If we are not superior, what are we? #
The children of the Peoples. “The myth of human supremacy tells us that we are the wisest and most intelligent species on the planet, whereas the truth is entirely the opposite.” Hunter-gatherers say the Stone People are the oldest and wisest, then the Plant People, then the Animal People, then us. “This is not about hierarchy, but about family. It means that we are the children.”17 We are also animals: “Far from having transcended Animal, we are the very definition of Animal, the epitome of it.”18 See Who are the Animal, Plant and Stone People?
What does it mean for how we live? #
It changes how we treat the other Peoples, in practice. Living without the myth means asking how that awareness would change the food that you eat, the products that you use, the job that you do.19 And for anyone practising shamanism, “It is a nonsense to ask for help from animals and plants in journeys, and then ignore their plight in this physical world and do nothing to help.”20
