Jessica Vigil, Contributing Writer
What defines consciousness? Scientists have not agreed on a common answer. Some say it is awareness of one’s own existence, while others say it is the ability to communicate. A lot of people say it is empathy.
But why does human empathy seem to stop when it comes time to apply it to other species in the animal kingdom? We have built businesses right through their habitats. We sell their bodies and provide them with trash in return. We have created farms and factories to mass kill them, and then we still have the nerve to let thousands of their bodies go to waste.
Before I had a name for this double standard in human morality, I used to call it “human nationalism.”
Last semester, I was ranting to a friend about an essay I read that kept emphasizing the “mindlessness” of fish and how only children could believe in their consciousness. I rambled about how fish mourn and communicate and how ignorant the author’s assumptions were. At the end of my rant, my friend said, “You know, there is a word for that, right? It’s ‘speciesism.’”
I always called it human nationalism because it seemed a lot like U.S. nationalism. Thinking our country is superior to others and thinking that we have the moral right to colonize and conquer the world — as an Afro-Indigenous Apache, I know this idea all too well.
“Speciesism,” “anthropocentrism” or “human nationalism.” Whatever you call it, the reality is the same — human supremacy is an unfounded societal norm and a comorbidity of white supremacy.
Peter Singer, who popularized the term “speciesism” in his book “Animal Liberation Now,” said there are two types of speciesism. The first is the idea that only homo sapiens are deserving of moral status. The second is the idea that animal cruelty only considers domesticated animals.
What is it about undomesticated animals that causes humanity to lose empathy? If it is how they hunt for themselves — our food is mass-produced and bred to die, and still, according to environmentalist Vandana Shiva, 50% of food in the United States is wasted.
Just because the majority of humankind gets its food at grocery stores doesn’t mean the blood of the animals we eat isn’t on our hands. Just because wild animals can look their prey in the eye doesn’t make them savages. Arguably, it is more moral. In many ways, the norms around food production in capitalistic societies keep us from being self-sufficient.
Anthropocentrism is a colonial mindset rooted in white supremacy and capitalism.
Part of why people don’t consider animals capable of morality is that they are seen as “uncivilized.” This same Eurocentric idea that “civilization” equals “consciousness” was used to keep Black people enslaved during the Enlightenment and to justify the genocide of Indigenous peoples during colonization.
The Doctrine of Discovery — a 1493 legal document once used to prevent Native sovereignty in U.S. courts — states that by law of all “civilized” nations, “the Indians had not individual rights to land; for the lands occupied by each tribe were not used by them in such a manner as to prevent their being appropriated by a people of cultivators.”
Native Americans lost and continue to lose rights to land because we see land as something with rights of its own — something a part of ourselves, our families and our communities. The violence colonizers feel entitled to inflict on marginalized groups stems from and coincides with their entitlement to inflict violence on the Earth.
Robin Wall Kimmerer from the Potawatomi tribe states in her book, “Braiding Sweetgrass,” that in Native thinking, humans are often seen as the little siblings of Creation — the species who have the least life experience and, as a result, the most to learn.
We have much to learn from the world around us — it is time to humble ourselves and recognize our spot in the animal kingdom.