Derrick Jensen - The Myth of Human Supremacy

[ The Myth of Human Supremacy ] offers a new way of thinking about the role of humans in relation to all other life on Earth, and a call to reevaluate our most basic assumptions about human domination of the planet. George Wuerthner, author, ecologist, and wildlands advocate

This book dissects and demolishes one of our cultures most pernicious assumptions, that humans are the pinnacle of evolution and the supreme species on the planet. Derrick Jensen is a master at digging into our beliefs, turning over rocks and unflinchingly looking at what lies beneath. The Myth of Human Supremacy brilliantly exposes our dangerous, nature-devouring belief that humans are superior and reveals to what absurd lengths we will go to preserve that belief. This is an important book full of critical lessons. It shows the valueand urgencyof humbly taking our true, unexceptional but valuable place among all of lifes marvelous creatures. Toby Hemenway, author of Gaias Garden and The Permaculture City

When I read Endgame (2006), I believed I had found the clearest description of patriarchal civilization and how it is killing every aspect of the living planet. I was mistaken. Derrick Jensen has outdone himself. In heartfelt, compelling prose, he asks the reader to question the obvious lies embedded within the dominant paradigm. Guy McPherson, professor emeritus of conservation biology at the University of Arizona

Jensens arguments are ferocious, heartbroken, hilarious, and lethally logical. The truths he tells are the most important in this reeling world, bar none.
Kathleen Dean Moore, author of Moral Ground and Great Tide Rising

This book made me weep. Its an angry ballad, an anguished love song to life itself. I sit here, tears in my eyes as I type these words, as if yet another human needed to be heard from. I sit here wishing, dreaming we could instead hear what the Amani flatwing damselflies, ploughshare tortoises, Asiatic black bears, and the pea plants have to say about The Myth of Human Supremacy. I imagine theyd bellow in unison: Its about fuckin time you caught on! Mickey Z., author of Occupy These Photos

Brilliant, lucid and gorgeously written, The Myth of Human Supremacy attacks the core of the planet-scale problem, the idea that only humans matter. The book is elegant and poised; the argument unassailable; the narrative engaging, witty, and full of surprises; the research meticulous. This is perhaps my favorite of his books. Suprabha Seshan, environmental educator, activist, and restoration ecologist, winner of 2006 Whitley Fund for Nature award, Ashoka Fellow, executive director of Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary

In this important book, Jensen upends longstanding truths about human domination of the planet, demanding that we not only rethink our ideas about politics and economics, but about ourselves. He focuses our attention on the multiple, cascading crises that can be traced to human supremacythe deeply destructive illusion that the world was made for humans because we are so very special. Jensen considers, and rejects, every reason we want to believe ourselves the anointed species, and challenges all of us to take seriously the moral principles we claim to hold. Robert Jensen, University of Texas at Austin, author of Plain Radical

The Myth of Human Supremacy is poetic and deeply moving. Jensen is unafraid to interrogate unquestionable assumptions and ask crazy questions. Here he dismantles the core of our crises, the mythologies that guide authoritarian, unsustainable, human supremacist cultures. Read this and weep, but then with new awareness shake off emotional and ideological blinders you have been taught, and take action with those who understand that humans are one among many. Darcia Narvaez, professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame, blogger at Psychology Today (Moral Landscapes), and author of Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture and Wisdom

Derrick Jensen elegantly shows that everything in our world is interconnected, and animals, plants, and even bacteria are sentient, conscious, and much like us. We humans refuse to believe that, preferring to believe a vast gulf exists between us and the rest of the natural world. That leads to the end of us and all of nature as we kill our planet. I hope this book will help people change their belief in human supremacy and help save our world. Con Slobodchikoff, PhD, author of Chasing Doctor Dolittle: Learning the Language of Animals

In his most important work since A Language Older Than Words , Jensen lays bare the sociopathy of the ideology of human supremacy: the fact that western civilization is based on domination, thievery, and murder, while the natural world innately gravitates towards harmony and balance. This supremacy is destroying the planet, an infinitely complex living entity weve only barely begun to understand. This book is mandatory reading. Dahr Jamail, author/journalist

It is said that a revolution begins in the mindan alternative to our present circumstances must first be imagined before we can be moved to fight for it. So we should all be grateful to Derrick Jensen, who with this book breaks the ideological chains of human supremacy and reveals the world as the interconnected web of being that it truly is. With our illusions ripped away, we may yet be able to save ourselves and our beautiful planet from the system that is killing us all. Stephanie McMillan, author of Capitalism Must Die

THE MYTH OF HUMAN SUPREMACY

DERRICK JENSEN

Seven Stories Press

New York / Oakland

Portions of this book appeared in different form in Orion and Earth Island Journal.

Copyright 2016 by Derrick Jensen

A SEVEN STORIES PRESS FIRST EDITION

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Seven Stories Press
Watts Street
New York, NY 10013
http://sevenstories.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Jensen, Derrick, 1960- author.
Title: The myth of human supremacy / by Derrick Jensen.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Seven Stories Press, 2016. |
Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015046725| ISBN 9781609806781 (paperback) | ISBN
9781609806798 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Environmentalism. | Environmental ethics. | Nature--Effect of
human beings on. | Human geography. | BISAC: NATURE / Environmental
Conservation & Protection. | NATURE / Ecology.
Classification: LCC GE195 .J47 2016 | DDC 304.2--dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015046725

Printed in the United States of America

Usually, the English language reserves the pronoun who for humans and uses that for nonhumans. To align grammar and syntax with the ideas put forward in this book, many entities normally considered things will be referred to with the pronoun who .

DJ

Contents

For the earth

Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesnt mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.

Kurt Vonnegut

Prelude

How we behave in the world is profoundly influenced by how we experience the world, which is profoundly influenced by how we perceive the world, which is profoundly influenced by what we believe about the world.

Our collective behavior is killing the planet.