The human race stands at a critical juncture, where its unchecked expansion and relentless exploitation of the natural world threaten its own survival. The pressing need to amend Protagoras’ aphorism “Man is the measure of all things” has never been more urgent
Is humanism as a philosophy leading to human extinction? The search for an answer must begin with the Greek sophist Protagoras’ frequently-qouted aphorism, “Man is the measure of all things.” It is generally considered to be the best encapsulation of the central message of humanism which asserts the centrality of humankind’s place in the cosmic order of things, including both the quotidian and historic flows of time. The value of everything, according to the Humanist weltanschauung has to be judged by its impact on the well-being of humans. It, however, does not refer to half of humankind-women. This was obviously because gender had not become an issue in public discourse in Protagoras’ time. He lived from 490 to 420 BCE. As things have changed vastly since then and the first amendment to his aphorism should make it read as. “Humankind is the measure of all things.”
The need for the second amendment arises from the nature of humankind’s relationship with other living beings-animals, birds, fish and plants-the essence of which is relentless exploitation of these by people, which is driving them to extinction. Significantly, the theme of Earth Day, 2019, observed, as in every year, on April 22, was “Protect our Species.” Elizabeth Kolbert writes in The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (first published in 2014), “Very, very occasionally in the distant past, the planet has undergone change so wrenching that the diversity of life has plummeted. Five of these ancient events were catastrophic enough that they’re put in their own category: the so-called Big Five. In what seems like a fantastic coincidence, but is probably no coincidence at all, the history of these events is recovered just as people come to realise that they are causing another one.”
It has become increasingly clear since the book first came out in 2014 that the sixth extinction is around the corner. The causes are well-known. Seabed mining is destroying unique ecosystems besides taking pollution to the deep sea. Rivers bring toxic industrial waste from hinterlands and, as in the case of stretches of Yamuna close to Delhi, make it impossible for fish to survive in their waters. Oil spills pollute hundreds of square miles. Increasing carbon emission is making sea water acidic and hence inhospitable to marine life. The consumption of plastic bags, hunting, poaching, the arrival of invasive species, have disastrous effects.
Container ships are killing a growing number of whales through accidents. Japan’s murderous whaling expeditions are killing hundreds of whales. Global warming has worsened matters.
All this is the result of human activity, which has increased sharply as a result of growing human population, which, currently around 8.2 Billion, is, pace UN projections, set to peak at 10.3 Billion by the mid-1980s. According to another estimate, it is expected to exceed 10 Billion by 2060. It is not just their sustenance demands that are increasing with their numbers. Market capitalism, with advertising as its cutting edge, is manufacturing demands for ever new consumer goods and leisure activity.
The result is pressure on nature, resources and space. Animal habitats and forests, for example, are destroyed to make room for townships, factories and roads, and rail lines linking them. Trees are cut en masse to provide for lumber for construction, firewood and the furniture industry.
Not surprisingly, Ian Johnston’s report in The Independent of the United Kingdom of 31 May, 2017, cited scientists writing in a special edition of the magazine, Nature, that humans were causing the sixth mass extinction of life on earth. Chris Jasurek’s piece in The Epoch Times of October 31, 2018, cites a World Wildlife Fund report as stating that humans have killed about 60 per cent of animals on the planet since 1970.
The future of humans themselves is at stake. Population increase is an important cause of accelerating human activity. Referring to the soaring increase in global population under way, Desmond Morris predicts in The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal, that time will come when “the densities we are now experiencing in our major cities would exist in every corner of the globe. The consequences of all this for all forms of wild animals is obvious. The effect it would have on our own species is equally depressing.”
Morris adds shortly thereafter, “Long before our populations reach the levels envisaged above we shall have broken so many of the rules that govern our biological nature, that we shall have collapsed as a dominant species. Many exciting species have become extinct in the past and we are no exception.” Those dismissing Morris’ prediction as alarmist can argue that the human mind, which accounts not only for the survival of the species but its dominance over nature through technology, will find a way of preventing this. Nothing of the sort. Technology would remain a formulation on paper if the environment in which it has to be applied disappears.
More important, the devising and application of technologies would require continued and serious application of the mind. Paul Shepard writes in Thinking Animals: Animals and the Development of Human Intelligence, “the mind and its organ, the brain, are in reality that part of us most dependent on the survival of animals. We are connected to animals by sinews that link speech to rationality, insight, intuition, and consciousness.” He states that people everywhere had “a profound, inescapable need for animals” which “are used in the growth and development of the human person, in those most priceless qualities which we lump together as ‘mind.’ Animal images and forms play a critical role in the shaping of personality, identity, and social consciousness. Animals are among the first inhabitants of the mind’s eye. They are “basic to the development of speech and thought.”
The progressive extinction of species will have a devastating effect on the human mind, and a progressive decline of the mind will have its own disastrous consequences. The mind is the home of reason and consciousness. As the basis of analytical thought, reason is the cutting edge of the mind.
Its possession has enabled humankind to create a civilisation tailored to cater to its needs, fancies and craving for luxuries, and based on the exploitation of all other species, who are considered inferior as they do not have the ability to reason. The argument will, of course, be that reason would enable people to recognise the deadly consequence of their way of life and retreat from the brink of the precipice.
Such optimism is unwarranted. Reason is an instrument, and not humankind’s defining attribute, and is often overpowered by passion and the urge for self-indulgence. The consequences of global warming and what is to be done to combat it are well known. Yet people are unable to overcome the growing desire for creature comforts, which is so overwhelming that they are incapable of jettisoning it. Many now join the Taliban or other groups whose obscurantist doctrines do not stand rational interrogation—as many in Nazi Germany joined the Sturm Abteilung (SA) and the Schultz Staffein (SS) steeped in Hitler’s racist doctrine. If the first instance reflects the failure of rationality, the second indicates the triumph of hatred over reason, Not many today realise that their human supremacist worldview and ruthless exploitation of non-human living beings is facilitating their own extinction. Instead of killing, they need to nurture and cherish all animals, birds, fish and plants. The second amendment to Protagoras’ aphorism should transform it to read, “Humankind is the preserver and protector of all beings.”
(The author is Consulting Editor, The Pioneer. Views expressed are personal)
