Micro-Landscapes of the Anthropocene

Omni-Endangerment (Humans and their stories)

The world of plants and animals will act regardless of whether humans are present or not. They act in accordance to their biologically programming, driven by instincts and their desire for self-preservation. My concept, omni-endangerment, describes when humans impose their own human framework of morality and ethics upon the indifferent non-human world. Across history, humans have designated animals and plants into categories based on their perceptions of their utility. In agriculture, cows, sheep, chicken, wheat and rice are considered good, while wild rabbits, foxes, locusts or anything that attacks the farm’s productivity are treated as malevolent. There is also a divide between native and introduced species, with native species imbued with reverence, introduced species treated as unnatural blights. Species that appeal to some aesthetic compulsion within us are kept in zoos, or are slated for preservation projects, or kept as pets or cultivated in gardens. Animals deemed ugly, like ibises or rats; or dangerous, like sharks and crocodiles have little luck. Although I believe that it is natural for us to discriminate which entities have more utility than others, the problem arises when we believe that animals are inherently good or bad. The mosquito does not suck our blood with any evil intention, yet we slam our fist on it believing that it is doing something wrong.

Under omni-endangerment, all non-humans are under the mercy of the stories that humans create around them. Say if the dandelion were to suddenly be discovered as a natural cure for cancer, it would instantly be valorised. However, if the same dandelions were the cause of your allergies, then they’d be mercilessly weed-whacked. Omni-endangerment asks us not to blame nature, but to point the finger at ourselves and notice the ways in which we perceive and control non-human nature. To believe that all of nature operates by our human mode of being is anthropocentric (i.e. selfish and unempathetic). It is to claim that our way of being is the superior way, expecting everything else to comply. It blocks us from understanding the world of non-humans as they inhabit it, which then impedes us from strengthening our codependence through the construction of reciprocal bonds. “Only by temporarily shedding the accepted perceptual logic of his culture can the sorcerer hope to enter into relation with other species on their own terms” writes David Abram (1103). To enact omni-endangerment is to perpetuate the binary of human and nature, when in fact, humans are a part of nature. By dropping the perceptual logic of our culture, we perforate the boundary of human and non-human.

“The world and life started without us and will end without us”, writes Claude Levi-Strauss, reminding us of how our human conceptions of what is right and wrong is much more recent than how life operated before us, and how life will continue to operate autonomously when we are gone. As such, instead of trying to force non-humans into our own conceptions of how things should be, we should be more attentive, cooperative and humble if we are to live more harmoniously.



Works cited:
Abram, David. “The Ecology of Magic.” The Norton Book of Nature Writing, edited by John Elder & Robert Finch, W.W.Norton, 2002, pp. 1101-1114.
 

This page has paths:

Contents of this path: