February 17, 2015 - 00:19
In their post, Marian said "we humans see ourselves as the "culmination" of evolution", and it really resonated with me. We, as humans, have been so socialized to see ourselves as the most advanced, most adapt, most "fit" species--the crowning jewel of the tree of life. This mindset is introduced and perpetrated in subtle (and all the more dangerous ways). Remember learning about evolution in high school? Many of us were shown the image of “the evolution of man”, a stooped figure slowly walking his way through intermediate species to a “fully evolved” man. This instills in humans the entitled mindset of being the important species, but also having the right to exploit the world and all of its inhabitants.
I wanted to expand on what Marian was saying by exploring this quote from Haraway’s piece When Species Meet: “Freud described three great historical wounds to the primary narcissism of the self-centered human subject, who tries to hold panic at bay by the fantasy of human exceptionalism. First is the Copernican wound that removed Earth itself, man’s home world, from the center of the cosmos and indeed paved the way for that cosmos to burst open into a universe of inhumane, nontelelogical times and spaces. Science made that decentering cut. The second wound is the Darwinian which put Homo sapiens firmly in the world of other critters, all trying to make an earthly living so evolving in relation to one another without the sureties of directional signposts that culminate in Man. Science inflicted that cruel cut too”(11).
Humans are narcissistic, self-centered beings. Science, in Freud’s eyes (and mine as well), tries to combat our self-image as one of heightened importance. Our world is built on purpose and meaning imposed by human want and desire. Science as a subject tries to offer a humbling, subjective perspective. One way we do that is by learning that our home, the earth, is within a large and complex universe, beyond human comprehension. Another way is to realize that evolution doesn’t have the purpose or an agenda of creating a “higher being”. Homo sapiens have come about by chance, nothing more. It is so important for people to be humbled in this way. Humans aren’t insignificant, but they are no more significant than any other creature on this planet.