Posted by
Andrews on Friday, July 24, 2009 12:19:02 PM
I was playing an on-line computer game the other day, and found myself surrounded by teens. What was interesting was how little what passes for intellectual discourse among relatively bright teens has changed since I was that age. More, interesting still, was looking back on those arguments with older eyes, to see how foolish I and my friends sounded when we were teens.
The conversation, as it often does, turned toward the denunciation of man. For those who spent too little time in anti-man circles as a teen, the basic argument is that man is a uniquely evil and destructive member of the animal kingdom. That he alone kills without reason. That he is the only animal that kills its own kind. That he is the only beast capable of destroying the earth. That he is some form of parasite or virus, whose very existence threatens the earth in ways no animal does.
It is an absurd argument, and wrong in many specifics. For instance, man is hardly alone in killing his own kind. Cannibalism is common throughout the animal kingdom, as well as killing the offspring of a defeated rival. In fact, in these two areas, man is remarkably restrained. Likewise, man is hardly unique in killing for reasons other than food. Many animals kill their own kind in mating struggles, or in struggles for dominance within a group. Animals kill their own species and others in territorial conflicts, and some kill for no discernible reason.
Nor do the environmentally tinged complaints hold up any better. For example, man is hardly unique in causing extinctions. After all, there are hundreds of millions of years of extinctions preceding man, and not all were environmental. Very often an animal introduced to a new environment will wipe out many species, the way the American gray squirrel is wiping out the red squirrel in England. And though that was an animal introduced by man, historically continental drift, unusual freezes, droughts, and other incidents connecting previously remote locations have allowed similar extinctions.
But I am not here to refute this argument, that is easy enough to do with just a little research. What I want to ask is a simple question. While most on both the right and left do not hold to this position, or at least do not firmly and consistently hold it, it seems many intellectuals are kindly disposed toward it, thinking that believing man is a particularly defective kind of animal is a valid belief.
Yet, those same people find it absurd to think that man is in any way special or better than the animal kingdom. They treat the old "great chain of being" arguments, the positioning of man between beat and angel, as absurd hubris. Yet they have no problem with the excessive vilification of man, though the evidence for both argument sis equally spare.
Why is that? Why does denigrating man pass muster, while elevating him does not? It has nothing to do with religion, as even the non-mystical elevation of the Objectivists and other rationalists are treated with scorn. It just seems that intellectuals are, in some way, predisposed to see man as something worthy of distaste.
Why? What makes them think detesting one's own species is a sign of sophistication?
And, as a corollary question, why is it that those who hate man, who call for him to be wiped from the face of the earth, never take the obvious first step and remove themselves from the equation? Not that I would ever advocate suicide, but you would think if someone consistently believed man was evil, they would be taking that logical step.
I was given the answer to that one, and, not surprisingly, the answer is "arrogance". One of the teens who was running down man gave me the perfect answer, one fitting my argument in "
Appealing to Arrogance", "
In A Nutshell" and elsewhere. "Man," he said , "is worthless, and those of us who know it are a little less worthless."
And perhaps that is my answer. Many run down man for the simple reason that by denigrating man they create a place where they can feel themselves better than anyone around them. Unable to find any other reason to elevate themselves, they find triumph in so lowering everyone else that they have stature by comparison.