Like many of our current false philosophies, Speciesism gained currency during the effete decade of the Clinton Co-presidency, the 1990's. Proponents of this theory argue that human arrogance and egotism accounts for a false belief that mankind is superior to any other life form on earth. In college, I recall hearing a lecture by a professor of philosophy arguing this very thing. At the end of his speech, I asked "If what you say is true, why should we believe you any more than we'd believe a monkey?" He turned an angry red, and replied that I was an ignoramus.
We really do live in a deeply depraved age. People seriously argue that gender has no basis in either biology or psychology. They argue that a foetus isn't a living being. They say that Civilization is evil, and that religion is dangerous. So it's no surprise that they also believe that human beings and sewer rats are equal in the universal schemata of things. Attitudes like these in practical use lead to the kind of stupidity displayed in Portland yesterday.
The State of Nature is not exactly kind to human beings, which is one reason why one of our earliest religious statutes is "to fill the earth and subdue it; to have dominion over the fishes of the sea; and over all the flying creatures in the skies; and over all the cattle and over all the creeping reptiles." The proponents of Speciesism will scoff at the corresponding passage which states that man was created in the Image of God. But even their own evolutionary theories lead essentially to the same conclusion. According to Evolutionists, nature operates on the principle of survival of the fittest. Nature is full of threats like predatory animals, wildfires, violent storms, blizzards, earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, and epidemic diseases. Civilization is mankind's defense against such things; therefore, we are the fittest species to survive and have every right to advance our species.
And, on the subject of Rights: the proponents of Speciesism talk of the rights of other species and our moral duties towards them without realizing that rights and morality are exclusively human concepts. Their whole theory is one massive contradiction of itself on nearly every aspect.
A century ago, German-American professor Wolfgang Kohler published The Mentality of Apes, the most exhaustive research on primate intelligence ever conducted. Kohler concluded that the most intelligent adult chimpanzees---mankind's closest genetic relative---never surpassed the average intelligence levels of a human 2-3 year old. By his own admission, even those levels were only reached by training and coaching. Contrast that with the findings of researchers like Maria Montessori and Jean Piaget on the rapid learning abilities of human children.
People who believe in theories like Speciesism must entertain an extremely low opinion of humanity and human nature. The same Professor Kohler mentioned above once pointed out that the leftist leanings of Academia even in his day were poisoning the soul of humanity. "If," he said at a speech at Dartmouth University, "mankind is a product of his economic class as the Marxists teach; or a product of subconscious drives as the Freudians teach---how is he ever responsible for his actions?" Add into that mix Atheism and Moral Relativism and you've a society well on the road to disaster.
For all of their prating about Ecology, the people who believe in Speciesism are about as far removed from nature as possible. Our ancestors who lived closer to nature understood it a lot better. My grandmother used to tell about the most terrifying experience of her childhood was her family riding in a sleigh on the way to Church and getting chased by a wolfpack. Those wolves weren't chasing them for fun, either. The horse ran into a neighbor's barn; and after Great-Grandpa bolted the door, the wolves started hurling themselves against the windows to break in. And yet there are animal-rights activists who insist that wolves never attack human beings.
The animal world is driven by a survival instinct and human moral concepts aren't a factor. I recall a few years ago, a TV ad (that was removed after complaints) showing a mother and her two kids driving along when they saw a sow-bear and her cubs. They got out of the car and were walking out towards the happy Bear Family sharing their experiences. Anyone who knows anything about the instinctual habits of bears knows that doing things like that in real life are shortcuts to an early grave. It's hard way to learn the superiority of reason to instinct; but it's surprising how many humans end up mauled, crippled, or dead every year because they think that wild animals' brains work like ours.
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