It hasn\u2019t been until the last half-of-a-century or so since we have discovered that up until that juncture, the human race had been trapped in moral darkness.\u00a0 With the advent of the 1960\u2019s, though, we gradually began to ascend from this cave, for it was then that we discovered that the institutional arrangements and modes of life to which we had long grown accustomed were nothing less than instruments of racial oppression.<\/p>\n
In the \u201860\u2019s, we discovered the evil of \u201cracism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Later on in the decade and into the next, as we grew more enlightened, it dawned on us that not only was America founded and sustained upon the backs of non-European minorities; women, too, have been subjugated.\u00a0 In addition to being \u201cracist\u201d to its core,America\u2014and all of Western civilization\u2014is incorrigibly \u201csexist,\u201d we realized.<\/p>\n
In the \u201880\u2019s and beyond, we reckoned with the glaring truth that we were an even more depraved people than these jarring revelations would have had us believe.\u00a0 It was bad enough that we were \u201cracist\u201d and \u201csexist.\u201d\u00a0 But then we discovered that we are also \u201chomophobic!\u201d\u00a0 It was during this time that homosexuals joined racial minorities and women as victims of \u201cAmerikanism\u201d and Western civilization more generally.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Since then, other heretofore undiscovered evils have been unveiled: \u201cclassism\u201d\u2014the differential treatment of people on the basis of socio-economic class; \u201cageism\u201d\u2014the differential treatment of people on the basis of age; \u201cableism\u201d\u2014the differential treatment of people on the basis of ability; \u201cIslamophobia\u201d\u2014the differential treatment of people on the basis of their adherence to Islam; and even \u201cspecieism\u201d\u2014the differential treatment of animals <\/em>on the basis of their exclusion from the human species.<\/p>\n Given this rapid rate of moral progress, it is nothing short of a monumental disappointment that there is one evil that has yet to be recognized for the horror that it is.\u00a0<\/p>\n The evil I refer to is that of what we may call \u201canimalism<\/em>\u201d: the differential treatment of plant life on the basis of the fact that plants are not animals.<\/p>\n If Americacan be said to have been built upon the proverbial backs of the historically disadvantaged and marginalized, then the planet can be said to have been built upon the proverbial backs of plants.\u00a0 In the absence of plants, we would be without the elements\u2014particularly, oxygen\u2014without which the existence of animals\u2014of the human and <\/em>non-human varieties\u2014would be impossible.\u00a0 Moreover, plants were around long before any other life forms emerged on the scene.<\/p>\n And yet, to this day, plants remain at the mercy of other living things.<\/p>\n Before the emergence of animals, plants ruled the planet.\u00a0 There were no wars, no bloodshed.\u00a0 For that matter, there wasn\u2019t even any pain.<\/p>\n Since the advent of animals, all of this has changed.\u00a0<\/p>\n The whole world now is governed according to a scheme that has no place for anything that is not either a predator<\/em> or a prey<\/em>.\u00a0 The scary thing about our circumstances is that the ubiquity and comprehensiveness of the systems of animalist domination to which they have given rise continue to blind us to them.\u00a0 How can things not be so?\u00a0 After all, every conceivable mode of thought\u2014from the law, morality, and religion, to literature, science, history, and beyond\u2014is determined by an idiom that is animalist through and through.\u00a0 Our discourses covertly\u2014and not always so covertly\u2014perpetuate animalism.<\/p>\n In other words, those presuppositions and prejudices that have conspired over the span of millennia to generate animal-centric hierarchies\u2014asymmetrical relations of power within which animals are assigned a position of privilege<\/em> over subjugated<\/em> plants\u2014are structural.\u00a0 <\/em>They are embedded within our institutions.\u00a0 Structural or institutional animalism, then, renders us all unconscious animalists.<\/p>\n Although the planet once belonged to plants, we have either claimed ownership of them or corralled many of them into \u201cparks,\u201d \u201cpublic gardens,\u201d and \u201cwildlife reserves\u201d\u2014i.e. the equivalents of concentration camps, reservations, and slave quarters.\u00a0 And even then, they are still prey to animal predators.<\/p>\n This horror of animalism transcends political parties, religions, cultures, and even species.\u00a0 Yes, that\u2019s right: even non-human animals are implicated in it.\u00a0 Granted, unreasoning animals aren\u2019t as <\/em>guilty as humans.\u00a0 But this doesn\u2019t mean that they shouldn\u2019t be held somewhat responsible for their animalism.\u00a0 If non-human animals can be said to have \u201crights\u201d\u2014and this is <\/em>what anti-specieists and others say about them\u2014then the implication that is most strongly urged on us is that these animals must also be held accountable for what they do.\u00a0<\/p>\n Doubtless, the more sophisticated animalists among us\u2014academic philosophers particularly\u2014will object either to my position that there is <\/em>such a thing as animalism or to my claim that it is an evil.\u00a0 Equally doubtless is the line of defense that they will advance.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAnimalism,\u201d if it is a meaningful term at all, they will contend, is no evil, for there is no one or nothing that is harmed by it.\u00a0 Plants, unlike human and non-human animals, are not sentient.\u00a0 <\/em>A sentient being is a being that is capable of experiencing pleasure and pain.\u00a0 It is true that not all animals possess the same measure of sentience, and some animals, like lobsters, say,\u00a0seem to possibly experience very little if any sentience.\u00a0 Still, it is certain<\/em> that plants have no <\/em>sentience: they experience no pain.\u00a0<\/p>\n On its face, this line of argumentation appears plausible as far as it goes.\u00a0 The problem with it, however, is that it doesn\u2019t go far at all.\u00a0 It is easily met. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n First, this apology for animalism conflates the concepts of harm <\/em>and pain.\u00a0 <\/em>The two are not the same.\u00a0 Even if it is true that there are no plants that experience pain, this does not mean that it is impossible to harm them.\u00a0 A person who is cheated on by his spouse may never find out about his wife\u2019s infidelity.\u00a0 He is, then, not pained <\/em>by it.\u00a0 But he is harmed <\/em>by it, because whether he knows it or not, he has been betrayed, deceived, manipulated.\u00a0 It is only on the shallowest conception of harm that the case can be made that only if someone feels <\/em>pain can they be injured.<\/p>\n Thus, inasmuch as we destroy plants for the sake of animal well being, whether real or perceived, we do indeed harm them.\u00a0 That they cannot experience pain is immaterial.<\/p>\n Second, the utterances and deeds of environmentalists of all sorts suggest that they are well aware of the distinction between pain and harm.\u00a0 This explains why they fight tooth and nail for <\/em>wildlife reserves and the rest.\u00a0 Yes, they express concern for the animals that will be homeless in the event of deforestation.\u00a0 But there is also no shortage of concern expressed for the plants themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n That this is so can be seen from the following thought experiment.\u00a0<\/p>\n Imagine that you are walking along a tree-lined city street and pause to avail yourself of some shade provided by one of the Dogwoods.\u00a0 About fifty feet or so away, you notice a rowdy group of teenagers that has set its sights upon one of the other Dogwood trees. Unlike you, the teens aren\u2019t interested in seeking relief from the afternoon sun.\u00a0 Rather, they proceed to vandalize the tree by breaking off its branches.\u00a0 Surely, you will be appalled by this.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0<\/p>\n There is no question that, whether they were beating on a tree or a lamppost, you will find offensive the violent nature of the teens\u2019 activity.\u00a0 But beyond this, that it is a living thing\u2014an innocent tree\u2014that did nothing to provoke their outrageous conduct will also account for no small measure of your own outrage.<\/p>\n Third and finally, the argument from sentience pushes the animalist\u2019s problem back one more step and further exposes his bigotry.\u00a0 The animalist, it is now clear, is a \u201csentiencist.\u201d\u00a0 In fact, animalism is propped up by sentiencism.\u00a0 The latter is the doctrine that only those beings that can experience pleasure and pain are morally relevant, for only sentient beings can be harmed.\u00a0 Yet sentiencism is objectionable for all of the same reasons that animalism is wrong.<\/p>\n Hence, the counter-objection\u2014the argument from sentience\u2014is question-begging. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n If morality demands impartiality for all peoples and all animal species, then it is nothing more or less than sheer arbitrariness that stops us from extending that impartiality to plants as well.\u00a0 If all humans and animals have \u201crights,\u201d then plants have rights too.<\/p>\n It is high time that we recognize animalism and its sister vice, sentiencism, for the evils that they are.<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n orginally published at The New American\u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It hasn\u2019t been until the last half-of-a-century or so since we have discovered that up until that juncture, the human race had been trapped in moral darkness.\u00a0 With the advent of the 1960\u2019s, though, we gradually began to ascend from this cave, for it was then that we discovered that the institutional arrangements and modes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n