this was part of Curtis's dialogue response to Jennifer about eating meat, religion, and country > what we realy need to do is abandon our antropocenteric > tendencys........ i don't know what country the rest of you are from ....but > "my" country has been the most destructive force this planet has ever > known. > > i don't belive that christianity is the problem........it is mearly > a symptom of the problem.. While i agree with curtis in spirit, i think we must really examine any possiblity of abandoning anthropocentrism. we can never abandon anthropocentrism. we will always see the world through human eyes. while i strongly believe in work by joanna macy and john seed in their council of all beings where humans are "taught" by acting to "feel" what it is like to be other species, we still place inherent biases in this plays. x-ianity is not the problem. lack of humility is. we must be humble no matter what we believe or do. that seems to be the key to me. we can never be something which we aren't. slag away peace, jamey >From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wed Oct 12 23:43:11 MDT 1994 >From [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wed Oct 12 23:43:10 1994 Received: from anu.anu.edu.au (anu.anu.edu.au [130.56.4.1]) by csf.Colorado.EDU (8.6.9/8.6.9/CNS-3.5) with SMTP id XAA22935 for <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Wed, 12 Oct 1994 23:43:09 -0600 Received: from cscgpo.anu.edu.au by anu.anu.edu.au (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA13178; Thu, 13 Oct 94 15:45:24 EST Received: from [150.203.144.13] by cscgpo.anu.edu.au (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AB11462; Thu, 13 Oct 94 15:48:01 EST Date: Thu, 13 Oct 94 15:48:00 EST Message-Id: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Lorraine Elliott) X-Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: ECOFEM digest 42 Jamey wrote: >we can never abandon anthropocentrism. we will always see the world through >>human eyes. - jamey's view is what Warwick Fox calls the 'anthropocentric fallacy', conflating the identity of the perceiving subject with the content of what is being perceived. Of course we can only see the world through human eyes (after all, we are human) - anthropocentrism is not about 'who' does the perceiving (except in its trivial sense) - it is about human-centredness, the 'unwarranted differential treatment of other beings on the basis that they do not belong to our own species' (See Eckersley (environmentalism and political theory, p.55). In other words, even though we are humans and see things through human eyes, we can cultivate a sense of consciousness that takes account of and equally values other species and thus overcome our anthropocentrism. Lorraine __________________________________________________________________________ | Dr Lorraine Elliott Phone: (61 6) 249 0589 | | Department of Political Science Fax: (61 6) 249 5054 | | Faculty of Arts | | Australian National University | | Canberra, ACT 0200 | | AUSTRALIA | |__________________________________________________________________________|