IntlForum
IntlForumEileen Crist, Ph.D. was one of 45 leading scholars, authors and activists who convened at The Great Hall of Cooper Union, New York City, on October 25-26, 2014, for the public presentation: “Techno-Utopianism and the Fate of the Earth.” Speakers discussed the profound impacts—environmental, economic and social—of runaway technological expansionism and cyber immersion; the tendency to see technology as the savior for all problems. For more info, see http://ifg.org/techno-utopia/program/ .
Eileen received her Bachelor’s from Haverford College in sociology in 1982 and her doctoral degree from Boston University in 1994, also in sociology, with a specialization in life sciences and society. She has been teaching at Virginia Tech in the Department of Science and Technology in Society since 1997. She is author of Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and Animal Mind. She is also coeditor of Gaia in Turmoil: Climate Change, Biodepletion, and Earth Ethics in an Age of Crisis, Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation, and most recently Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth. Eileen is author of numerous papers and contributor to the late journal Wild Earth. More about her work can be found on her website, eileencrist.com.
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29 Comments
@JurajHynek
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PMShe skopen out of my heart
@jeff8320
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PMHi Mr Cao!
@ellalia354
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PMAppreciating this
@VelhaGuardaTricolor
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PMWe just need to stop talking about this as if it was just an academic debate or worst still a matter of opinion.
We are talking hard core science.
So we need to start calling Anthropocentrism for what it is. A disease mankind has the potential to develop at some point in their lives. The same way we can catch malaria and die.
Tackling this disease should be at the very top of the WHO.
There should be triggers once humanity got rid of it, to prevent we ever contract it again.
Ecocentrism is not a choice, as much as healthy gums are not a choice over rotten teeth. One is healthy the other isn't.
We should be healthy.
There are economic and social ramifications to admitting this truth. That is why nobody can say it.
@alanhope8971
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PMIronically, this is one of the most anthropocentric ideologies I've ever heard.
@pedro-c4n
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PMHumanity first!
@hyungtaecf
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PMVeganism is speciesist. It only works having the anthropocentrism as a premise. No arguments make sense without a speciesist premise.
@manfer2434
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PMi jiggleing and twerking when i heard so hard to this song when i was , i need to twerk i cant stop it auuuggghhhh I NEED TO TWERK Edit: im being sent to a mental hospital whats that?"your being sent to a mental asylum" -🤓
@AlmostEthical
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PMAnthropocentrism expressed as numbers of different species of great apes:
Bonobos 20,000
Orangutans 100,000
Chimpanzees 300,000
Gorillas 300,000
Humans 8,000,000,000
And we think this is normal.
@falseprogress
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PM10:56 If you're concerned about landscapes lately, "clean" WIND ENERGY is the biggest ecological farce environmental groups have signed onto. The acceptance of such vast scenic blight signaled the end of serious preservation. You find out that when people NEED something, like energy, their values are quickly diluted. This doesn't even cover the growing noise and wildlife kills of Big Wind.
@VelhaGuardaTricolor
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PMTo call what we have now CIVILIZATION is in itself a fallacy, a self serving LABEL that just reinforces all that is wrong with this Dumb Anthropocentric and extremely violent and destructive Society in which we live in.
It is definitely not CIVIL. Or is just as civil as a cancer cell.
@reggiperry1366
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PMwhy always blame everything on the western society empires and slavery which was only recently abolished in some Islamic countries has been going on for thousands of years Buddhism and Jainism are probably the only religions that are not anthropocentric
@wabyjojohnston9606
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PMI’m like 10 minutes in and I’m already pumped to shoot a deer and burn down a rain forest to make room for a factory farm
@havenbastion
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PMHumans are clearly "superior" in every way that matters. Using our big brains to invent technologies, we can outdo any animal in any way. And as a matter of course whoever has the most power, humans or otherwise, will rule things for their own benefit primarily. This does not in any sense entail inherent harm to lesser creatures. Resources being for our use doesn't mean Exclusively for our use, and our uses include the good of everything around us anyhow. This appears to be turning into one big straw-man argument. If you want to argue against people MIS-using nature, that's not about anthropocentrism, that's about assholism, as seen through a lens of anthropology. "Sanctioning man's use of everything beneath him", again, does not imply harm. Attacking a tool or ideology without showing that it leads to the harms you attribute it, or caring to define it in a way that your audience is known to agree with, both render your argument meaningless.
@havenbastion
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PMBefore i get into the actual content, the title appears to be unnecessarily confrontational. We'll see..
Anthropocentrism puts us at the center of everything, it doesn't mean anything not in the center shouldn't be also well-treated and well cared for. It's a tool, like eugenics, and like any tool that doesn't aim for a particular goal, can be used for good or ill.
@CharlieMarno100
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PMYes!
@itoldyouso9566
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PM… on western civilaztion…. then I stoped. Sorry.
When you think someone is going far, but then they find a way to say "white civilization".
All the terrible anthropocentric cultures, buddhism, islam, comunism or hinduism are much anthropocentric as christianism. But criticize them are out of question. Enough.
@JackMosel
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PMBravo. http://www.h2development.com We're #onIt.
@janegene1723
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PMThank you! Be Vegan!! Respect the other Earthlings!!
@trinanomaly8371
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PMIt just has to.
@trinanomaly8371
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PMWow. Just. Wow. Brilliantly put into words.
This has to make a difference.
@meerkat1954
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PMWell I mean the overall point is spot on… but saying Western culture is somehow more anthropocentric is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. The Chinese are world renowned for their cruelty to every known species of animal life, and they are currently driving the market for endangered species parts that is killing off so many animals globally. Western culture is where humane societies first appeared, where cruelty to animals legislation was first enacted… I just have to shake my head at otherwise good people who drink the neomarxist koolaid that the problems of common HUMANITY can somehow be laid at the feet of men (patriarchy), straight people, white people (colonizers), or Westerners in particular. The fact is, the whole human race needs to learn how to treat animals with respect. Every single person of every single creed, colour, sex and race on this planet. Nobody is a saint. Everybody is a grave sinner.
@webncyber
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PMDear Eileen Crist, I know you guys have one main target and that is to take down and attack Christian belief and Bible in general, but just as a Christian point of view no one owns the world its just given to everyone to live in it. God is the only owner of everything, but yes humans are created in His image and that doesn't mean that we can treat the environment only for our benefits in selfish way. The biggest anthropocentrism groups I can think of are the politicians, the big corporations and religious leaders who have nothing to do with the real God of the bible, and they only think of their won good, self and how can they make more money in any way is possible, and that even includes killing of a human if they have to.
@williamwells835
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PMAh, conscience. Comes with the territory of our evolutionary story, to perhaps propel us upward and onward.
"Our lives are startlingly moral. There's never an instant's truce between virtue and vice." — Henry David Thoreau
@williamwells835
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PM"Anthropocentrism": Euphemism for self-centredness, — "self"-ishness. It's a moral
issue for we alone, the self-aware animal who by far most inborn be — with innate capacity to develop a conscience.
@williamwells835
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PM— Henry David Thoreau
@williamwells835
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PM. . . To cooperate on the higher level is a harmony inaudible to men, as if it were not. . . . What a miracle to behold were we to see through each others eyes for an instant.
@williamwells835
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PM"Every man is the lord of a realm beside which
the earthly empire of the czar is but a petty state. . .
"We can cooperate on a higher level, as well as a lower.
Both mean getting our living together. . . .
"Rather than political economy, we need first learn the economy of living —
the art of life. "
—Henry David Thoreau
You know . . . .
@williamwells835
02/20/2025 - 12:26 PMAdjustment to last entry:
1st stanza . . . Nor that, lo, — that's enough without we, . . .
Last stanza . . . what might we call — all expansive, magnanimous,
"All All in All".