Placing Humans First Is Not Pure

The most harmful myths are those we don’t see. Human exceptionalism—the idea that people are essentially separate from and superior to the remainder of nature—is a type of myths. It’s embedded in non secular doctrine, textbooks, political campaigns, promoting, and on a regular basis language. This worldview is just not hidden as a result of it’s obscure—it’s hidden as a result of it’s all over the place, taken without any consideration, and barely named or questioned. That’s exactly the place its energy lies. I believe human exceptionalism is probably the most highly effective unstated perception of our time.

But what struck me most in writing The Arrogant Ape was simply how completely this perception has infiltrated science—an establishment meant to problem our biases, not reinforce them.

In my discipline of primatology, as an example, we routinely evaluate the intelligence of captive chimpanzees—raised in extremely restricted, human-made environments—with that of totally autonomous Western people. And then we conclude that people are cognitively superior. But that’s not a good comparability. Imagine testing a baby raised in isolation and concluding they haven’t any empathy or need to cooperate. When we observe our closest dwelling family members in richer socioecological contexts, we witness striking prosocial behavior.

When we measure the world with a ruler made for people, different species inevitably come up quick.

Or take analysis on self-awareness. For many years, we believed solely people and some different primate species might acknowledge themselves in mirrors, a supposed benchmark of self-awareness. But the mirror take a look at is biased towards imaginative and prescient. Dogs expertise the world primarily through scent. They go an olfactory mirror test with ease—demonstrating self-awareness of their dominant sensory modality.

When we measure the world with a ruler made for people, different species inevitably come up quick.

Yet we persist in treating the human mind because the blueprint for intelligence and consciousness. We assume that minds are particular solely insofar as they resemble our minds; that there’s a hierarchy of mindedness, with us standing comfortably on the apex. Evolutionary diagrams are inclined to reinforce this view, depicting a neat, linear trajectory: micro organism, crops, worms, fishes, rats, canines, monkeys … all the best way as much as us. Even our taxonomic title—Primates, from Primata, which means “of the first rank”—betrays the identical assumption.

This isn’t simply dangerous evolutionary considering—it’s a profound failure of creativeness. And its penalties are far-reaching. Human exceptionalism helps the idea that the Earth exists solely for human profit, lowering different species to mere sources. This mindset rationalizes exploitation not simply of different animals and ecosystems, but additionally of other human beings who’re deemed “sub-human.” But once we expose and problem this fable, we don’t simply unsettle our assumptions—we open the door to higher science and deeper relationships with the remainder of the dwelling world.

Many folks deal with human exceptionalism as a pure conclusion. But current research in developmental and cross-cultural psychology recommend in any other case. Beliefs in human exceptionalism aren’t an inevitable end result of our biology—they as an alternative replicate a cultural worldview, one largely formed and codified by dominant Western traditions.

When researchers introduced American kids and adults with moral dilemmas—similar to saving one human or a number of animals—adults overwhelmingly favored people, even when the trade-off concerned 100 canines or pigs. Children didn’t. They typically selected to avoid wasting a number of animals over one human, valuing human and nonhuman lives way more equally. This sample has now been replicated in multiple European countries. In such Western contexts, kids are additionally way more seemingly than adults to evaluate it mistaken to hurt animals for meals, and fewer more likely to ignore details about the minds of animals sometimes thought of meals.

These findings recommend that the anthropocentric ethical frameworks generally held by adults are usually not the organic default. They emerge over time by means of cultural studying—notably as kids turn out to be more and more uncovered to the methods different types of life are used and valued in our society.

Children typically selected to avoid wasting a number of animals over one human.

Research throughout human cultures additionally reveals that human exceptionalism is far from a universal view. Many Indigenous and non-Western data methods reject such pure hierarchies. They acknowledge different animals, crops, rivers, forests, and mountains as kin: sentient, agentive beings embedded in a shared ethical and ecological world. Far from immature or naïve, these are subtle cosmologies grounded in millennia of statement, relationship, and reciprocity with the dwelling world. Within these frameworks, the notion that people are separate or superior merely doesn’t maintain.

Writing The Arrogant Ape launched me to numerous different cosmologies and traditions that reject the ideology of human exceptionalism. These worldviews don’t merely critique the ideology—they mannequin methods of dwelling in higher stability with the remainder of the pure world (as only one instance, research reveal that Indigenous-managed lands typically have equal or higher biodiversity than formally protected areas). Encountering these different relationships uncovered the narrowness of my very own upbringing and schooling. And it made me conscious of the cultural and historic forces—particularly colonialism and capitalism—that helped globalize the parable of human exceptionalism underneath the guise of progress and science.

If we see ourselves as separate from nature, we deal with the Earth not as a neighborhood we belong to, however as a set of sources to extract, handle, or “fix.” Recognizing this modified how I take into consideration the ecological disaster. It’s simple accountable world warming on fossil fuels, industrial extra, or political inaction. But we don’t simply must reform these establishments—we want a brand new relationship with the dwelling world, and a unique story about who we’re inside it.

Some immediately keep that people are the most evolutionarily “successful” species. Success, on this view, is measured by ecological dominance—our capability to unfold throughout the globe whereas manipulating and controlling our environments. But in actuality, probably the most resilient ecosystems—and probably the most sustainable methods of dwelling—are usually not constructed on domination, however on interdependence. What if cooperation have been the school by which evolutionary “success” was measured and achieved? In ecology, cooperation and mutualism are simply as prevalent and important to life as competitors and predation. Yet recent research shows that greater than two-thirds of the publications within the journal Ecology research “competition,” whereas lower than 2 % examine “cooperation.” We’ve constructed our scientific fashions round wrestle and individualism, though life on earth is held collectively by relationships and co-evolution.

The COVID-19 pandemic laid naked the hazards of this worldview. It seemingly emerged, partially, due to human encroachment into wild habitats. And but, media narratives celebrated human ingenuity in vaccine development whereas ignoring the systemic exploitation that made the outbreak attainable. Militarized language—the “war” or “battle” towards the virus—forged nature because the enemy to be conquered and destroyed as soon as once more. Similar considering surfaces in local weather discussions, the place technofixes like photo voltaic geoengineering or colonizing Mars promise salvation by means of additional domination.

These fixes depend on the identical logic of management: that we are able to outmaneuver the planet’s limits as an alternative of studying to reside inside them. They guarantee us that humanity will prevail in any case, however they echo the very mindset that introduced us to the brink within the first place! We are usually not above nature—we’re expressions of it. Our our bodies, minds, and cultures developed in deep entanglement with the earth over thousands and thousands of years. To think about ourselves as exempt from ecological constraints is just not foresight; it’s delusion. This is to not say that technical improvements haven’t any position in addressing local weather change. But I believe a few of them are greatest understood as new—and arguably extra highly effective—types of human exceptionalism.

We typically conflate dominance with success, mastery with real understanding. But actual perception comes from humility—acknowledging what we don’t know, listening to others (together with different species), and recognizing the boundaries of our typical frameworks. Writing The Arrogant Ape was humbling in the very best sense. It taught me that seeing ourselves clearly—not as rulers, however as contributors in a bigger internet—is likely one of the most pressing scientific and ethical challenges of our time.

Lead picture: captures_by_ap / Shutterstock

• Christine Webb

  Posted on September 3, 2025

  Christine Webb is an assistant professor within the Department of Environmental Studies at New York University, the place she is a part of the animal research program. She is a broadly skilled primatologist with experience in social habits, cognition, and emotion. She works with nonhuman primates in numerous settings and collaborates with students from the social sciences and humanities to reimagine the position of science within the rising cost to grant ethical standing to different animals. Her work has been lined by widespread shops together with The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic, and the BBC.