Anthropocentrism
.. the 'center' of what ?

There has been much made of the "Anthropic Principal" lately.  It's an interesting version of the universe and humanity's relationship to it, purpose in it.   I can't say for a fact, but it seems that it grew out of trying to blend the physics recognition that the physical constants of energy/matter would not have produced the universe - or us - if they weren't at the special values that they exists as (while there is no reason to disallow that they have other random values), and the Creationist view of God's plan for the universe to exist at all.

Now I am a spiritual person, so that reasoning is very appealing to me.  And with the Integrity cept that dimensions and states of existence can take many alternative forms - because 'dimensionality' in the strictest sense can transform readily in many ways - I like it but am reluctant to embrace it without reservation.  Affirmative logic contemplates that 'cause' and 'purpose' and 'result' are intimately bound ... existence is "proof" that there is a Plan which calls for 'existence' to "exist"...in order to serve that higher plan.  Cautious logic follows Daniel Quinn's reasoning in "Ishmael", where it's reasoned that any species, any sentience, could rationally claim that the purpose of the rest of the universe is/was to produce and support it's existence.  And what of the life forms yet to evolve or emerge?  We may feel good thinking that we are the pinnacle, but what if we're only the precursors?

I'm not sure there are definitive pragmatic answers.  It seems that there can only be opinion.  There can only be faith.

Yet, the cepts do go to very pragmatic issues:  depending on what a person or a society sees as the state-of-reality, there is an impact on how people and groups behave in the world.  If the stance is taken that one life or a group of lives is superior or privileged - for what ever reason - then the rest of existence can be treated as cavalierly as any particular Culture Story permits.... or rejects.

The question takes on imperative proportions as planet and people become more commercially intertwined and culturally squeezed together.  The question takes on imperative proportions when the repercussions of actions taken today can impact us immediately, instead of later or never.

A recent discussion on Gaia-Preservation Coalition (Gaia-PC) http://www.envirolink.org/orgs/gaia-pc focussed on what most accurate definition of "anthropocentric" is?    Depending on how much egotism the label is supposed to represent, places a better understanding on why people tend to act selfishly and live with only local or immediate concerns in mind.  For Gaia-PC, it is a matter of trying to understand why human self-centeredness is so entrenched in the human psyche that it's difficult to get people to recognize that life is 'coexistence', not 'dominance, for my benefit only'.  Once this is understood, it portends some way of changing it, in order to accommodate something other than driving all life except human food resources, to extinction. 

I chimed in on the conversation with the following remarks:

"I agree with Steve Kurtz's remarks, and it seems really strange to me that discussion has resorted to fine-tune re-defining 'anthropocentric' in order to get the message across that humans are part of the fabric of life on Earth, and have profound impacts on the rest of the world, whether people are alert and cognizant of those affects or not.

We don't talk about young children struggling over who can hold and play with a certain toy as "toddler-centric" behavior. We simply recognize that attention and concern can be 'focussed' in a being's life. 'Ego' and functional-coherence-unity are an aspect of every entity that exists ... it is unavoidable. Systems 'behave' according to their physical construction to behave in certain ways. Some are very limited. Some are less so.

Humans have the awareness capacity to learn and recognize that an apple plucked off a tree could nourish me, but the co-effect is to conditionally deprive another person or life-form of that particular nourishment.

Several billions of years of life-forms have struggled with the cyclic ebbing and flowing of narrow and limited 'life-spaces' perceptions interacting together. We are unavoidably part of that scenario and process. But, not 'inescapably' so.

Put all the 'morality' issues aside. Unclutter the "kindness" and "good or bad" notions about how we "should or shouldn't treat" other life forms.   Human lives aren't just what we see in the mirror or feel as our 'bodies'....and that is the lesson, the message, that has to be understood by our - and future - sapiens and evolving 'anthropes'.

There is no completely perfectly individual "us" inside our thoughts, and some "else" or "rest of the world" out there somewhere. The distinction is real, not illusory, BUT, in only in the loosest sense. Whatever "me" there is in this world requires the existence of everything else all about, in order to accurately define "me".

Part of who "I" am - , for example - includes Gaia-pc and the interactions, behaviors, concerns, thoughts et al of me sitting here and reacting to the 'extended behavior system" that is my life. No different than my right hand and fingers reaching over to touch my left arm or run my fingers through my hair. What my left arm 'does" affects the 'life-space' and behavior-space of my right arm.

"We" humans are therefore part of a 'whole-body' also, whether we ever took time to amend and coordinate our "local" behaviors with the rest of our "body" or not. An "arm" is not expected to be anything but an arm. A person must enact its life as a 'person' ... there is precious little option in this regard. But there is outrageous option to enlarge ourselves, to do new behaviors based on expanding our 'life-space' awareness to include the rest of the more incredible 'body' we are - also unavoidably - part of:  Gaia.

Forget the fact that we are physical/territorial/egoistic entities as separate people; focus and teach that every "I" doesn't end at the pseudo-limit boundary of our skin. Every life, as the theologian Martin Buber enunciated, is an "I-Thou". It includes that batch of oxygen molecules floating 50 feet away from me that I haven't met/encountered yet, but I will breath in in about 10 minutes, and so sustain my "life". It includes you and everyone else I know. My life is my own, and yet not. And I have responsibility to, with and for it all."

. December 1998

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