Human (n. and adj.), now obs.
A human being, a person; a member of the species Homo sapiens or other equally extinct species of the genus Homo (related: anthropos, lat. animal rationale, AGr. zoon logon ekhon).
Humans were distinguished from their nearest primate relatives principally by skeletal modifications adapting them to erect bipedalism and by their greater cranial capacity.
Often used with the (definite article)
That which was human or which related to humanity. The average or typical human being; humans collectively, the human race.
Scientific definition and classification
A human was a bipedal hominin characterized by having a higher and vertical forehead compared with earlier hominins. The brain volume was about 1,400 cc. The teeth and jaw were smaller and the chin was prominent. Humans were the hominins capable of creating and using complex tools, solving problems by sense and reasoning, using symbols and language, and creating complex social structures.
Usage
Humans referred to themselves as “people”, especially when comparing themselves with (other) “animals” or “machines”.
- Characteristics
It took humans a long time to develop a sense of their own historicity. The fact that we can now look back at them as a species that is now extinct makes their evolution from the first primates to early hominins and hominids to homo a quite impressive but also tortuous journey. The other evolutionary development, namely that in its final stages there was only one subspecies of the variety of homo that survived, the one that it referred to itself as “homo sapiens (sapiens)”, has long been seen as “proof” of its “exceptionality”, even though there might be much more mundane reasons for its sole survival like climate change, disease or (a thesis that was strongly contested by the survivors) genocide. In any case, in their 30,000 evolution, homo sapiens not only succeeded in adapting to their environment through ever more sophisticated “techniques” and “technologies”, they also managed to colonise almost the entire surface of their planet. They even became, like the microbes that first started the chemical processes that lead to the planet called “Earth” developing a “hydrosphere”, an “atmosphere”, and a “biosphere”, which ended up supporting a huge variety of organic life forms, major agents of transformation at a planetary level by adding another sphere, a “technosphere”, to the planet’s structure. It is believed that it is precisely this evolutionary “success” that led to homo’s eventual demise and to the collapse of its survival structures called “civilisations”. These civilisations (or “cultures”) were exteriorised and materialised forms of what homo referred to as their “consciousness” – a form of “self-awareness” able to transcend the limitations of the life span of individual members of the species through forms of communication, transmission and inscription.
It is not quite clear what prompted this extraordinary step and achievement in the history of “natural” evolution. Some say it was due to human “bipedalism”, the erect posture, that allowed standing and moving on two legs that “liberated” the upper extremities, which developed into “arms” with “hands” and “fingers”, and which allowed for holding and manipulating objects that therefore became “instruments” and “tools” for transforming materials – which is also seen as the origin of “culture”. This, in turn, transformed humans’ “way of life” from simple primate “hordes” into more and more organised groups, communities and “societies” (see below).
Another thing that the upright posture allowed for is the development of a comparatively large brain size for this species, which in turn favoured the development of more complex cognitive abilities, usually referred to as “thought” or “intelligence”. The “price” to pay for the increased brain and head size it is believed was that human cubs (usually referred to as “babies”) had to be born prematurely in order not to endanger the survival of their mothers giving birth through too small a birth canal. As a result, offspring were characterised by what was referred to as “neoteny” – a prolonged period of helplessness in neonates compared to other mammals, and which required many years’ of “care” and a “social” organisation that allowed for long periods of “parenting”. Parenting roles were usually distributed along gender and age faultlines: mothers doing the majority of rearing and “educational” work, together with older females who due to their social “usefulness”, tended to survive older males. The role of the “fathers” was mostly one of protection and provision of food. At a social level this most often led to a form of organisation called “family” based on the more or less monogamous cohabitation of one or more females with usually one, dominant, male and their offspring.
A striking characteristic of humans was their “nakedness” (one of their kind even referred to his own species as “the naked ape”). It is believed that humans probably lost their fur as the result of an adaptation to new habitats (from wooded to steppe) and climate warming. Again, there was a price to pay for this evolutionary process, namely that humans needed “artificial” protection against environmental phenomena like rain and sunshine, which led to the development of “clothes”. The use of clothes is also connected to a change in diet, which developed from mostly plant-based to carnivore and later omnivore. The hunting and killing of animals in hordes provided the kind of fur “coats” to protect human bodies and also served as symbols (“fetishes” or “trophies”) of human superiority over other animals. As this dominance grew a major transformation in life style and social organisation led to “domesticating” and “breeding” certain animal species and also to “harnessing” their power. This also led to the transformation of the vegetal landscape through tilling, sowing of seeds and harvesting – an activity referred to as “agriculture” – which gradually became able to sustain the ever-growing number of humans and their geographic spread.
Clothes, agriculture, herding and breeding were just some forms of “technology” invented by humans to master their environment (often referred to as “nature” and to be distinguished from the human-dominated sphere called “culture”). As more time became available for activities not directly related to basic subsistence more and more manual “tools” were invented, making ever more sophisticated use of the already mentioned development of “hands”. These “instruments” like tools for hammering, cutting, projecting etc, apart from affording the development of “techniques” and providing “extensions” or “prostheses” of human hands and other extremities and organs, also served as protective “shields” as well as both defensive and aggressive “weapons”. But there were also other “tools” not designed for material transformation which gradually became most characteristic for humans. These were all based on “symbolic” and hence at least partially “immaterial” activities. The prime example here is what was called “language”. Communication was of course not a uniquely human invention – on the contrary, virtually all other species had ways of using their various “sensoria” to make sense of their environments and also to a certain extent share it with others. However, what the human species maybe discovered by chance and subsequently developed to a unique level of “sophistication” was a way of making sense that also and systematically functioned in the “absence” of material tracks and traces, and was purely based on a transformation of materiality into immaterial or “psychic” signs. This added an almost infinite number of layers of “meaning” that by being shared through an agreed “code” (called “language”) led to a different level of “understanding” often referred to as “consciousness” (a kind of higher “mental” awareness of their environment and themselves that also went beyond their physical “presence”, affording an increased ability of “projection” and “remembering”).
This non-physical level of symbolic activity that allowed for consciousness, and which was based on a process of (mental) “interiorisation”, usually led to “self-awareness”, and combined with the extensive tool-making abilities of the species, translated into social, i.e. shared, practices like “drawing”, “singing” or “praying” – practices also used to differentiate between individual members of the species through “specialisation”, often with the effect of creating hierarchies among them. However, again there was a price to pay for these evolutionary advantages (mostly understood as “progress”), namely the development of an “unconscious”. Consciousness came with an awareness of finality and the anxieties, desires and questions this raised. It also came with “repression” (a kind of wilful “forgetting”) leading to strategies of avoidance. While it is safe to assume that all species have avoidance strategies for finality and other “instincts”, higher-level consciousness and its symbolic-semiotic transmission technologies (often referred to as “media”), humans were able to reflect on, transform and share their “experience” and thus to develop, accumulate and pass on “knowledge” to other species members, sometimes even long after their individual deaths – in particular as soon as more sophisticated “recording” systems became available, especially material encoding techniques called “painting” or “writing”.
The unconscious and the uncontrollable psychic activities it produced, especially “dreams”, became the “repositories” of repressed anxieties, desires and instincts whose repression was necessary to overcome the immediate memories of other life forms of animality deemed “lower” and “crude”, in order to create and maintain “higher” levels of (self-)consciousness. The downside was that by repressing these now prohibited (or “abjected”) levels of animality, instinctiveness and affectivity were not really defeated or expunged but merely “stored” out or reach of consciousness. In fact, they were sometimes made even more powerful through repeated repression because of their continued, “strangely” absent, presence that led to a constant reminder of them in barely disguised form, often referred to as “haunting”. Both psychic and external stimuli were constantly able to “remind” humans of the repressed and call for renewed and intensified psychic defence mechanisms sometimes leading to compulsively repetitive forms of behaviour considered “pathological” (including auto-destructive mental states like “depression” and behaviour like suicide, for example).
The undeniable success of the human species, however, can be seen in the development of ever more sophisticated social “structures”, more efficient agricultural technologies in combination with the harnessing of biochemical and genetic processes, civilizational developments like sanitation, the development of social institutions and medical care systems allowing for a dramatic reduction in still births and a substantial rise in life expectancy (even though all these were not equally distributed across the species at a global level, due to big differences in service availability, quality and lifestyle depending on geographical, socioeconomic and political factors often mapped along the dividing line between a privileged “global North” and a disadvantaged “global South”, a disparity in wealth historically explicable by the effects of colonialism, imperialism and “extractivism” in mainly African and South-American and some South-Asian regions by their Northern “oppressors”). Economically and environmentally these civilizational achievements, however, were often dearly bought through what humans referred to as “industrialisation” and “modernity” – both highly contested processes or “epochs” driven by “Western” colonial powers especially located on the “continent” called “Europe” (later superseded by “North America”).
Industrialisation meant a number of things: more and more people moved from agriculture into the mass production of goods in factories in or around cities leading to a concentration of housing, sanitation and “civic” facilities and a life style increasingly structured by “consumerism”. This process of “modernisation” linked to technological and social progress also led to the creation of public and increasingly “compulsory” education and to a rise of “literacy”. It also generated new “media” like newspapers, together with a “reading culture” and a “public sphere” for the liberal exchange of ideas, closely linked with the development of more “democratic” political systems. Later other “mass media” like film, television and most recently the “internet”, together with the establishment of dedicated “leisure” time and a “work-life balance” produced an increasingly “individualist” self-understanding of humans and led to calls for increased “personal freedom” and “universal and inalienable human rights”.
However, all these developmental feats did not really solve the important “metaphysical” (some would say “spiritual”) problems the human species had created for itself. The question what it “meant” to be human was being asked with more and more urgency, especially as any spiritual answers were becoming incredible due to scientific and sociological developments and a generally accepted “materialism”, which explained life and human “nature” exclusively in biochemical and psychosocial terms. This caused many “identitarian” crises since it was becoming increasingly difficult to define human “nature”, humans’ “essential difference” or “identity” against other biological and geological entities (“nonhuman” animals, plants, microbes, minerals etc.), as well as against material and increasingly “immaterial” (i.e. “virtual”) technological objects and processes (“machines”, digital “objects”, software based on “information”, “data” and “algorithms”). There was in fact no agreement on what made humans “special” and what, in turn, justified their “exceptional” positionality and hence no real “legitimation” for the absolute power over “planetary resources” humans had assumed.
Most often used as justification for human exceptionality, however, were their “cultural technologies”, like “philosophy”, their “science”, and maybe in particular their “art”, “architecture” and “literature”, seen as undeniable achievements and as signs of human aspirations towards perfection and continued moral improvement (a set of values often referred to as “humanism”), as well as shields against all forms of natural and human-made adversity. These “evils”, as they were called, continued to haunt and mire human civilizational and social progress: violence was a particular problem, whose origin could not be adequately explained by humanists, and which had been causing wars, immense suffering of both humans and nonhumans, as well as an unbelievable squandering of resources including the destruction of natural and cultural “habitats”. Most importantly, however, was that the underlying principle of humans’ “modern” economy and its associated “liberal” politics was that of competition – a distribution of the “means of production” functioning according to principles referred to as “capitalist”. It is true that the concentration of capital in the hands of “entrepreneurs” and the specialisation of a “workforce” greatly improved “productivity” and lifted a growing number of humans out of basic “poverty”, but the price for this was a very unevenly distributed access to privileges, “wealth” and power, as well as a growing psychological “alienation” of humans from their immediate natural and social “environment”. The principle of competitiveness was also turned into a general social principle which led to generalised mistrust, a decline in many previous forms of “solidarity” and to aggressive variants of “individualism”.
One fundamental and possibly fatal error the human species committed was that quite early on in their endeavour to systematically understand their metaphysical position in what they referred to as the “universe” or the “cosmos”, was to think of themselves as being within a triangular relationship of distinction between animals and machines (a triangle until quite recently, dominated by a fourth and “transcendent” entity called “God”). This resulted in a number of so-called “binary oppositions” (mutually exclusive categories) that were nevertheless unstable and ultimately untenable, and which caused all kinds of misconceptions and violence. The distinction human/animal was used to justify the exploitation and lawful killing (slaughter, hunt, medical experiments etc.) of animals based on the declared superiority of humans over (nonhuman) animals, despite the fact that biologically, human bodies were clearly classifiable as “mammals” and therefore part of the animal “kingdom”. To radically distinguish human animals from nonhuman animals, and the unlawful killing of humans (“murder”) from the lawful putting-to-death of nonhuman animals, a spiritual or religious reasoning was used that granted humans “souls”, “spirits”, “minds” or “consciousness”, denied nonhuman animals. However, the resulting violence against nonhuman animals could also be used against some humans as long as these were deemed to be or to act “like” animals (i.e. if they were not corresponding to constructed social norms).
The other boundary, namely between humans and machines, objects or technology more generally, was in fact equally “leaky” for a number of reasons: in the process of trying to establish an “abyss” between humans and animals, both human and animal bodies in fact came to be considered as “machines” (according to a belief system called “mechanism”). The idea was that some higher power (i.e. “God”, see above) with superior engineering knowledge had devised biological entities thought to be “natural” and “alive” which were functioning according to mechanistic i.e. technical principles, like “clockwork”. However, the special ingredient making humans superior in their mental capacities to all other “creatures” could only be explained by some immaterial i.e. spiritual or “divine” element not reducible to biology or physics. As humans began to develop more and more “sophisticated” technologies and self-moving objects that were increasingly able to replicate processes that used to be thought to be sole domain of the human “mind” (i.e. “thought”, “intelligence”, “consciousness” etc.) the boundary between human and machine and the associated differences between biological or “organic” life and mineral or “inorganic” (“dead”) matter also began to break down. The result was a great conceptual “mess” which caused a lot of anxiety in humans (especially of the “humanist” sort) producing more and more desperate attempts at finding new ways to consolidate human power in the face of this erosion of human power and the “haunting” return of both its repressed “animality” and “technology”.
As a result of its continued “narcissistic” obsession with its own identity and “exceptionality”, the human species was ultimately not able to rid itself of certain endemic violent tendencies, which can be seen in what humans called “history” and which, if read between the lines, is basically a recording system of processes of repressive practices, colonialism, slavery, war, “catastrophes” and killing, often reinterpreted as “cultural” achievements (scientific “breakthroughs”, inventions and other outcomes of “creative” thought and practice). This in the end led to the demise of an undeniable “talented” and often quite “promising” species but one which tended to be motivated by hubris and arrogance and a lack of “compassion” and altruism (see section 2, below).
It is therefore despite all their best “intentions”, which can be seen in social inventions, “ideas” and practices like “law” and “justice”, an appreciation of “beauty”, practices of “mindfulness” and “benevolence”, that humans contributed to their own disappearance and the general deterioration of the “biosphere” of the planet. What was particularly curious maybe was that while “justice” was an idea or even and ideal universally recognised as one of the highest and most “noble” principles of social organisation among humans, social practice in “applying” this principle through self-imposed rules and regulations referred to as “laws” almost always inevitably betrayed the very principle of justice. In this sense, humans must necessarily have experienced their own disappearance as a huge “cosmological” act of injustice, which at least some of them desperately sought to either redress or overcome, before their final demise and extinction, unfortunately without much avail.
2 Reasons for human decline and extinction
Overpopulation
What hastened the decline and the eventual extinction of the last homo species was, ironically, its evolutionary and reproductive success. Some even compared its spread and its adaptation to every single natural habitat of the planet, its thriving but also its predatory and destructive behaviour to that of a “virus”.
The species developed from an originally nomadic existence (“hunter-gatherers”) to a sedentary one (establishing “agriculture” and breeding nonhuman animal species to exploit). In its final stages it accelerated migratory patterns due to economic, socio-political and climatic disparities, usually involving large flows from the “Global South” towards the more affluent and temperate Northern parts of the planet – flows that were of course violently resisted and “channelled” elsewhere.
Increasingly, the motivation for migration shifted from political and economic reasons towards “ecological” motivations as more and more parts of the planet became unhospitable and uninhabitable due to climate change and “global warming” caused by the economic and extractive activities of humans. As the species began to realise that it had become a major, maybe even the dominant, “geological” agent responsible for irreversible atmospheric changes and the extinction of more and more nonhuman species, it had no better idea than “celebrating” its power by naming its final period (or “epoch”) the “Anthropocene”. In choosing a geological period name based on the root of “anthropos” it explicitly recognised the responsibility of a very specific part of humans and human ways of life referred to as “Western”, developed from its ancient Greek roots to its late European and Anglo-American outcome.
Technoeuphoria
In their relationship to their own evolutionary development, humans eventually came to blame themselves for creating what some referred to as their own “successor species”. What was understood as “technology” (at least in Western but also globalised “international” culture) started off as “tool” or “instrument” serving humans to extend and intensify their power over their “environment” (which included “materials”, but also other species and other humans, as well). Some would even claim that the relationship between human development and these “instruments” was so closely related that one might argue that it was “technology” that constituted the essence of what it meant to be “human”. Humans and their technologies were seen as “co-evolving” in their increasing “sophistication” and their power. Others, on the other hand, saw the “rise” of technology as a danger for human autonomy and as connected to more and more violent and destructive ways of “resolving” conflicts or “wars”, and as a major driver of ecological degradation and resource depletion.
Humans who referred to themselves as “progressive” tended to see a strong correlation between technological development and the improvement of social and individual living conditions. In fact, this was identified as the very “engine” of the period called “modernity” where humans believed in something they called “future”, to designate times that remained “to come”; and it was technology that was supposed to make sure this time would actually arrive. Nevertheless, as technologies became more and more powerful and “invasive” to an extent where they were threatening to outperform humans even at the immaterial level of “intelligence” and “cognition” and as, at the same time, the biochemical living conditions of organic life were deteriorating because of technological development and its associated “modern” lifestyles, human opinion began to split into what could be called “techno-sceptic” and “techno-euphorian” visions (or “world views”) regarding the future.
The techno-euphorians, who also referred to themselves as “transhumanists”, continued to believe that only further technological development could ensure the survival of “intelligent” life even if that meant that humans were to be replaced by inorganic “successor” species (often referred to as “artificial intelligence” or simply AI). Homo, they believed, was now solely responsible for the survival of intelligent life not only on the planet called “Earth” but possibly in the entire universe, since the (admittedly rather restricted kind of) space travel that humans and their technology had been capable of had not provided any evidence of other forms of life and intelligence elsewhere. Some therefore advocated replacing the biosphere as much as possible with a “technosphere” and find “engineering” solutions for planetary and atmospheric problems. Others believed that their planet was beyond repair and poured more and more resources into ways of discovering, reaching and colonising “exoplanets” believed to be “out there” in the universe.
This led to a global fight for the necessary resources either to preserve, “re-engineer” or to disseminate human and nonhuman, organic and inorganic life. Technosceptics usually acknowledged that some progress had been made by technology and that technology functioned not only as an “instrument” to serve human interests, but they tended to place technology in its wider social, economic and political context. First of all, technology understood as a way to control one’s environment was not a human “invention” but was instead already developed by much older nonhuman species. What was problematic, rather, was the particular way humans had used technology to distance themselves from and insulate themselves against their natural “habitats” and, in doing so, had depleted resources and colonised spaces that were not really “theirs”. What these technosceptics in the end criticised was the idea that in their final stages some humans would even go so far as to “outsource” their most intimate and most vital characteristics to artificial forms of agency (like so-called “social media”, “social robots” and so on), which led not to the creation of ever easier and more comfortable lifestyles but rather to a mental “impoverishment” and civilizational “regression”.
Some humans who became more and more sceptical of this kind of human self-replacement by technology and technological “media” and who instead insisted on the link between capitalist practices involved in the development of new technologies and the deterioration of the living conditions for organic life forms on the planet, referred to themselves as “critical posthumanists” to signal that they believed that human self-centredness (humanism or “anthropocentrism”) was to blame for all this and that more sustainable and more just modi vivendi needed to be found to enable the survival of as many human and nonhuman species as possible. They also believed that technological development should not be used for the economic profit of only some humans, but instead should acknowledge the essential “correlatedness” (also referred to as “entanglement”) of human, nonhuman animal, environmental and technical forms of agency or “subjectivity”. They usually referred to this as the need for a recognition of a “more-than-human” world.
Capitalism
Even more specifically, the demise of humans was hastened, as already insinuated, by one particular form of socio-economic organisation that had gained planetary dominance, which was called “capitalism”, and which was in the end responsible for the collapse of “world civilisation” (in fact, this was prompted by the disruption of the capitalist world “economy” and its intensified integration process called “globalisation”). The slogan TINA (an acronym for “there is no alternative”) proved correct but not in the way anticipated by capitalists, namely to keep anti-capitalist protest in check, but by demonstrating that capitalism was ultimately a self-destructive system based on unsustainable consumption and ever-increasing alienation.
The original capitalist idea was that what was referred to as “barter” economy (goods in exchange of other goods or services) would become a lot more efficient through “symbolic” exchanges, especially “money”. Some materials, especially gold, was deemed rare, special and “valuable” and could be exchanged for goods and services, and accumulated. Later forms of “payment” became increasingly “virtual” as value was underwritten by institutions like “banks”, big “corporations” and social organisations like “nationstates”, as money which was first “metal”, then “paper based” finally became “immaterial” through digitalisation. Capitalism was in the end no longer based on (symbolic) exchange, instead “wealth” was created “virtually” through “speculation” (a form of “wagering” on gains and losses of values slightly regulated and instantly recorded, and as some would therefore say, “produced”, by “stockmarkets”). In the end, since more and more value was being generated through “debts” (i.e. deferred payments) the virtuality on which the whole system was based collapsed, wiping out not only “assets” but also any accumulated “capital” as such.
The other capitalist characteristic that led to its downfall was its idea of “work”. Since power was already unevenly distributed before the transition to capitalist economies, wealth (equalling the legitimation of power) was produced by “workers” who would sell their time, “manpower” and “know-how” to those who owned land and later to those who owned what was referred to as the “means of production” (esp. “factories”, machines and technological apparatuses, and later “platforms” of all kinds). The workers in selling their time and accumulating wealth for the owners (“capitalists”) and through more and more technological development leading to “specialisation” and “fragmentation” of the production processes, became more and more “alienated” from their own products and processes. One could say, that they became even more estranged from their “realities” by being turned into “customers” who would be paid a “salary” so that they could buy (“back”) the products they had themselves helped produce. This process was accelerating to an extent that consumption became more and more important in (esp. Western and “affluent” societies and for social “classes” who had managed through education, inheritance or acquired knowledge or “skills” to gain advantages over the so-called “working class”) and overtook production as the principal way of “profit” making. To hide the real conditions of disparity and dependence this created, institutions and powerful “elites” who stood to profit most from this system used what was called “ideology” and, increasingly, “marketing” to create and feed the increasing “desire” for more “commodities” (objects and services). The downside was that this led to “overproduction” (and hence “waste”), and accelerated resource depletion and “pollution”. Capitalism finished, one could say, by consuming its own “base” and annihilating its own “subjects” (i.e. human consumers).
Occasionally the cycle of production and consumption hit upon “crises” which led to “unemployment” and “poverty” among workers, and the destruction of the means of production through either “natural” or “planned wastage”, new technologies, fierce competition, followed by “bankruptcies” and further “rationalisation”, or simply through violent destruction like wars. However, destruction was always also presented as an “opportunity” since reconstruction had to occur which boosted “demand”, spurred technological innovation and so on, and which it was hoped gradually would also produce some (although dearly bought) social progress as a benefit of new and more efficient forms of production and the gradual increase in “leisure” time, health care and so on. Unfortunately, these cycles were becoming more and more destructive as technology became more powerful and wars became more devastating. This, in the end, led to what some humans would call a “two third/one third society” in which the third part of society was basically excluded from full participation in social life for lack of “skills” and access to the necessary means to participate in the consumption process. This, and earlier crises, as well as the problem of the constant devaluation of money and assets due to overproduction (i.e. “inflation”), meant that “disillusionment” and “depression”, social isolation and so on were a constant companion to humans under capitalism and the pressure this put on each human to “compete”, to be productive and to consume as much as possible.
The reason why capitalism (at least in the West) was so successful and considered without alternative is that it managed to ally itself to an ideologically very cunning political system called “liberal democracy”. Democracies proved superior to previous socio-political forms of organisation and “governmentality” in that they created “subjectivities” (ways of understanding for each human to be able to take part in social processes and to be “addressed” or “interpellated” by other humans and institutions) that were based on a notion of “individuality”, “uniqueness” and “self-identity”. Humans could be taught through institutions like schools but also by marketing strategies to think of themselves as “free individuals” who were responsible for their own development and place in society and for making sure they fulfilled their “potential” to repay society the “investment” it had made in them (an ideology sometimes referred to as “liberal humanism”). This led to a self-understanding that produced an unrealistic idea of self-worth in many cases and also translated into a certain arrogance (cf. “hubris” below) with regard to other humans but, more importantly, to the material environment and nonhumans. It also made sure that the competitiveness needed by the economic system functioned both at an individual and social level, as well as between “national” systems, since democracies were administered along historically formed cultural entities called “nations”, and which each believed itself to have some privileged access to its “territory” together with a set of values, acquired knowledge, memory, artefacts etc. that would produce a collective identity or “spirit”, often invoked in times of crises like wars against other nations who would think of themselves in similar (or mostly in even “superior”) terms. There was thus a strong correlation between capitalist practices, political organisation and individual self-understanding – all of which favoured a notion of false superiority and “autonomy” which led to the repression or the forgetting of the fact that any achievement, any social practice, any technological development, any “way of life” was always the result of relationality, rather than autonomy, and that systems in the end would be measured against their ability to acknowledge, sustain and to justly distribute the benefits achieved through their correlativity (i.e. human, nonhuman, environmental etc. “co-implication”) not against their ability to “extract” resources most efficiently (from humans, nonhumans, environments etc.).
Imperialism
Even though there were serious attempts at criticising this “system” and at organising political resistance to it, most notably by movements like “communism”, “socialism” and, more recently, “critical posthumanism”, unfortunately, this proved to be too little too late. The dominance of this cultural and economic system (capitalism, liberalism, humanism…) supported by “the West” (see above) – a remainder of a historical period usually referred to as “colonialism”, in which one civilisation that thought of itself as superior and as the expression of divine selection, called “Europe” (later superseded by one of its own former colonies, “America”, and which for a while managed to dominate at a global level as a so-called “superpower”, before entering into a downward spiral and competition with other emergent superpowers like “China” or “India”), attributed to itself the (“God-given”) right to “discover”, take possession of and extract human and nonhuman resources (by “slavery”, “mining” etc.) from other areas and populations on the basis of what they called their own “civilizational” and “technological” advance.
The interesting thing about the justification for the associated practice of “imperialism”, i.e. building “empires” by extending physically conquering territories, colonising their inhabitants, taking possession of their resources, imposing their power structures and value systems and so on, is that it was based on strategic misconceptions that interpreted “otherness” as both desirable and threatening. Humans like most organic species learnt to perceive through their senses to make a distinction between an “environment” in which they were placed and within which they could move and which they to some extent could control. This fundamental distinction led to a sense of “self” as opposed to “not-self” or “other”. This concept of “otherness”, projected on the perception of difference and subsequently exaggerated as “radical” or “absolute” (which led to the construction of what humans called “binary oppositions” (see above), i.e. differences between perceived entities or “ideas” that were mutually exclusive, of which the self/other binary seemed to have been the most fundamental one) was often “mapped” onto hierarchies and values. “Others”, which could be other humans, nonhumans, material objects or even immaterial “ideas”, were used to construct and consolidate “knowledge” which could be used to exercise control over the entities that lay behind the coat of “otherness”, so to speak. Unfortunately, this control was dearly bought because it also involved a necessary misconception about the true nature of these “others”, which could lead either to too positive and desirable “representations”, but most often it translated into negative and debasing visions, usually referred to as “stereotypes”. The process of increasing one’s self (or shoring up one’s identity against such otherness provoked by perceived differences) led to violent practices connected to the experienced desires and anxieties as a result. They were then used for justifying oppressive behaviour against “others”.
Imperialism – the “discovery” of “others” and the uncertainty of how to “classify” them, “calling” for practices of domination and control sometimes also referred to as “civilisation” and “education”, or perceived as a “mission” – was thus in fact an extension of a fundamental way of operating among humans. This could also be seen in other social areas in which differences (“real”, “perceived” or “projected”) could be used for what came to be known as “othering” (which is basically a radicalisation of difference to produce and protect a “me” or “self” as opposed to a “not-me” or “other”, as well as, at a social level, an “us” as opposed to a “them”). Differences were thus “established” between “sexes”, “races” and “species”, for example, which led to the associated “discriminating” practices of “sexism”, “racism” and “speciesism” (often “intersecting”) and which were basically unfounded power systems that used these largely constructed differences to justify hierarchies and to regulate access to power. Human societies were full of these power structures and despite valiant efforts by “feminists”, “anti-racists” and “animal rights protesters”, or, indeed, “critical posthumanists”, the otherness behind the differences was so “significant” that it ultimately constituted the very idea of what humans thought it meant to be human and thus to justify the superiority of (some) humans over everything else.
While open imperialism as an aggressive military practice gradually gave way to more indirect “cultural” forms of dominant influence over other territories and populations (while the economic need for the extraction of resources form others’ territories continued to grow with “industrialisation” and global “development”), capitalism demanded an ever more expanding network of production, consumption and services spanning across “national” boundaries, working towards “delocalising” and interconnecting production processes, global and instantaneous money flows based on “virtualisation” and “speculation”, all this based on a process called “digitalisation” and “datafication”. By transforming everything into electric signals that could be transmitted almost at the speed of light, “information” could be shared and used instantaneously, for “educational” and “entertainment” but mainly for economic and socio-political reasons. This global sharing platform based on digital information and its flows was called (the) “internet” and it became the main platform of social exchange through so-called “social media”. Unfortunately, these latter were owned by a new breed of capitalists who came to be the dominant and most powerful class of humans, amassing huge wealth with which they could influence (national) governments as well as (international) organisations while reaching an almost global community of “prosumers” (humans who would both produce and consume “content” and teach “bots” or algorithm-based software to emulate human meaning production and “feed it back” to them). The dream of a global “free” society with instant and ubiquitous access to all the knowledge and the “best” of human achievements (a huge data “bank” and “archive”) leading to a period of global understanding, prosperity and peace, as a result, was unfortunately scuppered (once again) by the very liberal humanist values that had produced this “cosmopolitan” vision and its “geopolitical” economic (i.e. global capitalist) practices and decisions. Authoritarian regimes rightly perceived the free circulation of knowledge and “ideas” as a threat to their legitimation of power and attempted to control and filter information, restrict access or disseminate “misinformation”, by “hacking into” digital infrastructures and damage vital institutions, as well as influence humans by spreading what was called “fake news”. More and more violence was therefore committed at a global informational level which led to acts of so-called “cyberterrorism”, “info-war” and “post-truth politics”.
In the end, the combination of global capitalism and the internet led not to an increase and an improvement of sociality as the phrase “social media” might suggest, but actually to a generalised state of war (very much the opposite of the original idea of “cosmopolitanism”, of course).
Hubris
The ultimate downfall of the species, however, was probably due to a “moral” problem, namely its “hubris”, or the overestimation of its own powers and its “pride” based on the belief in its own cosmological significance (cf. the notion of “anthropocentrism” above). In fact, the human species perished (taking most of the “biosphere” with it) because it was not able to come to terms with its own finality and its co-relationality with nonhuman others, or, in other words, its lack of a realisation and acceptance that it was living in, depending on, even while being responsible for, a “more-than-human” world. Instead, especially in its final phases, (some) humans even accelerated the demise of the species by disseminating imaginary scenarios of its own end as a desperate way of repressing maybe, to a point where narratives were invented (the present one, arguably, included) that provided hypothetical retrospectives of the species often addressed to unknown and unknowable “aliens” or future “time travellers” hitting upon the recorded memory of the human species (referred to itself as “humanity”) in the hope of receiving at least some form of “cosmic” justice après coup, so to speak, or at least some vindication and “absolution”. Maybe these “bottled” messages were also to serve as a “warning” to other life forms from unknown planets visiting Earth even though none of these were discovered during human life time despite extensive search efforts called “space exploration” carried out by a privileged human group called “astronauts”, “cosmonauts” etc.
All in all, one can say that what caught up with the species in the end was, ironically, its “consciousness”, which was “achieved” at the (too) high cost of repressing its own animality, and which led to violence against all its “others”. Despite all the attempts at “deanimalisation” like “education”, “civilisation”, “social progress” and “cultural refinement”, and due to a largely irresponsible use of technologies and resources (one might say “poor housekeeping”), humans eventually had to experience their own disappearance (or “fall”).
