LIVING A BIOCENTRIC LIFE

by Captain Paul Watson

The greatest threat to the survival of humanity is anthropocentrism, the worldview that human beings are dominant over all other species, more important than all other species, and that all of creation came into being specifically for one special species — ourselves.

This anthropocentric paradigm is contrary to all the laws of nature and certainly contrary to all the laws of ecology.

A few years ago, journalist Brit Hume of the FOX network called me up to ask if it was true that I had publicly said that worms, trees, bees and bacteria were more important than human beings.

I answered that yes indeed, I did say that.

In a somewhat shocked voice he demanded, “How could you say something so wrong and so outrageous?”

I answered, “Because I am not wrong. Worms, trees, bees and bacteria are far more important than we are, and the reason is that these species can live on this planet without humans, but we humans cannot live here without them. We need them. They don’t need us and that makes them more important than us.”

Anthropocentric religions

All of the dominant religions in human society are anthropocentric. They all hold the position that humanity is dominant and better than all other species. Some hold to the idea that we are the very image of a god that we actually invented, to justify our dominance and superiority.

In the name of this fabricated god or gods (there have been thousands of them), humanity has committed horrific atrocities. Because of this collective form of mass psychosis, wars have been fought, people and animals have been sacrificed and tortured, lives have been ruined and wholesale destruction has been inflicted upon the living ecosystems of the planet.

Years ago, I attended an ecological theological conference in Seattle. In attendance were priests and ministers, rabbis and mullahs, and representatives of all the major religions. For the most part everyone was open minded, but when I gave my talk on biocentrism, an evangelical Christian loudly and quite rudely interrupted my talk to accuse me of being a pantheist. I answered that I was not, but if I were, what was his problem with that? He literally screamed that worshiping the creation instead of the creator was a mortal sin for which I would be going to hell.

“The problem with that,” I replied, “Is that I don’t believe in your version of hell, but because you do, you will be going to hell also because you will be going to Catholic hell, Presbyterian hell, Muslim hell or any of the other hells that other religions believe in.”

I then went on to say that I did believe in heaven and hell, but unlike him, I have personal experience with both.

Heaven is the natural world; it is a walk through the forest, a climb of the mountains, a canoe trip down a river, a sail across the ocean. It is the taste of salt from the sea, the smell of flowers, the feeling of warm rain upon our skin. It is a world of wildness and wilderness, of a diversity of wondrous species all interdependent upon each other for survival and happiness. It is a world that provides all the security and comfort of belonging, of knowing who we are and our connections to everything else.

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