Human, fear of becoming the other

The current contemporary global society has been the result of the Eurocentric vison of the world, for centuries it evolved from how Anthropos/Human differenced themselves from other beings, including the non-recognized humans and nonhuman entities, to an exceptionalist civilizational standard based on the privileged of self-reflective reason for human species as a whole and European culture more specifically.20 Therefore, this approach of European thought remains today above in a hierarchical position as the conditioner of human, social and cultural evolution in comparison to other views available, similarly to the position that became central to the colonial ideology of European expansion.

Radical currents of theory such as feminist, postcolonial and anti-racist critical theory, environmental activists, among others, question the founding principles of European humanism and its role in the project of the Western modernity.21 These movements interrogate more specifically the idea of “Man” as the supposed “measure of all things”, an ideal that combines the individual’s physical, intellectual and moral perfections. This ideal “Man” has shaped the way humans relate within themselves, in an impersonal and individualist manner, extending to the way nature is treated and the other nonhumans entities that are part of the same ecology, looking at them as an impersonal thing without rights, deeper meaning or intrinsic value, as natural ‘resources’ that exist entirely to the benefit of ‘Man’. Prof Skrbina expands on this idea that, with no deeper meaning or value, plant and animal species are generally seen as mindless and insentient objects, and thus as deserving no respect or moral consideration.22

Human is word that derives from the Latin word humanus, an adjective associated to humus (ground, earth, soil), which refer to the ‘earthly beings’ as an opposition to the divine, Gods and Goodness. Humanus was an adjective used by antient Romans to exclude themselves from the divine, barbarian, and animal; consequently, the term human was a means of selfdefinition from the perspective of ‘what is not’ by the exclusion of others. The term merged with the meaning of Anthropos, the Greek term for human to refer as a political animal, polis referring to civilized. Since the notion of human was stablished, it has derived in a dualistic relation to the others and conceived only from the perspective of the Anthropos.23

Through history it has evolve to a prestige, as not all humans have the same importance. This refers to times of colonisation when indigenous people were seeing less humans than European settlers, hence the term human refers to specific kinds which different rights, equally expanded to the hierarchical relation to knowledge. This may be the cause of current individualism in different western societies during the times called Anthropocene and Capitalocene, dictated by both Anthropos and Capital. Nowadays, this conflictive relationship that human have with themselves and with nature obstructs humans from the potential that exists from stablishing a different approach.

What is that sound…

……Is it raining? Is the river? It sounds like water...