Excerpt from The Myth of Human Supremacy

Rationalization (p. 328)

From chapter "“Rebooting the World,” or The Destruction of All That Is"

But you want humans to be superior at something? I’ll give you something at which human supremacists excel. Rationalization.

I mean this in two ways. The first is in the way rationalization is usually meant. Rationalize: “to attempt to explain or justify (one’s own or another’s behavior or attitude) with logical, plausible reasons, even if these are not true or appropriate.” Or, “to think about or describe something (such as bad behavior) in a way that explains it and makes it seem proper, more attractive, etc.” Or, “to provide plausible but untrue reasons for conduct.” Or, “to attribute (one’s actions) to rational and creditable motives without analysis of true and especially unconscious motives.”

Sound familiar?

This describes human supremacism, which is an “attempt to explain or justify (one’s own or another’s behavior or attitude) with logical, plausible reasons, even if these are not true or appropriate.” Human supremacism is an attempt to explain or justify atrocious and world-destroying behavior. And then so much of this culture’s philosophy, its religion, its economics, its epistemology, its science, are all attempts to explain, justify, and/or facilitate human (and other) supremacisms.

We’re really good at rationalizing our behavior.

Remember that Timur the Great was able to rationalize his behavior. Hitler was able to rationalize his behavior. The head of ExxonMobil is able to rationalize his behavior.

We are currently rationalizing the murder of the planet.

But rationalization means something else, too, at which human supremacists also excel. In terms of “scientific management,” rationalization can be seen as the deliberate elimination of information unnecessary to achieving an immediate task. So the process of frying a hamburger at a fast-food restaurant can be said to have been “rationalized” if all extraneous movements and considerations have been removed.

Another way to say this is that human supremacists excel at figuring out “solutions” to discrete “problems” by ignoring everything but the specific “solution” to the discrete “problem.” This is essentially the point of the scientific method: you try to eliminate all variables but one. Which is a functional problem with the scientific method, and why science is functionally so very good at making matter and energy jump through hoops on command, and simultaneously so very destructive of communities.

Step by step, that’s how this culture has built itself up. Step by step, the rest of the world has suffered because of it. Other cultures, other species. The entire world.