As the vegan movement increasingly finds connections with other justice movements, we catch up with writer and academic Joel Matthews ahead of the publication of his book Human Supremacy to find out more about supremacy, human rights, and animal justice.
Why are we so concerned as a species about the notion of supremacy?
I’d first of all separate out the ‘us’. Humans can be separated into groupings defined by the motivations and beliefs they hold. Contemporary people of faith adopt an unquestioning commitment to old texts fundamentally demarcating our species from all other biological life on Earth. The epistemic data reveals this is a fallacy. As well as this, we have capitalists who want to exploit nonhuman animals. For them the denigration of particular species is a cornerstone of their business model. I think most other people will unthinkingly follow these two strong influences to varying degrees across the globe.
As well as this, I think we must always remember that human beings are animals too, with basic biological impulses embedded. And so our empathy (as well as our moral reasoning and logical extrapolations) for all other species is quickly dropped when we feel we are threatened. This is an explanation for scientific animal testing in a secular context. Under threat our basic instincts kick in, elevating our self worth in almost unspoken universal agreement.
In short, I’m not sure we ordinarily have a conscious, collective sense of superiority. What we do have is unchallenged, man-made, pernicious forces at work and, unfortunately, an eternally inseparable biological resort to violence.
How did it come to this point where white European males believe — and act as though — they are superior to all others?
Great question! From a geographical and naturalistic perspective, the continent of Europe allowed for homo sapiens to flourish resulting in ‘first world’, ‘developed’ socio economic societies. Europe’s physical climate and geography is optimal for building, travelling and day-to-day living. Unlike the terrain and climates of sub-Saharan Africa, South America, and South Asia. Of course, these are broad and sweeping generalisations but does provide a suitably explanatory backdrop.
Upon this naturalist context, homo sapien ‘culture’ emerged and this is where things get contentious. I will suggest the males of the human species have always dominated females, both physically and within the human cultural domain. I suggest this may have a biological origin and so must be met by activists like myself with the values of inclusivity, diversity and equality.
Overlaying this biological, patriarchal dominance is the verbal and literal articulation of male domination in a religious context. Polytheism has largely been replaced by monotheism in the West, all stemming from the ‘covenant’ given to Abraham. And what do we see within each expression of Judaic, Christian and Islamic monotheistic faith? We find the explicit, unapologetic subordination of women by men. It so happens that Christianity became the most successful religion for Europeans to follow and arrange themselves, and so was used as a theological justification for underlying biological patriarchal impulses.
What are the implications for this kind of thinking, where sectors of society are essentially ranked by worth? What does it give rise to?
The implications are catastrophic, far reaching and probably impact every aspect of human identity (gender, sexuality, skin colour, nationality, age, physical ability, cognitive ability). I’m sure every facet is vulnerable to supremacist thinking.
Recent history has shown that an authoritarian government can rise, calmly select a particular group to exclude, then oppress and exploit for political gain. All entirely arbitrarily, but, of course, not in the minds of their devoted public.
What does this mean for animals?
Right now, hell.
We are living in a perplexing time; enjoying the fruits of the Scientific Revolution using our comprehension of physics, gravity and relativity enabling us to walk around with computers in our pockets with access to every word of collective human knowledge, but simultaneously, consciously ignoring other insights that will contribute to the sustenance of our species.
One of the world’s leading universities, UCL was founded by enlightenment thinker Jeremy Bentham. It proudly advertises itself on this basis and yet, has decided to entirely ignore his most profound offering, ‘life must not be adjudicated upon their ability to think and reason, but upon their ability to suffer’. I cannot stress enough how vital these words are.
This is because they provide the blueprint for anyone with a commitment to alleviating suffering in the world. For the more conservative people amongst us, who may not care about others and ‘society’, I implore you not to dismiss this. This is not a ‘liberal dream’ that can be rejected out of hand. We now know the world is experiencing a climate crisis, largely caused by animal agriculture. In other words – our sense of ethics is guiding us towards principles that give us the greatest chance of survival. Biodiversity must be allowed to flourish, to cradle humanity for as long as possible before we develop technologies to migrate out, beyond our current solar system. Every branch of Darwin’s ‘Tree of Life’ has something to offer and for it to be ignored will be done at our peril!
Right now, on the whole, nonhuman animals are reduced to objects (as Descartes described them as ‘machina automata’). Since his death our attitude toward them has barely advanced an inch. From birth we sear our human superiority into our children, feeding them the products of animal exclusion and oppression. By default, the next generation falls in line, adopting the execution of millions of animals, on an industrial scale. The lives of nonhuman species, with mothers, fathers, family groupings and children of their own experience the wrath of humanity with a blade, a bolt gun, boiling water, electrocution. And their remains pass through our digestive systems to be defecated out. This is what most animals currently mean to us.
Tell us how women’s rights, Black rights, LGBTQIA+ rights, environmental rights, animal rights are connected.
Despite the differing effects and experiences of the victim, they are connected because they are all based upon moral exclusion and oppression. Whether it’s patriarchy, white supremacy, cis or het normativity, each system is grounded in an ‘acceptable’ ‘in’ group, and an ‘unacceptable’ group of others. Thankfully, rights groups have emerged to challenge and correct these systems.
From a personal perspective, although I would describe myself as a ‘rights activist’, I do not believe in the natural or literal existence of rights. I believe rights are a beautiful human construction that must be applied to every being that can suffer and, to alleviate the climate crisis, to some natural geographical features; rivers, lakes, oceans, forests etc.
How does feminism intersect with veganism?
Nonhuman animals experience objectification by humanity. I think we would be hard pressed to find a woman or girl who has not experienced this by men and boys.
In order to ease moments of conscience when eating animals who once lived with their families, we call them ‘meat’ and tell ourselves they are devoid of interior experience and feeling. Sound familiar? This is the experience of women and girls. Their personhood or humanity is almost entirely denied by males who choose to succumb to base-level ‘sensory pleasure’. It is remarkable how interchangeable the cognitive mechanisms undergirding both objectification of women and nonhuman animal exploitation are interchangeable.
How do Black rights intersect with veganism?
In its most vicious form we must go back to the transatlantic slave trade. Supported by prevalent Christianity and its imaginary Old Testament stories of the ‘curse of Ham’, reprehensible separation of life, based upon skin colour, was adopted by the Spanish and Portuguese empires in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. This justified the moral exclusion and literal enslavement of West and West Central African people. People with mothers, fathers, families, tribal communities and children of their own, all now reduced to being considered mindless, soulless animals.
Veganism is essentially about ethics. How do we treat others? The motivations of civil rights activists and vegans, whether they are aware of it or not, are essentially identical.
How does capitalism fit into all this?
I suggest capitalism is a secondary phenomenon, emerging from human culture. There are various socio-economic types, however this type, importantly for people like me, has no intrinsic ethics. In other words, there is no ‘natural’ moral mechanism present in the capitalist theory. If anything, the essence of capitalism is im-moral because it does not contain any careful consideration of life. For capitalism, life is reduced to a resource, a unit, a number. This is why capitalism can often be a suitable bedfellow for oppressive systems including the desire to exploit animals.
And how does religion fit into all of this?
As I have mentioned, religion demonstrates the literal articulations of underlying moral exclusions. The subordination of women, the exclusion of other religions, the refusal to acknowledge marriage and loving partnerships between gay and lesbian people. The rejection and hostility towards trans people in the modern world. All of this can be found, literally, in the books held as sacred and proudly held at the heart of all western monotheisms.
All of which is self-evidently morally reprehensible to people, like me, who are genuinely interested in the world and the experiences of others within it. In my book, Human Supremacy, I urge us all to ignore and reject our own selfish, egotistical, metaphysically idealist and religious thoughts about the world and focus our attention outward with a sincere and selfless engagement.
Given the bitter divisions (that are in many cases purposely created) across many of the world’s nations, is it naive to think we could unite to topple this unjust system?
Absolutely not. Admittedly I am a very optimistic, hopeful person, but I have research to back this up. Human history reveals a comforting and hopeful expanding moral circle. Dogmatic, dominating and exclusive religion has had a 1,500 year head start on the European Scientific Revolution and what I champion – the ‘natural attitude’. This ‘natural attitude’ (something intuitive that we are all born with) reveals that national borders do not really exist in the first place. Like monotheism and monarchy, they only exist in the human imagination.
In the 21st century we continue to live amongst the relics of bronze age and mediaeval institutions including national borders, At the dawn of a world without the reliance on a fatherly, guiding Abrahamic God the command of the world and our successful projects within it will eventually give us the full confidence to leave the outsourcing of our moral, legal and educational frameworks to someone else, instead taking responsibility and ownership of our own destiny.
Do you have hope?
Absolutely! A mistake often made when evaluating the nature of humanity in the largest cosmological context is the comparison between our positive compassionate behaviour and our more cruel, violent behaviour. You would be forgiven for measuring these two as equal, at best, or an outweighing of human barbarism in the world at worst. This is a mistake.
The universe itself is fundamentally hostile to life. The vast majority of the universe is inhospitable interstellar space… a vacuum that will crush and extinguish life without care. Amongst this is an array of inhospitable planets. Within this context is an unbelievably narrow slither of an environment which has allowed for chemistry to form and carbon-based biological life to emerge on Earth sprouting a ‘Tree of Life’.
The success of homo sapiens on Earth originates in our ability to cooperate. No other species on Earth demonstrates this ability on large scales. It is this cooperation that is what I consider the most remarkable aspect of the human condition and something that must be acknowledged, celebrated and advanced further.
Joel Matthews is a writer on progressive social movements from the perspective of their historical and philosophical foundations. He has an academic background in philosophy, theology and cosmology and has worked in the science and academic sectors. He is also a rights activist and can be found at human_supremacy_book on Instagram.
