Showing results for "Animalis" in Violence in Society

There are two supreme predators on the planet with the most complex brains in nature: humans and orcas. In the 20th century alone, one of these animals killed 200 million members of its own species, the other killed none. Jeffrey Masson’s fascinating new book begins here: There is something different about us. In Beasts he demonstrates that the violence we perceive in the "wild" is mostly a matter of projection. We link the basest human behavior to animals, to "beasts" ("he behaved no better than a beast"), and claim the high ground for our species.

Proponents of human exceptionalism claim that only humans possess certain morally significant capacities, and as a result, are entitled to be treated better than members of all other species. In the last 50 years, scientists have discovered how these capacities are shared by other species, which only raises the questions of how and why we evade responsibility for inhumane behavior, not only to animals but to one another.