Hating humans ~ By Patrice Lewis

Commentary from WorldNetDaily

Despite the fact that there are a number of deep ecologists I would happily consider pushing down a flight of stairs, I find humanity to be a joyous, splendid thing. No other species can dance ballet or play the fiddle or paint a landscape. No other species can heal its own as well as other species. No other species can worship and revere. No other species can care.

By Patrice Lewis

Posted: February 20, 2010 ~ 1:00 am Eastern

© 2010

A few weeks ago, I clicked on an online article for what seemed like an interesting but innocuous subject: human parasites. The slide show led me through tapeworms, Rhinosporidiosis and Triatomine bugs. But I did a double take as I clicked on the last link and read the following:

But while we're on parasites: The big picture singles out us. We're a parasite of sorts. … Many of us are a burden on our "host," Planet Earth. Deep ecologists believe that all forms of life have an equal claim on existence. Humans are only a part of nature, and not necessarily the most significant part. Think about that for a bit.

After reading about blood flukes and African eye worms, this was such an unexpected twist of logic that I blinked in surprise and wondered if I'd accidentally clicked to a different page. But no, this writer apparently believes that humans are a parasitical species. (I won't link to the article because I don't want to attack the writer; I merely want to address the issue.) Additional research on the author led me to these statements:

Once you broaden your definition, you can label many things parasites. A lot of people ask me, "Do you think humans are parasites?" It's an interesting idea and one worth thinking about. People casually refer to humanity as a virus spreading across the earth. In fact, we do look like some strange kind of bio-film spreading across the landscape. … I think it's a pretty good metaphor. If the biosphere is our host, we do use it up for our own benefit. … I don't think there's anything all that bad about being called a parasite. Parasites are very sophisticated; parasites are highly evolved; parasites are very successful, as reflected in their diversity. In fact, I would say that we may be parasites, but we're not very good ones. Successful parasites do a very good job of balancing – using up their hosts and keeping them alive. It's all a question of tuning the adaptation to your particular host. In our case, we have only one host, so we have to be particularly careful.

What interesting logic. The earth is our "host," and we're parasites. By definition, a parasite is something that takes but doesn't give back. This is how deep ecologists view us.

To extend this reasoning to its logical conclusion, it would seem deep ecologists would prefer to do with humans what it's best to do with all parasites: either get rid of them, or at least reduce the population to a controllable level so as not to damage the host organism.

This made me wonder: Why do some people regard humanity with such loathing?

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