Why My Life is Less Valuable Than a Gorilla's

A response to the Huffington Post article, "The Value of a Gorilla vs a Human" by Bron Taylor: click here

Each and every non-human life is MORE valuable than a human life. Take the emotional bias homo sapiens have for justifying their own existence out of the equation, and this is an ecological fact. Human beings not only contribute NOTHING to the natural world by virtue of pollination, seed dispersal and the myriad duties that only non-humans are capable of providing for enriching our world, but humans have become the number one parasitic killing force on planet Earth.

We are perennial destroyers -- not builders. Our planetary rape is massive. And in the few instances where we attempt to mitigate our impact on the environment, we fail miserably. Reseeding a clear-cut forest will never bring back its original biological diversity -- that is lost forever. Polluted water, soil, oceans and air will never be made clean and whole again. Mass extinctions due to our hubris-filled, greedy, psychopathy will not be reversed.

Technology will not save us from ourselves because we know just enough to be dangerous -- bloated with our own self-importance and limited capacity to problem solve after the fact -- we are incapable of foreseeing the mega disasters we continue to create. [Are we better off in a post nuclear landscape than before a few brilliant men, without the ability or benefit of long term vision, inextricably changed the course of the planet forever?]

We laud ourselves for our superiority, yet we are the only species that have virtually no inherent survival skills at birth and are at the bottom of the learning curve when factoring in the years it takes for our kind to function on a level comparable to our non-human counterparts.

Our arrogance is psychopathic. As is our ability to remain ensconced in a fantasy world regarding the real importance of our existence to this planet, a place that can only begin to heal and thrive when humankind no longer exists.

With a population of over 7.4 billion continuing to swell, there is still no real discussion about human over population which is stripping the planet of her resources at an unprecedented rate. People continuously, joyously, and stupidly proselytize having as many offspring as possible as a sacred right, never even entertaining the reality that their choices are a precursor to a soon-coming, resource starved, nightmare existence for us all.

Will they be as selfishly prideful when their children are wailing due to dwindling supplies of water and food in the not-too-distant future? When the mindless decadence of consumerism is replaced by the relentless demands of bare bones personal survival?

As anyone with a modicum of intelligence can observe, there is no sustaining nature without non-humans taking preeminent importance. Human survival is secondary. Presently we are too stupid to put our priorities into the correct order and to begin understanding and embracing our lesser role in the scheme of life. Our speciescidal refusal in accepting that we are not now, nor have we ever been, essential to the planet on any level ensures our ultimate demise.