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Question: Is anthropocentrism the way to a better life...

Question: Is anthropocentrism the way to a better life or will it lead to our very own extinction?

Anthropocentrism is defined by Webster’s Online Dictionary as “considering human beings as the most significant entity of the universe; interpreting or regarding the world in terms of human values and experiences” (Webster’s). We, as a species, have always and continue to utilize and deteriorate our environment and the living things in it, claiming “reason, self-awareness, language, autonomy and a moral sense for our own species” as the justification for doing so (Singer, 1989: 8). We act as gods to this universe.

Humans kill every species that is not our own. We decrease the amount of natural land to accommodate the increasing number of people. We pump waste into water we drink and bury toxins in the soil we live on. We unleash pollution into the air we breathe. Humans exhaust the environment for pleasure, not survival. Like the drug addict that continues to feed on his fix each day until death, humans’ addiction to the free will of nature will ironically, but inevitably, lead to our own extinction.

Mark Sunlin reminds us of the mythological legends that tell of ambrosia, the proverbial “food of the gods” who drank it, bathed in it and rubbed it into their skins. It was believed that without this daily substance, a god became weak and was no longer immortal. He states, “perhaps it is this which serves as the best analogy for anthropocentricity – a form of ambrosia for the human ego” (Sunlin, 1990: 17). But like the Greek legend, the reality is only a myth and, in the end, the gods themselves faded away.


Singer, Peter (1989) “Absence of Malice,” The Animals' Voice Magazine 2, no. 1, 8-9.
Sunlin, Mark (1990) “In the Beginning Was the Word Anthropocentricity,” The Animals' Voice Magazine 3, no. 1, 17.
Webster’s Online Dictionary, http://www.m-w.com/, January 20, 2002.