Speciesism, like racism, imperils humanity and the planet

物种歧视和种族主义一样，危及人类和地球

With the world’s population topping 8 billion last year, it’s clear that humans have achieved a unique status in Earth’s history. We are the only creature that dominate all other organisms on the planet, from animals and fungi to plants and microbes.

随着去年世界人口超过80亿，很明显人类在地球历史上获得了独特的地位。从动物和真菌到植物和微生物，我们是地球上唯一主宰所有其他生物的生物。

It remains to be seen whether humans can retain this dominance as we push the global climate to extremes while driving to extinction the very organisms that we climbed over to get to the top.

当我们将全球气候推向极端，同时将我们爬上山顶的生物推向灭绝时，人类能否保持这种优势还有待观察。

In a new book, a group of scientists and philosophers places part of the blame on an attitude prevalent among scientists and the general public — the false belief that species are uniquely real, and that some species are superior to others.

在一本新书中，一群科学家和哲学家将部分责任归咎于科学家和公众中普遍存在的一种态度——错误地认为物种是唯一真实的，一些物种优于其他物种。

To the researchers, this is analogous to racism — the fallacious belief that races exist as branches on the tree of life, and that some races are superior to others.

对研究人员来说，这类似于种族主义——错误地认为种族是生命之树上的分支，有些种族比其他种族优越。

“People these days are very conscious of how evil it is for one group of people to think that they’re superior to another race, and yet the same people who are very woke about that are perfectly happy to say, well, humans are in charge of everything, so the rest of the world is ours to use as we see fit,” said Brent Mishler, professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and co-editor and co-author of the book with UC Berkeley Ph.D. recipient and former postdoctoral fellow Brian Swartz.

加州大学伯克利分校的综合生物学教授布伦特·米什勒说：“现在的人们非常清楚一群人认为自己比另一个种族优越是多么邪恶，然而同样是那些对此非常清醒的人非常高兴地说，嗯，人类掌管一切，所以世界的其余部分是我们的，我们可以按照自己认为合适的方式使用。”他是这本书的共同编辑和作者，加州大学伯克利分校的博士。获奖者和前博士后布莱恩·斯沃茨。

“The two precepts — that species are uniquely real and that one or more are superior to others — cascade into how humans see themselves and how we behave on this planet,” said Swartz, who is also affiliated with the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere at Stanford University. “Our cultural and biological manifestations flow from this worldview and snowball to affect how we interact with other forms of life, the physical world and other people.”

“这两条戒律——物种是独一无二的真实存在的，一个或多个物种优于其他物种——级联到人类如何看待自己和我们在这个星球上的行为，”斯沃茨说，他也是斯坦福大学人类和生物圈千年联盟的成员。“我们的文化和生物表现来自这种世界观，滚雪球般地影响着我们与其他生命形式、物质世界和其他人的互动。”

In the new book, Swartz, Mishler and nine other contributors argue that speciesism — the belief that species are real and that humans are the superior species — “leads to behavior that challenges our future on this planet.”

在这本新书中，斯沃茨、米什勒和其他九位撰稿人认为物种主义——相信物种是真实存在的，人类是优越的物种——“导致了挑战我们在这个星球上的未来的行为。”

They instead urge humans to remove themselves from their pedestal and treat all creatures as they would members of the human family by valuing and protecting their lives and habitats.

相反，他们敦促人类把自己从基座上移开，像对待人类大家庭成员一样对待所有生物，重视和保护他们的生命和栖息地。

“The way I put it to my students is that it’s like we’re a huge, diverse family living in the same house, which is Earth, and we need to get along. Not just the human family. We’re talking about everything — plants, animals and bacteria. What one does stresses another,” said Mishler, an evolutionary biologist who is director of the University and Jepson Herbaria at UC Berkeley. “We’re not arguing that humans are not important. We’re just saying they’re only one of many of the life forms at the tips of the tree of life.”

“我对我的学生说，这就像我们是一个庞大的、多样化的家庭，住在同一个房子里，那就是地球，我们需要和睦相处。不仅仅是人类大家庭。我们在谈论一切——植物、动物和细菌。一个人所做的会给另一个人带来压力，”米什勒说，他是一名进化生物学家，也是加州大学伯克利分校杰普森植物标本馆的主任。“我们并不是说人类不重要。我们只是说，它们只是生命之树顶端的许多生命形式中的一种。”

The book, Speciesism in Biology and Culture: How Human Exceptionalism is Pushing Planetary Boundaries, was published this month as an open access eBook by Springer, an imprint of Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

这本书《生物学和文化中的物种主义：人类例外论如何推动地球边界》本月由施普林格出版，是施普林格自然瑞士股份公司的一个分支。

Dominionism

支配主义

The attitude that humans are at the top of the heap has been with us for millennia. In the Bible, God urges man in Genesis to “have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”

人类处于社会顶端的态度已经伴随我们几千年了。在《圣经》中，上帝在《创世记》中敦促人“掌管海里的鱼，空中的飞鸟，以及地上所有的生物”

In one of the new book’s chapters, “Species, God, and Dominion,” philosopher of science John Wilkins of the University of Melbourne in Australia argues that the concept of species derives from religion and philosophy, not from any empirical or scientific need. As such, it remains politically important for the religious movement known as dominionism and ultimately impacts environmentalist and conservation politics in the United States and worldwide.

在新书的一个章节“物种、上帝和统治”中，澳大利亚墨尔本大学的科学哲学家约翰·威尔金斯认为，物种的概念来自宗教和哲学，而不是来自任何经验或科学需求。因此，它对被称为支配主义的宗教运动仍然具有政治重要性，并最终影响美国和全世界的环保主义和保护政治。

“Having a ‘theoretical’ notion of species is inimical to science and polity,” Wilkins wrote. “It is not needed, as it retains much of its original essentialistic religious origins and emphasizes human exceptionalism to the detriment of ecological stewardship.”

威尔金斯写道：“对物种有一个‘理论’概念是不利于科学和政治的。”“这是不必要的，因为它保留了许多原始的本质主义宗教起源，并强调人类例外论，损害了生态管理。”

Though dominionism is only one interpretation of the Bible, the concept became codified when Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, considered the father of modern taxonomy, and others established a hierarchy or ranking system of life on Earth, with species as the smallest grouping. He lumped species into larger and larger units — genus, family, order, class and kingdom — based on shared physical characteristics. Humans — Homo sapiens in Linnaeus’s binomial system, grouped within the hominid family, primate order, mammalian class and animal kingdom — were presumed the pinnacle of God’s creation within a ladder-like scale of nature, what the ancient Greeks called a scala naturae.

虽然支配主义只是对《圣经》的一种解释，但当被认为是现代分类学之父的瑞典植物学家卡尔·林奈和其他人建立了地球上生命的等级制度，以物种为最小的群体时，这个概念被编纂成法典。他根据共同的物理特征将物种归入越来越大的单位——属、科、目、纲和界。人类——林奈二项式系统中的智人，分为原始人家族、灵长类、哺乳动物纲和动物界——被认为是上帝在阶梯状自然尺度内创造的顶峰，古希腊人称之为scala naturae。

Charles Darwin arguably took God out of the equation, as well as the ladder. The hierarchy evolved into the tree of life, where the tips of each twig represent a living creature and the branches that support them represent extinct ancestors — lineages that descend from common ancestors shared by all life on Earth.

查尔斯·达尔文可以说把上帝和梯子都排除在外了。这个等级进化成了生命树，每根树枝的顶端代表一种生物，支撑它们的树枝代表灭绝的祖先——从地球上所有生命共有的共同祖先传承下来的血统。

Mishler has argued for decades against considering individual species as the most important grouping, particularly when discussing conservation. He laid out his arguments in a 2021 book, What, If Anything, Are Species? (CRC Press), in which he proposed getting rid of taxonomic rankings altogether, including the binomial system for naming species that is used universally today.

几十年来，米什勒一直反对将单个物种视为最重要的群体，尤其是在讨论保护时。他在2021年出版的一本书《物种是什么，如果有的话》中阐述了他的论点。（CRC出版社），其中他建议完全取消分类排名，包括今天普遍使用的物种命名二项式系统。

One key reason is that species distinctions are not equivalent across all branches on the tree of life. Bacteria that look identical may vary as much genetically as a dog from a cat, while some birds that live in totally different areas and look different can be nearly identical genetically. On the other hand, lineages — the sequence of organisms that have evolved from one another over millions of years — are consistent across all forms of life.

一个关键原因是，在生命之树的所有分支上，物种差异并不相等。看起来相同的细菌可能在基因上有很大的不同，就像狗和猫一样，而一些生活在完全不同地区、看起来不同的鸟类可能在基因上几乎相同。另一方面，谱系——数百万年来相互进化的生物体序列——在所有生命形式中都是一致的。

“Evidence shows that a species of amoeba does not mean the same thing as a species of fungus, animal or anything,” Swartz said. “And if species are not uniquely real, then where does that leave us? Is there anything that means the same thing across the tree of life? The answer to that question is: lineages. These are branches on the tree of life that maintain genealogical connections across time and space. They include children, or descendants, and their parents, or ancestors, on through animals broadly and their distant relatives. Lineages are branches across the tree of life.”

“证据表明，一种变形虫与一种真菌、动物或任何东西的含义并不相同，”斯沃茨说。“如果物种不是唯一真实的，那么我们将何去何从？在生命树上有什么意思是一样的吗？这个问题的答案是：血统。这些是生命树上的分支，维持着跨越时间和空间的系谱连接。他们包括孩子，或后代，和他们的父母，或祖先，通过动物和他们的远亲。血统是生命之树的分支。”

Throwing out the concept of species would eliminate the artificial dividing line that helps justify the belief that some species are more important. Instead, the authors maintain that humans are just one part of a genealogy connecting all living things. This interconnectedness forms an ecological web that sustains the planet and us, and that deserves to be protected equally with humans.

抛弃物种的概念将消除人为的分界线，这种分界线有助于证明某些物种更重要的信念。相反，作者坚持认为人类只是连接所有生物的谱系的一部分。这种相互联系形成了一个生态网络，支撑着地球和我们，理应得到与人类同等的保护。

“Every living thing is related to every other living thing. The only issue is: How far back do you have to go until you hit a common ancestor?” Mishler said. “Humans are certainly important, but we’re just one of millions of these lineages, all of which have equal importance. We should at least be mindful of when we have to destroy some of the lineages — that is, eat other living things — in order to live.”

每一个生物都是与其他生物相关的。唯一的问题是：你要追溯到多远才能找到一个共同的祖先？”米什勒说。“人类当然很重要，但我们只是数百万个血统中的一个，所有这些血统都具有同等的重要性。我们至少应该注意，为了生存，我们必须毁灭一些血统——也就是说，吃掉其他生物。”

Mishler goes one step further, arguing that lineages should be respected — not for how they can benefit humans, but intrinsically, as part of the web of life. He detests the term “ecosystem services,” which implies that the natural world exists to service humanity.

米什勒更进一步，认为血统应该受到尊重——不是因为它们如何造福人类，而是本质上，作为生命之网的一部分。他讨厌“生态系统服务”这个术语，它暗示自然界的存在是为了服务人类。

“Healthy ecosystems benefit everybody, from humans to any other lineage connected to them,” Swartz noted.

“健康的生态系统对每个人都有好处，从人类到与之相关的任何其他血统，”斯沃茨指出。

Sex: too much or too little

性：太多还是太少

The authors point out that the standard definition of a species is a population that cannot breed with closely related populations. But Mishler said this definition is muddied by the fact that there is often wide variation within a breeding population; sometimes two separate species can and do successfully interbreed, and some species don’t breed at all.

作者指出，物种的标准定义是不能与密切相关的种群繁殖的种群。但是米什勒说，这个定义是模糊的，因为在一个繁殖群体中经常有很大的差异；有时两个独立的物种能够并且确实成功地杂交，有些物种根本不繁殖。

“Alan Templeton summarized it most succinctly: The trouble with species is too little sex and too much sex,” he said. “There are asexual groups that don’t do sex at all, but still have lineages. And then there are plants, like the orchid, which can just about be crossed with every other orchid, yet they’re bizarrely different from each other. So, reproductive compatibility, while a nice idea, just doesn’t work empirically.”

艾伦·邓普顿简明扼要地总结了这一点：物种的问题是性生活太少和太多，”他说。“有些无性群体根本不做爱，但仍有血统。还有一些植物，比如兰花，它们几乎可以和其他兰花杂交，但它们彼此之间却有着奇怪的不同。因此，生殖相容性虽然是一个好主意，但从经验上看是行不通的。”

Species also can evolve because they get separated geographically or ecologically, not because of an inability to breed.

物种进化也是因为它们在地理上或生态上被分离，而不是因为无法繁殖。

A more natural grouping is by lineage — ancestor-descendant pairs connected across time — or by clade, which consists of all the descendants of a creature.

一个更自然的分组是通过谱系——跨越时间连接的祖先-后代对——或者通过进化枝，进化枝由一个生物的所有后代组成。

“These ancestor-descendant pairs mean the same thing, irrespective of whether you are talking about a lineage of bacteria, amoeba, mammal or anything else,” Swartz said. “Contrariwise, the species level or any other level in traditional classification is inequivalent. They are arbitrary cross sections across the tree of life. Species are human constructs.”

“不管你谈论的是细菌、变形虫、哺乳动物还是其他任何东西的谱系，这些祖先-后代对意味着同样的事情，”斯沃茨说。相反，传统分类中的物种层次或任何其他层次都是不等同的。它们是跨越生命之树的任意横截面。物种是人类的构造。”

Yet, when scientists and conservationists talk about saving animals from extinction, they inevitably talk about species, Mishler said. Lineages and clades share many genes that contribute to a living thing’s ability to adapt. Species alone do not capture that genetic diversity.

然而，当科学家和自然资源保护主义者谈论拯救濒临灭绝的动物时，他们不可避免地会谈论物种，米什勒说。谱系和分支共享许多有助于生物适应能力的基因。单靠物种并不能捕捉到这种遗传多样性。

Speciesism akin to racism

类似于种族主义的物种主义

More insidious is the common belief that some species — or even lineages — are superior to others. This has led to prioritizing humans and human culture over everything else and accepting that ecosystems and life within them should be destroyed to make way for humans.

更阴险的是，人们普遍认为某些物种——甚至血统——比其他物种优越。这导致人类和人类文化优先于其他一切，并接受生态系统和其中的生命应该被摧毁，为人类让路。

But perceived superiority depends on your perspective, Swartz said.

但是感知到的优越感取决于你的视角，斯沃茨说。

“Eagles have far better vision than humans, and bats are more maneuverable than any human-made machine. Adaptation is to the prevailing environment, which makes it hard to argue that whole organisms are ubiquitously and objectively superior to others. The world constantly changes, and the ultimate punchline is that we are all simply … different,” he said. “Those differences don’t necessarily correspond to superiority. They correspond to biology and extensions of biology — culture — that are adapted to the environment of the moment.”

“鹰的视力比人类好得多，蝙蝠的机动性比任何人造机器都强。适应是对普遍环境的适应，这使得很难说整个有机体无处不在且客观地优于其他有机体。世界在不断变化，最终的笑点是我们都只是……不同，”他说。“这些差异并不一定对应于优越感。它们与生物学和生物学的延伸——文化——相对应，适应了当下的环境。”

Yet, viewing humans as superior has consequences not unlike viewing one race as superior to others.

然而，认为人类优越的后果与认为一个种族优于其他种族没有什么不同。

“To complete the analogy, races are to racism as species are to speciesism,” Swartz said. “We know the landscape of race and racism, especially when people think that races are branches on the human tree of life, and that one race is superior. The same parallels play out with species and speciesism. How you view yourself and what you think is real will impact your behavior. This is the historical and psychological reality that undergirds our present moment.”

“为了完成这个类比，种族对于种族主义就像物种对于物种主义一样，”斯沃茨说。“我们知道种族和种族主义的景观，特别是当人们认为种族是人类生命之树上的分支，一个种族是优越的。物种和物种主义也有同样的相似之处。你如何看待自己，你认为什么是真实的，会影响你的行为。这是支撑我们现在的历史和心理现实。”

Swartz and Mishler acknowledge that this means, ultimately, that eating animals poses philosophical challenges. While humans can harvest parts of plants, and those parts regenerate, this is not true of domestic animals.

斯沃茨和米什勒承认，这意味着，最终，吃动物提出了哲学挑战。虽然人类可以收获植物的一部分，这些部分可以再生，但家畜却不是这样。

“Humanity is at an inflection point with its growth and technology curves, and we are reinventing agriculture at the cellular level. The implication is that we will soon be able to grow food for the masses in environmental, ethical and culturally appropriate ways that will turn the horrors of factory farming into the days of yesteryear,” Swartz said. “This obviously makes vegans happy, but stepping beyond the ideology, it also makes happy the researchers, entrepreneurs and policy experts who are looking to manage global issues like climate change, food security, the future of energy and the future of humanity itself.”

“人类正处于增长和技术曲线的拐点，我们正在细胞水平上重塑农业。这意味着，我们很快就能以环境、道德和文化上适当的方式为大众种植粮食，将工厂化农业的恐怖变成过去的日子，”斯沃茨说。“这显然让素食主义者感到高兴，但超越意识形态，它也让研究人员、企业家和政策专家感到高兴，他们正在寻求管理全球问题，如气候变化、食品安全、能源的未来和人类自身的未来。”

The authors are not expecting to change engrained attitudes overnight, but they hope to make people think about the implications of speciesism for the planet, not just for humanity.

作者并不期望在一夜之间改变根深蒂固的态度，但他们希望让人们思考物种主义对地球的影响，而不仅仅是对人类的影响。

“What we’re grappling with in the book is, if we take a broader view of family, where all of life is our family, then how do we deal with that?” Mishler said. “We’ve still got to live. We’ve still got to eat. But can we be more mindful of everybody else, all of our relatives, and try to do it in such a way that it doesn’t destroy what our relatives need to do to make their living.”

米什勒说：“我们在书中要解决的问题是，如果我们从更广阔的角度看待家庭，所有的生活都是我们的家庭，那么我们该如何处理这个问题呢？”“我们还得活着。我们还得吃饭。但我们能否更多地关心其他人，我们所有的亲属，并努力做到这一点，而不破坏我们的亲属谋生所需的东西。”

The book emerged from a seminar series at UC Berkeley in 2012-13 titled “Speciesism and the future of humanity: biology, culture, sociopolitics,” which was supported by a Sawyer Seminar Grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The foundation also funded the book’s open-access publication.

这本书来自加州大学伯克利分校2012-13年题为“物种主义和人类的未来：生物学、文化、社会政治”的系列研讨会，该研讨会得到了安德鲁·W·梅隆基金会的索耶研讨会资助。该基金会还资助了该书的开放出版。

Speciesism in Biology and Culture: How Human Exceptionalism is Pushing Planetary Boundaries”

生物学和文化中的物种主义：人类例外论如何推动行星边界

Brian Swartz’s website

Brian Swartz的网站

Brent Mishler’s website

布伦特·米什勒网站

University and Jepson Herbaria

大学和杰普森草本植物