The Most Important Keystone Species

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Since the first week of this quarter, I have been considering the question: “What are people for in terms of the basic ecological functioning of the Earth?” There isn’t an all encompassing answer to this question, but there is a definition that we fit into.

Keystone species are often defined as a group of organisms that hold an ecosystem together, or have a disproportionately large effect on the system compared to their abundance. When the keystone species is removed, the system will collapse.

A demonstration of the importance of a keystone species (sharks in this case). Find it Here

It’s easy to make the argument that humans have an immense effect on the entire planet – it’s in the news everyday. But how are we holding the ecosystems of the planet together? We are unique in this world because we have the awareness and the ability to want to save the biodiversity that we are quickly killing. We can take a collapsing ecosystem and prop it up with resources and breeding programs so that it lives on. We put patches and glue over cracks in our failing global ecological system in the hopes that what we fix will ripple and stave off extinction in other parts of the world. It’s a valiant and necessary effort, and without it, the biodiversity on our planet would collapse and disappear much faster.

However, humans have created a culture around the death of species that makes it hard to make the most logical decisions as we try and patch our ecosystems. More often than not, if a species is seen as cute, cuddly, or ‘good’ (the giant panda, tigers, blue whales) we pump resources into trying to save them. If a species is seen as dangerous, scary, or ‘bad’ (sharks, tuna, rhinos) then we turn a blind eye as their numbers dwindle further. This is often the case even if a group like sharks or tuna are proven to be much more ecologically important compared to something like pandas. In our culture, we are conditioned to want to save the things that we are emotionally attached to and that provide value on a surface level.

A sign found in Cape Cod warning of the dangers of sharks. Find it Here

As the Anthropocene continues, and the number of species on the Endangered Species List rises, it will be important to remember that what we need to save may not be what we are conditioned to think needs saving. We are the most important keystone species on our planet, so we need to wield our power carefully.

A graph of the declining shark populations for eight species. Find it Here

Further Thought:

Sharkwater from Rob Stewart following themes about the necessary conservation of misunderstood species.

Fear: Friends and Foes

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Organisms die, mountains erode, and as stars cease to shine, even the universe will experience heat death. The commonality of finitude unites humanity with itself and that which it exists alongside. Unlike the forests or the mountains, however, humans have evolved an awareness of their impending expiration. This awareness enables the emergence of death anxiety, the suppression of which, as argued in The Worm at the Core, catalyzes the development of fundamental pieces of human culture. Uninhibited death anxiety would hinder any degree of progress, yet through religion, ritual, and art, the severity of death was lowered such that humanity would come to strive. Despite this victory in our battle against fear, death anxiety still holds authority over much of our lives. Just as this lingering influence stops us from stepping into a busy street, so too can it be attributed to the conflict between ourselves. 

Terror Management Theory poses that the fear of death reinforces bonds amongst the in-group while severing them with those in the out-group. While for early humans, these groups may be easier to define, contemporary society has come to broaden the scope of what defines the in and out-groups. Grouping formed based on race and religion litter our historical records of conflict, but as a desire for further groups develops out of pressure from death anxiety, we see that such groupings can develop out of even minute differences, as suggested in Sigmund Freud’s theory of narcissism of small differences.

For many, walking the streets at night is an unnerving activity, triggering thoughts of our potential death. This death anxiety induces our Terror Management Theory groupings so strongly, that we come to view other people in our vicinity, especially those larger than ourselves as a threat. In recent weeks, however, reminders of our mortality have been ever-present. The numerous killings of students mere steps away from campus and the nightly ringing of gunshots have ignited even deeper levels of fear. Friends who live just a block away have now begun to ask for company on the way home, citing these recent events as factors for their greater distrust of people out at night. In reality, it is incredibly more likely that others outside are similar to ourselves, but our death anxiety grows so intense that anyone beyond ourselves is framed as an outsider and as a threat.

Getty Images

 

“When We Feel Inadequate, We Consume the World Around Us Rapaciously”

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I agree with James Rowe’s article connecting terror management to capitalism’s endless consumption. When reminded of our temporariness, we double-down on our worldviews for some sort of safe purchase. If the pursuit of self-esteem defined by a Western capitalist worldview is conspicuous-consumption and power necessitated by the disenfranchisement and theft of resources from as many as possible, then the pursuit of symbolic immortality through the mythologization of endless wealth is clearly a reaction to the terror of mortality. 

But I don’t think that capitalistic greed and attempts to prove our own supremacy to ourselves— whether through cultural/racial supremacy or the supremacy of the human race— is the only possibility. It’s a far more human response (it’s much more appealing to our collective humanity) to recognize the sacredness of life and embrace radical empathy as a reaction to the terror of death. My disagreement with Solomon et. al’s statement that “we cling to our culture’s […]rituals to buttress our view of human life as uniquely significant and eternal” is summed up by Rowe— “but what if ritual [is] instead vital technology that has historically allowed some cultures to befriend death and impermanence?” Attaining symbolic immortality by gaining “imagined control” over death isn’t a universal pattern of thinking. 

Concerning Peck and Pachirat’s discussion of the ethics of animal consumption, I think the problem lies in the mass overconsumption of meat, and the wasteful ways Western societies package/discard meat and pathologize ways of meat-eating that use the whole animal, including the ‘undesirable’ bits. Peck completely misses a fundamental critique of Thoreau’s words—“I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized”. It’s the perfect ideological predecessor of evangelical white veganism, those who have colonized the moral high ground and have no problem ignoring the conditions of labor exploitation and Indigenous land dispossession needed for their “ethical” consumption. Thoreau lived an individualistic fantasy, completely removing himself from the genocide, land theft, and stolen labor producing his ‘secluded’ comforts. The sequestration of violence is needed to produce Thoreau’s Walden— that legacy continues in the modern-day slaughterhouse, where the “mechanisms of distance, concealment, and surveillance” neutralize and routinize violence.

Death, Sex and Heteronormativity

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The Worm at the Core has a chapter about the interplay between sex and death, largely pointing to shame around sex and how it is fuelled by our desire to differentiate ourselves from animals. Although, the chapter took a largely heteronormative and patriarchal stance on this concept by only talking about heterosexual sex and implying that men’s sexual urges lead to violence towards women – I do still feel there is substance to this theory.

Within Western culture, shame and degradation have often been associated with sexual practices – particularly ones that do not conform to Christian sexual morality. Sex has often been associated with impurity, the spread of diseases, animalistic desire and youthful hedonism. So why is one of the practices entirely orientated around human life so heavily associated with death? In The Worm at the Core, it is largely argued that sex is associated with the human body at its most vulnerable, this reminds one of their mortality and therefore as the process of TMT explains leads individuals to associate sex with the fear of death.

However, where sex and death are most heavily related is in the heteronormative cultural worldview. Sex that threatens one’s cultural worldview is considered perverse and punishable as it threatens one’s beliefs of a practice that is already shaped by fear of death. Views of sex and heterosexual morality are both shaped by the fear of death, therefore when these are both threatened this fear is exacerbated. In the US, this has usually been portrayed through the fear of homosexual sex. When AIDS came to the forefront of public consciousness in the 1980s many Christian preachers and evangelists saw the disease as God’s revenge for sexual misconduct (Newtown, 1989). Moreover, fear of how AIDS could be passed on swept the cultural consensus and as it was revealed it was often passed through homosexual sex, this fear of death became a fear of queerness. Moreover, many gay people were villainised for ‘risking their own lives for sex’. Yet, there was a turning point when action groups such as ACT UP released projects such as “Silence = Death”, subverting the narrative by moving the thought away from equating sex with death to equating misinformation and lack of sexual education with death.

References:

The Worm at the Core

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/4612043.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A51106171d2b01cab1f529d2e89a8c2ac&ab_segments=&origin=&acceptTC=1

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-confusing-and-at-times-counterproductive-1980s-response-to-the-aids-epidemic-180948611/

https://wellcomecollection.org/works/d2mxjdkb?wellcomeImagesUrl=/indexplus/image/L0052822.html

Death and Culture’s Love Affair

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As this course has progressed the conversations being had during class have continued to evolve and push further into the psyche that surrounds death and the Anthropocene. There have been several stimulating discussions but one that stood out to me was concerning the connection between Terror Management Theory and the differing reactions based on cultural values.

For those unaware of Terror Management Theory it can be understood through both proximal and distal defences, but its main purpose is to defend a persons mind against concerns about death through either conscious or unconscious thoughts. It is also considered to be one of our main triggers when embarking on actions such as alcohol consumption, exercise, or different driving behaviors. When looking at the two different responses the first is proximal which deals with conscious threats by pushing them away from focal attention. The second is distal, which addresses the unconscious thoughts through a sense of meaning or value; this is the response that I intend to focus on. Two of the main contributors to distal responses are religion and culture and through these we can see how different people interact with their conceptions of death. 

 

One might ask why the relationship between death and culture is so tight knit but that is the way it has been for as long as history has been recorded. This was evident in The Worm at the Core as they wrote, “The idea that knowledge of our mortality plays a pivotal role in human affairs is ancient” and the authors then go on to mention this being included in many texts such as the Qur’an, the Bible, and Buddhist texts. It seems to me that people have always searched for comfort when it comes to death and through these desires religion and culture were built. Knowing that the end of their mortal life was not the end of their existence and consciousness has allowed for people to think of death more comfortably, less like the end and more like a transition to another phase. Different cultures have different ideas of life after death, if they do believe in one, but many share the same central ideas. Many find comfort knowing that a life spent well on Earth leads to something more and their individual cultural beliefs give them something to expect.

 

Resources and Inspirations

The Worm at the Core. Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski. Chapter 1

Class Discussions



Terror Management and the Meat Industry

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Credit: Nasser Nouri, Flickr

“Working Undercover in a Slaughterhouse” by Avi Solomon raises several questions from our course theme: why do humans care about separating ourselves from animals? How is our indifference to slaughtering farm animals similar to our indifference to loss in worldwide biodiversity? How do we frame this for ourselves so that we can remain moral and virtuous?

As The Worm at the Core and our class have discussed, animals are a harsh reminder of our mortality. Our pets die, we see roadkill as we drive down the highway, and we watch nature documentaries where wild animals kill each other. Animals remind us that we are not immortal, so we distance ourselves hoping to overcome their failures. In the meat industry, we separate ourselves so that we can continue to eat the products, work in the slaughterhouses, and excuse ourselves of wrong doing. If we embraced animals as our kin, are slaughterhouses not the same as Nazi death camps? Is our man-made 6th mass extinction not a multi-species genocide?

Solomon’s article describes how the meat industry has been designed to minimize human contact with animal deaths. Only one person works in the room that shoots each animal in the head. Everybody else works along the conveyor belt handling “beef,” allowing them to wash their hands of regret and blame because they weren’t responsible, they’re just working a job handling the aftermath.

Credit: maol, Flickr

This brings up an uncomfortable parallel for me and my desensitization to plastic waste at Starbucks. When I first began working as a barista, I was very away of every plastic cup that I unnecessarily threw away. Now I do it with ease­­­­––it’s so much faster to throw away a lid with accidental whip cream on it than to wash it. I save myself time and an irritable customer. This minor convenience for me comes at the expense of our overflowing landfills and the countless creatures that will have to endure that lid for 450 years while it slowly decomposes.

For many people, even if they refuse to become desensitized to the slaughtering of the meat industry, or the plastic waste of the food industry, they can’t escape it. As is described by Solomon, a majority of the workers in the slaughterhouse are illegal immigrants, desperate for any work and money. As I’ve seen at Starbucks, many of my coworkers are without other job prospects­­––sure they could move to another fast food chain, but they are stuck in the system of constant, unnecessary disposal of plastic. They’re stuck relying on terror management­­­–­–distracting their consciousness, relying on culture for purpose and beliefs, and maintaining their self esteem by reminding themselves that their job is necessary to provide food to millions of people around the world.

Together We Can Face the World

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The Worm at the Core comments that a world without clear meaning is one of anxiety if “everything we believe in and everything we strive for…can be challenged” (Solomon, et al., 171) In the Anthropocene where everything from political institutions to resource security are crumbling in front of us, people are feeling especially anxious. I argue that even in a world of uncertainty, we can find stability in each other. We can be each other’s rock, so whatever we face, we face together.

Being connected to other people can help us have security in a world without definite meaning.  The authors compare two worldviews where the “rock” is a worldview of clear right and wrong that gives absolute meaning to the world. Contrastingly, the “hard place” is a worldview that accepts different perspectives but lacks psychological security when everything can be both right and wrong (285). In the Anthropocene, the ways of life we thought were correct are being challenged, and we have no choice but to be in the “hard place.” We have no choice but to begin to accept new, unfamiliar ways of life. This transition is especially hard when we are facing it alone. However, when we are together and supporting each other, we can give each other the courage we need to face this challenge head on to figure out what to do next.

This community includes non-human beings as well. The authors observe that people often assert that we “belong to the world of culture, not the world of nature” (201). Our mortal bodies can make us anxious because it reminds us of our inevitable death, but it can also be a reminder of our deep connection to other forms of life. Thus, even if the meanings we created for the world seem to be falling apart, we will always still have other connections to the earth around us. Whatever happens, the sun will still rise again, and the moon will shine just as bright.

It is scary to face an uncertain future alone, then it’s a good thing we are not alone.

Source: Henri Rousseau The Dream 1910. Caption: We belong to a world of culture AND a world of nature.

Humans, Hubris, and the Anthropocene

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The Worm at the Core touched on how humans have developed systems of culture and domination that suppose to keep us placated in the face of death. One thing that escaped me, though, is how the fear of death inspired such rapid technological innovation (and subsequently spawned a myriad of climactic issues) and why our fear of death does not spawn action in the face of the deadly consequences of climate change.

In a separate course, I am reading Amitav Ghosh’s The Great Derangement. One of the points he makes, which I think applies neatly to this course, concerns the increasing rates of destruction and lack of infrastructure to adjust to climate events linked to climate change (Ghosh specifically talks of Mumbai’s lack of preparedness for cyclones). Ghosh also points out that, while much of the 19th, 20th, and 21st century concerned themselves with dominating nature, we have subsequently made ourselves more vulnerable to the volatility of the climate.

Western, industrialized societies view the Earth and, subsequently nature, as a resource to be mined, extracted, or dominated. The building of dams, destruction of mountains, and filling of lakes represent efforts to change the natural environment for the sake of human advancement at the expense of the natural environment. While we now understand the many scientific processes that cause hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, etc., we are still wholly unable to stop them or even effectively cope with them. The irony then is that, through the unfettered mining and exploitation of Earth’s resources, we have worsened the conditions we already struggle to cope with. In the quest to become the master of nature, nature has become even more untamable.

I think the emphasis on technology as the primary solution to climate change is hubristic. Already, our attempts to master nature have ended in disaster that harms the people least involved in the creation of the problem. Unchecked economic growth and technological advancement inherently fails to recognize and reflect on how we got to where we are in the first place, and not every society has sought to expel fear of death through the domination of the planet as the West has. We might look towards nations like Ecuador, who established the “rights of nature” in their constitution, recognizing Earth and nature as stakeholders in the conversation surrounding climate change. Substantial, effective change is not possible until this is recognized on a larger scale.

“A Turn Towards Apathy”

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Content Warning: Nihilism/nihilistic ideation

Immortality is divisive; there are those who chase it with projects and aspirations to leave a legacy behind, and there are those who are struggling to live life as is. For the former, theories like Terror Management help to explain how immortality projects help us live a life that is meaningfully generative. This group actively looks for a contribution to life that lives beyond us as a way of immortalizing ourselves and thus, placating their death anxiety (Worm at the Core).

While Terror Management seems to explain this population well, I question its

Thred’s, “Nihilism”

applicability to the other group, a population that seems to be turning increasingly nihilistic. Class last week affirmed this idea when multiple peers agreed that chasing immortality isn’t of interest because many of us are struggling to want to live now. My extrapolation comes from a non representative population, so I outsourced to see if this feeling of struggling to engage with current life (let alone immortality) is reciprocated amongst others. 

Thred, a social change website/art platform (see image to right and below), published an article in May 2022 that observes this same phenomena. They write that, “climate change, political turmoil, growing wealth inequality, and many more knock-on capitalist trends have caused a rise in nihilistic attitudes” especially amongst young people.

Thred’s, “Nihilism”

Overwhelmed with caring about so many devastating things, nihilism (at its most extreme) points to not caring at all. It seems as though the sentiment of my last blog post is relevant here too: I struggle to think about the future when I am drowning in the present. It seems extreme, but walk across any corner of the UW campus, and I can almost guarantee students parroting the phrases “I don’t care anymore”, “I’m tired”, “I’ve given up”, “I just can’t”, “There’s too much”. 

So what implications does many’s turn towards nihilistic-like behaviors/attitudes have for TMT/death anxiety? Well, as I said last week, I’m still baking this thought (and thus, encourage others to test it/push back if it does not resonate). For right now, I’ve conceptualized it like this: it appears that for individuals (especially youth) turning towards nihilistic-like attitudes, death anxiety is disrupted by numbness. Instead of death anxiety, it more closely resembles death apathy. If this is true, I also wonder whether or not this manifests in physical consequences (becoming more risk-acceptant/engaging in less generative behaviors).

Image Description (first): A neon green background with varying neon pink skulls centered around one larger gray skull. There are yellow motion lines around skulls, signifying movement.

Image Description (second): A spiral background made of light and dark green. In the middle is a hand holding a skull, shaded and outlined in red. There are also red squiggles around the skull.

When The Bee Stings

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credit: Ryan Haskins

I have a facts-based, biological view of mortality and existence, which I think is what has allowed me to find peace. I’ve accepted the simple fact that when I die, the same thing will happen to me that happens to all organisms on our planet: my corpse will be feasted on, and I’ll be turned into energy for other living beings.

As far as why I exist, I recognize that an organism’s singular purpose in life is to reproduce and contribute to evolution. Yes, this seems like a depressing outlook (especially because I’m gay), but it has led me to pledge to use my time here on Earth to “maximize what [I] can get out of life and minimize the harm [I] do to others” (Solomon et al. 224). Maybe this is emblematic of Terror Management Theory at work.

I’ve found it useful to apply that same ‘hard place’ worldview to my thoughts about living in a time of so many uncontrollable crises. I’m afraid of where America’s current struggles with capitalism, democracy, and international peacekeeping amidst the Anthropocene might take us. However, it motivates me to try to make a difference (however small), even when it seems futile. I choose what I get out of this life, so I am going to make the most of it and do my best to make society better for those who will come after.

When I started reading The Worm at the Core, I’ll admit that I had doubts about Terror Management Theory’s explanation of why people behave the way they do. In some ways, I still do. The book focuses almost solely on Western countries in experiments, ignores different gender perspectives, and overgeneralizes some claims without evidence. However, upon finishing the book and reflecting on some of my life decisions, I can see how TMT played a role, especially regarding my worldview.

As I review our other (sometimes quite bleak) course materials, I try to stay committed to my ‘hard place’ worldview and remember that change is possible if we envision it. I think this is why I’ve particularly enjoyed “The Ecomodernist Manifesto” and The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans. When the bee stings and my time here on Earth is up, I may not have fulfilled my animal purpose, but I am confident that I will have fulfilled my human one.