John Jacobi > Quotes

“...unlike humanism, ecocentrism includes the suffering of nonhumans into its calculations. For the same reason, ecocentrists can often be outwardly misanthropic. It allows for the utilitarian calculation that, since all suffering is equally bad, and since ending humanity would (according to some progressive ecocentrists) decrease overall suffering, the end of humanity is worth it. This is comparable to saying that killing one person is better than killing five.

But these are only potentials, ones that have been taken, but potentials only nonetheless. Ecocentrism usually does not go hand-in-hand with strict antiindustrial politics or misanthropy. In the main, ecocentrists wish to radically transform society such that it decreases its impact on the natural world and includes the standing of non-humans into its social systems. This does not necessarily mean, say, that animals could sue; only that their interests as wild animals are considered,
perhaps by establishing wilderness areas. To not do
this, to reaffirm only the value of the human, is what ecocentrists call “anthropocentrism.”

The philosophy, however, is inconsistent. Whereas it measures non-human wellbeing by a standard of wildness, it does not do so for human wellbeing. Instead, humans are supposed to reaffirm civility between all human beings, thereby legitimizing the systems and infrastructure that inculcated that civility; and they are supposed to go still further by extending their moral behavior toward non humans, thereby legitimizing new systems and infrastructure. Man as wild animal himself— unconsidered.”
― John Jacobi, Repent to the Primitive

“So we must distinguish between mutualism in the natural state of man, which we will call solidarity, with mutualism in the civilized state of man, which we will call civility. Civility must be cultivated from solidarity according to the demands of civilization, and, as civilization gets larger, so does the sphere of moral consideration.”
― John Jacobi, Repent to the Primitive

“To argue that wilderness protection puts invaluable economic resources on reserve is not actually convincing to the core of the wilderness movement, but it has occasionally been useful to activists seeking to broaden political support. It is a way of striking a deal with individuals who hold values incommensurable with wildness. The same applies to wilderness as a reserve of scientific biological data, a space for recreational activity, or a source of national pride. Again, the arguments are true, politically useful, and should not be abandoned; but they do not illustrate the wilderness ethic.

Wilderness is valuable because it contains the ecological building blocks necessary for nature to run itself. Wilderness is wildness dignified; thus the losses of wilderness are the losses of wildness to an exemplary degree. In the context of wild nature, nature provides the necessary components for survival. Humans do not need to subordinate themselves to large organizations and technical systems in order to exercise their wills. But when humans modify nature, they must keep up the process of perpetual modification, because the rest of the natural system has not evolved to function in that state. Artificial labor must fill in the gaps. For example, without any human intervention, natural processes deal with animal feces. But a toilet requires entire technical systems of human labor, waste disposal, state management, and so forth. The plumbing is convenient, this is true, but at the cost of great overhead, necessary policing, and further modification of nature. A civilization is the same kind of problem magnified a thousandfold.”
― John Jacobi, Repent to the Primitive

“Despite its name, humanism has tension with human nature. It is not interested in humans as they are, only humans as they can be fashioned. For example, to humanists, social problems are often caused by humans not being cooperative enough within the social system. Their solution, then, is to change the humans rather than the society.”
― John Jacobi, Repent to the Primitive