Can Democracy Include a World Beyond Humans?

Send To Pod

Content provided by SendToPod AI. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by SendToPod AI or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://podcastplayer.com/legal.

2+ y ago

MP3•Episode home

Original Article: Can Democracy Include a World Beyond Humans?

Convert your long form article to podcast? Visit SendToPod

Follow me on Twitter to find out more.
----

There was once an orangutan named Ken Allen at the San Diego Zoo who was notorious for carrying out complex escape plans. He found every nut and bolt in his cage and unscrewed them; in his open enclosure he threw rocks and feces at visitors. On one occasion, he constructed a ladder out of some fallen branches, carefully testing his weight on the rungs. After that, the zoo raised his enclosure walls and smoothed them to remove handholds.

Hoping to distract Ken, the zoo introduced some female orangutans. But Ken enlisted them as accomplices: While he distracted the zookeepers, his fellow inmate Vicki pried open a window. One time, Ken was caught waist-deep in water in the enclosure’s moat, attempting to inch up the sides, despite the fact that orangutans are believed to be intensely hydrophobic. As for the electrified wires on top of the enclosure walls, Ken tested them repeatedly, and one day, during a maintenance break, he tried to hop out.

Animal escape attempts often make novelty news headlines, but these are not mindless acts of sabotage or curiosity; rather, they are forms of active and knowing resistance to the conditions forced upon them by humans. Animal acts of resistance in captivity mirror those of humans: They ignore commands, slow down, refuse to work, break equipment, damage enclosures, fight, and abscond. Their actions are a struggle against exploitation—as such, they constitute political activity.

Politics, at heart, is the science and art of making decisions. We commonly think of politics as the stuff done by politicians and activists within the framework of national and local government—but really it is the mundane, everyday business of communal organization. Any time two or more people make an agreement or come to a decision, politics is at work. For humans, politics plays out in all kinds of ways: in parliaments, at the ballot box, in our daily decisions about how we want to live. Every choice we make that affects others is itself political. This obviously includes voting, but it also includes the things we make and design; our relationships with our partners and neighbors; what we consume, act upon, share, and refuse. Even if we say that we want nothing to do with politics, we don’t really have that option—politics affects almost every aspect of our lives, whether we want it to or not. By definition, it is the process by which almost anything at all gets done. In this sense, politics, when organized, is also a kind of technology: the framework of communication and processing that governs everyday interaction and possibility.

This understanding of politics also means that our decisionmaking processes must extend beyond our own human lives: to nonhuman animals, to the planet, and in the very near future to autonomous AI. I call this a “more-than-human” politics, drawing from ecologist and philosopher David Abram’s concept of a more-than-human world, a way of thinking that fully acknowledges and engages with all living beings and ecological systems. A more-than-human political system can take many forms. Among humans, most political interactions are legislative and judicial, but we have much to learn from the myriad ways animals act politically among themselves.

Animals do politics practically; this is true for individual animals, as in the case of Ken Allen, but it is especially important for animal social groups. Social cohesion is critical to collective survival, and so all soci...

190 episodes

#Tech #SendToPod AI