Culture & Ethics
Evolution
From Steven Wise, TED Conference Hears that Chimps and Bonobos Are "Slaves"
The personalization of some animals continues apace, and most people don’t see, believe — or perhaps, care — that it is happening.
The prestigious TED conference heard a talk recently from Steven Wise, the attorney who leads the Nonhuman Rights Project. Wise sued to have chimpanzees declared “persons” and asked courts to issue writs of habeas corpus freeing them from captivity. So far, no go, but he’s not quitting.
Wise told the TED audience that chimps and other animals should be declared persons, just like humans are. From the Agence France-Presse story:
A US lawyer has described his mission to prove that chimpanzees, dolphins, elephants and gorillas should be given the same legal rights as humans.
Steven Wise, who addressed the TED Conference in Vancouver, explained that personhood was a legal concept which applied to companies, religious sites, and even parts of nature such as rivers, and so should be granted to some animals. “Personhood is not a biological concept, it is a public policy concept,” Wise told AFP. “The legal system decides it; human being is not synonymous with person…”
“They truly are slaves,” Wise said of chimps, bonobos and other animals proven to have feelings, memories, language, foresight and other traits considered human. “I realized there was no one looking out for their interests and they were just being exploited.”
For those who still roll their eyes and chuckle at this frontal assault on human exceptionalism, presuming complacently that it won’t happen; it already has. A Brazilian judge declared an orangutan to be a “nonhuman person,” and issued a writ of habeas corpus that ordered the animal released from a zoo into an ape sanctuary.
Animals as “persons” is extremely destructive of human exceptionalism, and the concomitant liberty and human equality the principle grounds. Moreover, one can protect animals from abuse without elevating them to our level, which is really to reduce us to theirs.
It is especially notable that Wise was invited to TED. It means the intellectuals and the Davos set are open to this view, an essential step toward policy implementation.
I wonder: Has TED ever had anyone defend the unique value of human life? That isn’t an accusation, it is a sincere question.
Image by Psych USD (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.