Human Exceptionalism And The Zombie Apocalypse
Now that we’ve zombified ourselves to death in TV and film—Wikipedia lists 641 individual titles—let us pause and contemplate our fascination with the grotesque denigration of the human race as we know it.
What is it about the undead chewing through the faces of the few of us left alive that captures our attention so thoroughly? Is it the innate schadenfreude of seeing the top dog fall, even if it’s our own species? Or does it have to do with our primordial appetite for fresh flesh?
One thing the zombie genre continually illustrates is how thin the facade of “civilization” is. Take away the police, the traffic lights, and the rest of the rules that maintain surface order, and we’re no better than our knuckle-dragging ancestors.
But let’s not insult animals. They’re not the ones destroying the earth in these movies. They’re rarely as barbaric to each other as we are. They hardly exploit the planet’s resources like we do. And yet, human exceptionalism—the idea that we’re somehow superior to every other species—still prevails as a reason to literally devour them in large quantities.
We flatter ourselves with the belief that the history of the world is the history of human evolution. But isn’t the idea that all this was made for us just a lame vestige left over from however many antiquated religious creeds? Aren’t we ready for more?
For all of the eye-rolling we do at the kale-chomping vegans, they have some pretty common-sense arguments concerning human beings' place in the bigger picture. Carnivores argue that we’re the top of the food chain, end of the discussion. We’re more evolved than other animals because we use language, make art, and plan for the future… but whales sing, and squirrels hide acorns. Birds fly, and we can’t. How many points do they get for that?
Why exactly is a human life more sacred than a cow’s? Is it because we can reason? So can octopuses. White-tailed deer give birth near the highway not because they like exhaust, but because their primary predator, the wolf, gets hit by cars preying on them. Pretty smart strategy.
Hypothetical: What if an alien species lands on Earth to check out how their pyramids are holding up and decides to enslave us in fattening pens, eventually mass-processing us for food? By our own reasoning, they would be justified, as they’re now the superior species.
Others argue that our brains evolved because we ate meat. Thousands of years of protein intake got us to where we are today. But it’s a false premise. We’re omnivores, and more so, the majority of non-human primates are mostly vegetarian. Probably because it’s easier to nab a berry off a tree than chase after something running like hell to get away from you.
How many of us carnivores have slaughtered, gutted, and cleaned what we’ve eaten? I wonder how much it would change our feelings about what we ate if we did. It’s a fact we can flourish without eating meat.
Vegans hope to bring some awareness to our current anthropocentric prejudices. Their questions are basic: Are we causing suffering in how we treat animals? Are we cutting their lives short? Doesn’t every animal want to live as much as we do?
What about the fact that animals eat each other? It’s true, but it’s not what we’re debating. Animals are not industrializing slaughter, or wasting what they don’t eat like we are.
Granted, when the zombie apocalypse does happen, and a BBQ’d squirrel will get you through the night, then you do it to survive. But we’re not talking about life-or-death circumstances most of the time. And we’re not talking about a limited, ritualistic consumption of meat every now and then. We’re talking about the mass processing of sentient creatures that feel pain, have wills to live and reproduce, nurture their young, and mourn their dead—just like we do.
So it’s not that we’re superior, or that we deserve it, or that it’s just natural. And that will become clear when the zombies are setting the table. Maybe we can reason with them. Tell them being a vegan zombie is not such a bad life choice. There’s enough beans, kale, and watermelon for the undead too. And they taste pretty amazing.