[p2p-research] Free flipper! argues scientist

[Andy Robinson]

We have a lot of animal peers...  Dogs are the most obvious example, they
seem to see us as part of their pack, which itself is based on a contingent
affinity-power model.  I've heard it argued that without dogs to do our
sniffing for us, humans could never have evolved our brains (which require
that our snouts shrink).  Horses also have a special kind of relationship
with humans over time - and cats would probably question who domesticated
whom.  Bonobo chimps (humans' closest relatives) have a societal form which
is in some respects ideally horizontal.  Then there's the species which seem
to operate solely by collective intelligence, such as ants and bees.
Indigenous societies tend to view all of nature as something like a
peer-to-peer web.  And spookily, the major monotheist religions all
developed ethical taboos against eating some of the more intelligent animal
species (dogs, pigs, monkeys) way before modern science established their
intelligence - perhaps they're a little too human-like for comfort?

There's a certain ethical break between theories which operate on a
horizontalist, egalitarian and networked basis, but restricted to humans
(with the rest of existence viewed as "resources"), and those which attempt
to extend the horizontal network of equals into existence as a whole -
eco-anarchism, animal liberationism, actor-network theory and the like.
Humans are quite resistant to such extension as the big increase in
individual-human choice and power which comes from the former extension is
undercut to some degree by the latter - we don't have to worry about being
accountable to authorities anymore, but suddenly we have to be sustainable,
consume ethically, etc.  I wonder, though, if a horizontal world based
exclusively on humans could ultimately survive.  For one thing, there seems
to be a continuity between relating to nature hierarchically and failing to
pay attention to it - and the latter leads to unsustainability, which is a
problem even from an anthropocentric perspective.  For another, divides
constructing an excluded Other are always rather porous, and the danger of
being "dehumanised" is never far away - all that needs to be done to put
someone outside the horizontal peer-network is to redefine them as
insufficiently human.  I think people also have difficulties with the
extension because the idea of nature as egalitarian or abundant runs up
against a whole history of Darwinist/Malthusian metaphor in human views of
nature, establishing equivalence between processes in nature (predation,
extinction, violence) and processes in capitalism, or in a Hobbesian war of
all against all.  (Ever noticed how TV cavemen are always white, solitary,
violent, and prone to clubbing women over the head?)  An adequate
perspective on nature has to take account of these processes, but the
metaphors in question are not the only way of doing so - Amazonian views of
predation as absorption rather than elimination, and Nietzsche's discussion
of why the sheep should not be preferred to the wolf are among various
contributions which point beyond this particular fantasmatic construction.
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