This site uses interchangeably the terms speciesism, human chauvinism and human supremacism. Contrarily, anthropocentrism should never be regarded simply as synonym of speciesism. Speciesism indicates the perspective is at least in part the result of a value judgment by the agent, whereas anthropocentrism indicates only a limitation in perspective resulting from the vantage point. It is at times difficult to construe the distinction because speciesism can derive from anthropocentrism. In the same way, racism can derive from considering only the perspective of one’s ethnic group. This distinction is important because racism and speciesism may be only an effect of immediate ignorance caused by limited perspective. On the other hand, a long history of ignorance, or other reasons discussed below, may have led to chauvinism’s institutionalization. Overcoming ignorance takes education, but sociologists and biologists have been both racists and speciesists, respectively. Overcoming institutionalized chauvinism also requires retrofitting law to reflect new knowledge, as well as new legal measures to overcome the effectually deeper sociopsychological rooting of chauvinistic bigotry. This strategy as pertains to racism came with new domestic legislation and international conventions.

The institutionalization, or homo-sociological enshrinement, of speciesism in international law requires a new term to delineate it, like patriarchy did for sexism. Anthrarchy is the homo-sociological organization of norms and values that systematically suppresses or discounts the importance and influence of other forms of life. The Author prefers to use a novel prefix for this novel term, as a hybrid of the possible “anthropo” (human) and “andro” (male). Patriarchy is better called andrarchy, since the prefix “patria” refers to only fathers or elder males. Anthrarchy probably found its inception at the same time as patriarchy. Today, for all intents and purposes, it is collective human chauvinism rather than only male chauvinism that pervades legal systems. Nonetheless, anthrarchy is still marked profoundly by an historical suppression of female influence on norms and values in human society. Thus, the prefix “anthro” may indicate human and predominantly male.

Perhaps it can be attributed to the collective legitimacy created by the social system of anthrarchy that extremely intelligent people very quickly endorse human supremacist arguments, despite that no such argument exists that is not at least tautological.[i] Arguments attempting to justify speciesism rely on circular reasoning, metaphysics, or what Bartlett calls “projective misconstructions,” a tactic to give the illusion of objectivity by not acknowledging an assumed construct like a god or moral system. All of these are tautologies in that they are unfalsifiable by definition. The most common circular argument, of course, is to posit human supremacy based on a typical human trait.

Janis provided an analysis of the dogma of ideology, or “groupthink,” in the policymaking arena.[ii] Anthrarchic groupthink may also explain this intellectual conservatism in the sciences, which illuminates why the legal realm has yet to acknowledge explicitly the speciousness of biological hierarchies, much less the socio-psychological basis for their justification.[iii] Bartlett calls it “conceptual pathology.” However one describes anthrarchy, it preempts something as basic as a nonhuman right to life.[iv]

Referring to E.O. Wilson’s sociobiological argument that much of human culture derives in part from genetic propensities, it could be misconstrued that “exclusionary human dignity” is human nature. Wilson himself even refers to our closest genetic relatives, chimpanzees, as “little-brother species,”[v] albeit with apparently good intentions. On the other hand, he acknowledged that “no intellectual vice is more crippling than defiantly self-indulgent anthropocentrism,”[vi] as well as, unwittingly through his argumentation, that the precedent in our species is actually an egalitarian animism represented somewhat by surviving food foraging societies.[vii]

Using 99% of our social history as evidence, neither anthrarchy nor patriarchy appears genetically wired in humans. Why anthrarchy evolved as a sociocultural system may hark back to the beginning of the agricultural revolution, when increased resource scarcity per capita was forcing humans to develop new ways to obtain sustenance from smaller areas of land.[viii] Immediate survival required rationalizing activities toward nature that were instinctively discomfiting, like being sedentary, working longer for less food and exploiting other species in a manner that, because of the scale of exploitation, was both disrespectful and unsustainable.[ix] Such behavior needed a values system to justify itself in light of its missing sociobiological foundation, especially as sedentarity thwarted the population control inherent in nomadism – creating a snowball effect of population growth, resource exploitation and a trend of increasing intensity in the spikes and collapses of human settlements. Around 10,000 years later, anthrarchy continues to validate behavior toward nature that is disrespectful, and the global human population is headed toward the first global collapse of civilization.

Anthrarchy as a values system facilitates intuitive reactions that are automatically suppressive of other species to avoid them gaining relative influence over what humans consider normal or desirable – just as patriarchy suppresses the possibility of feminine influence.[x] The sociocultural system is defending itself and the values that define it, possibly so fiercely because the sociobiological foundation is still missing. This is why simply endowing other animals with rights will not be sufficient to protect them, and why it is unlikely animals rights will ever be considered legitimate within anthrarchy. Protecting biodiversity requires addressing head-on anthrarchy and the exclusionary ethic it sustains, which is speciesism.

Although anthrarchy as a social system may not be inherent, the purported selfish-gene,[xi] which could be responsible for cooperative traits,[xii] may also encourage a propensity in individuals to favor their own species through favoring the genotype as represented in themselves as one organism. In effect, one could surmise that the tendency for individualistic competition suppresses the tendency for socially-oriented cooperation, but the propensity for both traits is rooted in the genes. Furthermore, we evolved to balance these “gene expressions” socially. There is physiological, neurological, linguistic and historical evidence for this difference being predominately one of male and female.[xiii] This merits some discussion of the difference between sex and gender, as well as research about how the location an individual is on a biological “spectrum” of sexuality can influence the social coddling of either masculine or feminine traits in societies that embrace a “black or white” view of sex. However, it can be generalized that males exhibit masculine behavior and females exhibit feminine behavior. If males are more likely to be competitive, the selfish gene theory correlates well with the rise of social domination of males over females in human populations. Patriarchy and anthrarchy probably both find their beginnings at the agricultural revolution.[xiv] In fact, some scholars argue that the degree of male cultural dominance is proportional to the socially perverse relationship with other species.[xv] This implies that increasing women’s rights will correlate with increasingly environmentally-sensible policy, which appears to be corroborated by human development indicators.[xvi] The logical conclusion is that naturally harmonious policy will entail balancing the view of nature as a world of competition with the view that nature is world of cooperation, and that this will happen by rebalancing the influence of masculine and feminine politics.[xvii] Furthermore, working to eradicate patriarchy will decrease anthrarchy, and vice versa.