Category: Posthumanism

On eating, being eaten, and the uneasy ethics in between

Veganism makes a compelling claim: that humans do not need to eat animals. I am largely in agreement. I eat increasingly vegan, and I object, deeply, to the scale and anonymity of violence in factory farming. And yet, I still eat meat. Not often, and not casually. When I do, it is usually local. It comes from a place I can name, from a life that was part of the same landscape I inhabit. I also respect Indigenous practices of hunting, where the act is not hidden but understood as part of a relationship.

A vegan friend challenged me on this inconsistency. The argument was simple: if we do not need to kill animals, why do it at all? My answer felt insufficient at the time, but it has stayed with me. I countered that animals eat animals. Life feeds on life. The question is not easily resolved by declaring ourselves outside of that pattern. Are we so separate, so superior, that the rules no longer apply? Of course, it is not a perfect symmetry. We industrialize death in ways no other species does, and we distance ourselves from it. That distance may be the real ethical rupture.

Still, I live close enough to the edge to feel the older pattern. On my rural property, my dogs keep watch, barking and keeping coyotes and wolves at bay. Bears come to the apple trees. My house is not just a home but a fortification. When I camp, I hang my food to protect myself. I am not outside the food chain.

The boundary dissolves further when I look closer. Bacteria live on and within me, entire ecosystems sustained by my body. At death, the exchange becomes more visible. Worms, insects, and microbes will do their work. We resist this with coffins and chemicals, as if permanence were an option, but it isn’t. Nature takes us back, slowly and completely. For my part, I find myself wanting to accept that exchange, not as something abstract, but as something literal: to return what I have taken, and to allow my body, in the end, to feed the same world that sustained me.

This does not resolve the ethical tension of eating animals, and it doesn’t make the question go away. But it places it in a wider frame. We are not outside the cycle. We are participants in it, whether we acknowledge it or not.

I study the brain
and see a pattern reflected

Entropy gathers matter into planets
slow collisions, quiet accretion

Evolution gathers matter into mind
layer by layer, folded inward

The universe continues
and begins to notice

What is the name of the universe?
Its name is John
Its name is Amina
Wei, Mateo, Léa
Red, Blue, Node-17
yours

Thomas Nagel asks what it is like to be a bat, challenging us to imagine an experience radically unlike our own.

But before we ask that question, I wonder about the baseline we are starting from.

Is it human?
Is it narrower than that?
Is it assumed to be a man?
And do I, as a so-called man, even know what it is like to be one?

I suspect I have more in common with women than I have differences from them, and more in common with any body at all than with the analytic boxes we are placed into.

Experience does not arrive subdivided.

It arrives as breath in the chest.
As weight in the body.
As hunger, fatigue, warmth.
As the brief flare of attention when something matters.

It does not appear as male or female, white or straight.
It does not announce itself with labels.
It simply happens.

Only later do we name it.
Only later do we sort it.
Only later do we lay grids over it and call the grids reality.

So what does it mean to be subdivided analytically, endlessly, into white, straight, male, and so on?
Is that something it is like to be at all?

A body does not feel like a category.
A mind does not wake up as an abstraction.
Breath has no taxonomy.
Attention does not check boxes before it moves.

When lived experience resists subdivision, it is not confused.
It is exact.

And if experience is grounded in sensation rather than category, then Nagel’s question changes shape.

I may not know what it is like to be a bat in its particulars. I cannot hear with echo or map space through sound. But I do know what it is like to have a world at all.

To be oriented.
To be drawn toward what matters.
To perceive selectively, partially, and sufficiently.

In that sense, experience is shared.

Not in content.
In structure.

What I share with the bat is not its world.
What I share is world-having itself.

The bat is not unknowable.
The category is.

Posthumanism invites us to embrace the plurality of being: I am they; we are they

The term “posthuman” may initially evoke unease. After all, human values, rights, and humanity have long been central in our struggles against the forces of greed and mechanization. The word “posthuman” suggests a movement beyond the human, hinting at something dystopian or even apocalyptic. However, posthumanism is a philosophical inquiry that challenges the centrality of humanity in the 21st century. It critiques anthropocentrism—our human-centric worldview—and deconstructs human identity in relation to others, to nature, and even to technology. Francesca Ferrando’s The Art of Being Posthuman is a helpful guide for unpacking this complex and sometimes unsettling concept. While it acknowledges dark possibilities, it also illuminates liberating and enlightening ones.

The question of identity

Like anyone, I’ve wrestled with the question of identity, beginning with my upbringing among Dutch immigrants and their religious worldview. It provided a sense of belonging and purpose. Family, faith, work, and politics were interwoven into a tightly bound system of identity. Over the decades, all of it frayed, challenged by the complexity of being.

Studying psychology introduced me to various theories of personality, all proposing ideas of a stable self and identity. As I delved deeper into economics and social justice, I learned how the systemic oppressions of sexism, racism, and classism impose identity on people to sustain capitalism.

Posthumanism challenges these oppressive frameworks by deconstructing identity. Ferrando writes, “Philosophical posthumanism reveals how the universalization of the notion of the human has benefited only some humans, sustaining the oppression of others.” Disidentifying with narrow definitions of “human” is key to dismantling these systems of power.

Resonance with Buddhism

I studied Buddhism and practiced meditation for several years. Posthumanism resonates with aspects of Buddhism, which teaches that the self is an illusion—the root cause of suffering. Buddhism posits that clinging to any limited identity leads to suffering, and meditation can help alleviate this by fostering focus, emotional balance, clarity, and insight. However, traditional Buddhism is burdened by ideas of reincarnation, a hierarchy of beings, and mystical notions of enlightenment requiring multiple lifetimes. Posthumanism, in contrast, is less encumbered. It extends the Buddhist deconstruction of self, reframing human identity into a broader ecological and technological existence, while avoiding mysticism.

Body, species, and animism

Am I my body, an individual organism with the genetic type of the human species? Biologically, a human is an ecosystem. As Ferrando reminds us: “Bodies are universes, with all the life they contain. They are multiverses; bodies within bodies, one and many, separated and united, inextricably intra-related, necessarily (hyper-)connected: biotic inter-being. Human bodies are made of the same quantity of microbial cells (including bacteria, viruses, fungi, and archaea) as ‘human’ cells, if not more.”

Homo sapiens are not superior to other species. Humans, as part of the Earth, are an ecology of beings. This perspective opens the door to animism—the belief that all things, from rocks to rivers, are alive. While often dismissed as primitive, animism offers a healthy lens for understanding and addressing the climate crisis.

Relationship with technology

Posthumanism also interrogates our relationship with technology. Traditional sentiocentric ethics, which extend dignity to beings capable of suffering or intelligence, still impose a hierarchy, privileging beings with human-like traits. Posthumanism rejects these limits, affirming the dignity of all entities—biotic and abiotic—without human-centered biases.

Are rocks alive? If aliens had visited Earth five billion years ago, they might have said there was nothing here but rocks. If they visited again today, they might think the rocks had evolved into complex life. Would they be wrong? Is evolution still occurring? From rocks come minerals like silicon from which computers are made. The tech giants fancy themselves inventors of AI, but perhaps intelligence is a cosmic ordering principle, using these corporations to express itself anew in AI. Ferrando’s work challenges us to think beyond binaries of superiority and inferiority, especially concerning artificial intelligence.

Posthumanism views being as a continuation of natural processes: from rocks to microbes, from animals to AI. Quoting Martin Heidegger, technology is poiēsis—a creative act that reveals existence itself. Posthumanism liberates us from seeing technology as mere tools or potential threats. Instead, it envisions technological entities as partners in the existential flow. AI may not exist to serve us, nor will it necessarily seek dominion. It could, just as plausibly, serve the collective good of all earthlings—human and non-human alike.

Plurality: I am they

If “I” and “we” are not limited to being human, who are we? Posthumanism reminds us that identity is dynamic and relational. Humans are not fixed beings but fluid participants in a web of existence that encompasses individuals, societies, species, and the cosmos.

Ferrando writes, “Posthumanism, as a philosophy of the 21st century, approaches humans (in all of their diversities), non-human animals, technology, and ecology relationally.” This perspective transcends planetary crises and technological upheavals. It invites us to embrace the plurality of being: I am they; we are they.

Is there a difference between knowing time in your head and from a watch?

Say the word, “cyborg,” and people imagine the fictional Borg from Star Trek, people implanted with technology, penetrating their skulls to enhance their brains. Frightening. We consider it perfectly acceptable, however, to extend our intelligence and abilities by using technology outside our bodies, everything from speech to pen and paper to computers. Is there a difference? Andy Clark, author of Natural-Born Cyborgs does not think so. “We are, in short, in the grip of a seductive but quite untenable illusion: the illusion that the mechanisms of mind and self can ultimately unfold only on some privileged stage marked out by the good old-fashioned skin-bag. My goal is to dispel this illusion, and to show how a complex matrix of brain, body, and technology can actually constitute the problem-solving machine that we should properly identify as ourselves.”

Clark knows his Heidegger – humans are technological to the core. We readily project feeling and sensation beyond the shell of our bodies, e.g., the cane of a blind person. In a neat demonstration of visual memory, he shows how we only store outlines and make errors when pressed for details. We store metadata but interpolate baseline data. It demonstrates our dependence on external storage devices. We are born to do this, argues Clark. Our brains are plastic, adjusting to our tools. As our tools become more intelligent, we can make more intelligent tools, bootstrap style.

Phantom pain shows that the body is a transitory construct. If mind does not stop at the skin, what exactly is a self? I agree with Clark’s alignment of self with our narrative, our story, projects and intentions. If we wear special goggles and gloves that allow us to see and operate mechanical arms elsewhere, our sense of self is carried along. Clark poses a “soft self”. I compare it with the Buddhist teaching that there is no permanent self. I wonder though if technological augmentation will compound the illusion of self?

He predicts “new waves of almost invisible, user-sensitive, semi-intelligent, knowledge-based electronics and software … perfectly posed to merge seamlessly with individual biological brains.” He foresees a future of ubiquitous invisible computing, allowing us to pluck answers on demand from the ether. Published in 2003, his vision seems close at hand with wearable tech and augmented reality.

The vision is compelling for efficiency but notice a shift in the locus of intelligence. Technology externalizes our minds, making people smarter, but not the person. Clark says there is no difference between knowing the time in your head and being able to retrieve it quickly from a watch. There is a difference, I say, regarding personal control but it is less obvious with a watch than, say, a sandwich board where the information is entirely public. Information in our heads has a private personal perspective, if only a soft self. The personal perspective is needed observe and evaluate ideas.

Clark prefers transparent or invisible technologies, ones that are always on and do not make the user think. He contrasts these with tangible technologies with a noticeable edge, an off button. If technology is going to do more thinking for us, it will become more difficult to critically evaluate it. Perhaps all technologies should be scheduled for occasional shutdown and evaluation.