human arrogance

The idea, or attitude, that human beings are superior to other sentient beings.

Often justified by the misinterpretation of the Bronze Age biblical story of creation, at the end of which the creator presumably declared man the ruler of all other earthly beings.

This is in direct contradiction to, for example, the Buddhist compassion for all sentient beings, which are deemed equal to man.

Human arrogance has led to the extinction of many a species. It has also spread into the idea that some people are superior to others, and has caused such plagues as slavery, racism, nationalism, and wars.

It's not really fair to call this "human arrogance" since not all human societies accept this value. What it is closer to is cultural arrogance...in this case, a culture of nearly six billion people.

What we're looking at is not the European culture, the American Culture, or the Asian culture, but a culture that includes all of these and many more...a culture that acts with the belief that the world is at its disposal to do with what we will.

But not everyone on the planet belongs to this culture. There are many tribal peoples (10,000 tribes worldwide seems to be a good estimate) who not only do not have this view of the world, but actually regard it as a kind of lunacy. They are humans, too, and they do not share this arrogance.

So, not human arrogance, but the arrogance of one part of our human family, a major part of it, the grand culture which has come to be known as "Takers," (as defined by Daniel Quinn), for they have decided that their destiny is to "take the rule of the world into their own hands."