Are we speciesist?

In chapter 6 of his book ¿Qué es la Antropología? (What is Antropology, 2020), Francisco de Paula Rodríguez Valls writes:

Human beings would be speciesist if they acted according to the logic of survival by using the power of his faculties in his own benefit. All the other species would do that, of course... Human beings are the only species that may not be speciesist by taking care of the entire planet. By putting their power at the service of the entire kingdom of life.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, speciesism is prejudice or discrimination based on species, especially against animals. It can also refer to the assumption that humans are superior to other species.

This is a recently coined word, one of those neologisms associated with the ideology of political correctness, which insists that we shouldn’t upset anyone, neither with our actions, nor with our words, nor with our thoughts. Starting from a laudable anti-racist stance, they extended it to increasingly exaggerated and absurd situations (there are many examples), and in particular to all other animal species, based on the ideological premise that no species is superior to any other, which, as I have explained several times in this blog, is highly debatable.

Are we on our way to Soylent Green?

In 1973, the American film director Richard Fleischer released the film Soylent Green, based on the 1966 science-fiction novel Make room! Make room! written by Harry Harrison, although there are quite a few differences between the book and its film adaptation. This dystopian film describes a future society (it’s supposed to happen in the year 2022, i.e. just now) where there is a very serious problem of overpopulation (New York alone is inhabited by 40 million people), which leads to a huge food shortage.

The Soylent Company, which appears in the film's title, centralizes the production of food obtained from concentrated vegetables, and markets them under names that depend on their color: Soylent yellow, Soylent red and Soylent green. Every time this last product is put up for sale, there is an avalanche of buyers, many of whom cannot acquire it, because stocks are quickly depleted.

The protagonist of the film (represented by Charlton Heston) is a New York City policeman who lives with his assistant, an older ex-professor (Edward G. Robinson), who investigates the murder of one of the top managers of the Soylent Company and discovers that the Soylent green product is made by recycling meat from human corpses. To prove to his friend that what he says is true, he submits to voluntary euthanasia and orders him to follow his corpse. Thus the protagonist discovers that all the corpses are transferred to the Soylent company facilities, where they are converted into Soylent Green. But when Heston tries to make public his macabre discovery, he is attacked and badly wounded, while the public ignores his warnings.