Humans do not make very good animals. We have no natural coat, which severely limits the climates an unclothed person can live in. We are not especially fast or strong and have no fangs or claws for killing prey. Our stomach and teeth are too weak for grazing, and very few places have enough raw, uncultivated fruits and vegetables to support humans. Human infants require a lengthy nine-month gestation period, but they are unable to walk at birth like most mammals. The time it takes for a human to mature is longer than the lifespan of most animals.

The reason for this highly vulnerable adolescence is our large heads. A large brain takes a long time to develop, but infants are forced to be born well before maturity or else their heads will be unable to pass through the birth canal. These large brains, despite their inconvenience in youth, are our only way of surviving. They tell us to use fire and cook food to make it digestible, to use tools to compensate for our sluggishness, and to don the pelts of other animals to keep from freezing. Because we are so unlike other animals we must behave unlike other animals to live and thrive.

In the twentieth century two related ideas emerged that threatened to render our one advantage useless. Now that the fear of starvation and exposure have been removed from our every day lives, people have become free to develop the ideas of radical environmentalism and veganism. The radical environmentalist believes in protecting the environment, not for human sake, but for the sake of nature itself. The vegan believes that animals are deserving of the dignity that we give humans. Combined, they make for a crippling philosophy.

The radical environmentalist position is that humans have gotten out of alignment with nature and are no longer in their proper place. Somehow we have overproduced and have altered our habitats in unacceptable ways. The environmentalist position makes two assumptions; there is a proper order in nature, and humans are able to defy it. But what dictates the proper order? Who says the human population should be two billion and not twenty billion, or that rain forest are preferable to cities? Why must humans protect endangered species when nature eradicates them on her own? Only a belief in a higher power would embolden someone to answer. For the radical environmentalist, that deity is nature. Some people actually believe that whatever nature does is acceptable and anything humans do to alter nature's running is unacceptable. For instance, it is all right for a lightning fire to destroy a forest, but not all right for humans to clear-cut it. What is confusing about this belief is why humans are not considered a part of nature. Other species are the ordained stewards of nature's "will", but humans are supposed to remain inactive observers. Such a belief is incompatible with human life, whose very existence is dependent on altering the environment for its needs. This belief gives a far greater burden to humans (the one species that can scarcely afford it) than any other species, but offers no explanation why.

In the same strand is the vegan diet. Vegans hold that no animal byproduct should be eaten or drank. The rational seems to be that processing an animal denies it dignity. So far, vegans have not attempted to stop the animals from robbing one another of dignity, and are only concerned with humans. Like the radical environmentalist, they believe it is acceptable for animals to eat one another, but unacceptable for humans to behave likewise. This is perplexing, for any biologist will tell you that humans are omnivores. Our need for proteins found in animal flesh and our sharp cusped teeth designed for tearing flesh would seem to imply that at least some part of our diet should come from animals. Have we been designed to do that which we should not do? The vegan burden is no lighter than the radical environmentalist.

Frequently, both of these views are held simultaneously. Together, they paint a very odd picture of the world. In it, humans are supposed to minimize their interaction with the planet and allow nature to take its course. At the same time they are supposed to deny their very own nature and not eat meat. They are not allowed to copy that which nature's other species do all the time. The only source of such beliefs must be an extreme hatred of humanity. Nothing else can adequately explain why we are expected to follow the rules of a nature that hates us. A NARF (Northfield Animal Rights Front) slogan reads, "Humans are not the only species on the planet, we just act like it." NARF and similar groups claim to want to put us on par with other species, but in actuality they want to make us the least of the species by not allowing us to utilize our natural abilities. The one thing that makes life possible and tolerable on this planet is our ability to manipulate it and the other animals. If we give that up, we cease to be humans.

Nick Grey is a first-year at St. Olaf College.