A ground-breaking two-day symposium to explore the idea that at the core of our increasingly destructive relationship with our fellow animals is the deeply-rooted psychological need to tell ourselves that “I am NOT an animal!”
It’s the big question – perhaps the only question that truly matters right now:
Why is it that, despite the continuing work of animal protection, conservation and ecological groups, the situation for most of our fellow animals continues to go from bad to worse?
How have we come to the point where we have entered a Sixth Mass Extinction of species that could ultimately include our own?
And why are we humans unable to come to grips with what’s happening and change our behavior?
At this ground-breaking two-day symposium, we explore the idea that at the core of our fraught relationship with our fellow animals is the deeply-rooted psychological need to tell ourselves that “I am not an animal!”
We talk with leaders in the fields of psychology, ecology, philosophy, humanities, law and advocacy. And we discuss how we can apply their insights to environmental and animal protection efforts.
February 24 – 25, 2017
At the Emory Conference Center, Atlanta.
Session Topics Include
• Overview: The basic challenges facing our fellow animals and the natural world.
• History: The stories we’ve told ourselves over thousands of years about who we are and who they are. And how those stories have changed.
• Viewing Animals: The psychology of why we keep them in zoos.
• Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why it’s so hard to think straight about other animals.
• The Worm at the Core: How the fear of death guides human behavior, and why we need to tell ourselves that “I am not an animal!”
• Human Exceptionalism: Why animal protection and environmental efforts continue to fail.
• The Law: Why the legal system still views nonhuman animals as “property” with no inherent rights.
• Someone, Not Something: A new relationship based on reconciliation and restitution.
• Looking Ahead: Where we go from here.
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