Rogue Primate: An Exploration of Human Domestication

Simon Dalby is an assistant professor of geography at Carleton
University in Ottawa.

A naturalist by training, Livingston taught for many years in York
University’s faculty of environmental studies. In this award-winning
volume, the author of The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation (1981) once
again uses his extensive experience as a naturalist to investigate our
own species. Rogue Primate is an argumentative book that uses the
considerable writing skills of this longtime activist and academic to
challenge members of both communities, as well as the wider public, to
think in new ways about the human condition and our role in the current
environmental predicament.

The book’s subtitle encapsulates the basic premise of this
provocative investigation. Livingston argues that the human animal is
unique in that it is by evolution an animal best understood as a
domesticated species. As such an animal, humanity depends on numerous
“prostheses,” or artificial supports, for its existence. Our
prostheses have allowed the emergence of “civilizations” but at a
terrible cost to the natural environment on which we all ultimately
depend.

An important prosthesis is the construction of human ideological
systems—in particular modern “zero-order humanism,” which
rationalizes humanity’s supposed superiority over nature. Livingston
traces this theme through discussions of such subjects as evolutionary
theory and animal “rights.” His trenchant critiques of conventional
wisdom are sure to annoy many readers. Among other things, he argues
that sustainable development is an unsustainable oxymoron, and that
extending legal or human moral “rights” to wilderness is an
anthropomorphic conceit that is directly contrary to notions of
wildness. This passionate and carefully argued book expresses its
difficult yet fascinating arguments in energetic, highly readable prose.