Who Counts As Human?
Preliminaries to a Post-Human Solarpunk Ontology
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It almost goes without saying that objectifying people in a way that dehumanizes them is a bad thing. I’ve made the claim many times that ethical relations are those that humanize people and that such relations can make us more human. If our goal is to create a better society like solarpunk, then we obviously want people to be engaged in humanizing relations. Firstly, solarpunk basically means an egalitarian, nature-oriented, technological culture.
The obvious dilemma here is that this implies that some people are more human than others. There’s a performative contradiction that by claiming that solarpunk selves are more ethical because they are the product of humanizing, I have reified those who are not solarpunk selves as less-than-human. I’ve created categories of the human and the not-human-enough to be able to create solarpunk. For a movement that claims to be more ethical than neoliberal capitalism and to have a conception of the self more ethical than the liberal individual, this is an error we have to correct.
Another quick definition, a performative contradiction is one that contradicts itself because making the claim presupposes truths that contradict the claim. For example, saying that there is no universal truth presupposes the universal truth that there are no universal truths.3 Or, saying that solarpunk selves are more ethical because they’re humanizing presupposes selves that are less-than-human, creating an ethically dubious hierarchy of humanity in which some people are less human than others.
To begin solving this performative contradiction, I want to begin by discussing how the idea for this essay came about. I had posted an essay on the solarpunk subreddit. The fact that I talk about masculinity led to many calling for gender abolition. One of the commenters quoted Ursula K. Le Guin for having said that whatever is left over after gender has been removed is simply human. I don’t mean to put words into the commenter’s mouth or that of Le Guin. I really don’t think they mean what I’m about to say.
I think we need to be careful about how we deny humanity to those who desire to be gendered for the same reason that we need to be careful how we deny humanity to those who aren’t solarpunk. We both claim to stand for a more ethical future while simultaneously making a deeply unethical performative contradiction. I am going to swing back around to gender, but there’s a road we have to take to get there.
All that said, if the solarpunk self is relational, meaning that it’s created out of its relations with others and the world, then we can very easily see how this begins to solve this dilemma. By saying that solarpunk selves are those that humanize, we say that if there is any person that is dehumanizing another then that person is not a solarpunk self.
This creates a sort of virtuous failsafe in which we aim to catch ourselves in the act of dehumanization. I make myself a solarpunk self by humanizing even those who don’t have solarpunk selves. In other words, it is not the solarpunk self who dehumanizes, but others who dehumanize themselves through their dehumanization of others who don’t fit their standardizing definition of the human. Even when another dehumanizes me, I humanize myself by humanizing them, which at the very least closes the door to a reciprocal dehumanization that leads us to atrocity.
This reciprocal co-creation of the self is a profoundly important point. Those who dehumanize inevitably end up dehumanizing themselves. We have to understand how this happens because, as might be obvious, this kind of dynamic is very much alive in our culture.
Firstly, I wrote the following before reading Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue. He gives a similar argument as mine in his challenge to emotivism and its consequences.4
Either way, by objectifying another as a tool, as a means to my end, I create a competition of nihilistic hedonism. It’s nihilistic because there is no meaning outside of our own end, there is nothing bigger than myself. Meaning in life becomes constrained to my own self-interested needs. It becomes merely hedonic because it’s only about my own little self and what is most pleasurable or satisfactory for my own end. If all that matters is me and myself, then all that can be taken into account is how something benefits or hurts me.
This is why the Conformist stage, which is 2.5 in Dr. O’Fallon’s model of psychological development, is a necessary and beautiful part of everyone’s lives. This is a stage of development we all require because despite the negative consequences of blind conformity, we also must learn the social norms and codes of conduct that allow us to engage with other people in, hopefully, healthy ways.5 In solarpunk societies, we want some sort of social norm that teenagers can conform to so that they’re prepared for the solarpunk world as adults.
Most children find themselves at one of the stages before Conformist, which is called Egocentric. Adults stuck at this stage often lack the ability to truly care about another’s perspective as their own. This leads them to treat other people in a way that seems narcissistic, objectifying, and instrumentalizing, but it’s literally because they can’t see outside their own perspective. 5
As a Conformist, I honestly care about my group outside of what they can give me. I can experienced the mutuality of shared experience that allows me to see beyond that Egocentric narcissism.6 There are many issues with Conformists, yes, but it is an important step to greater capabilities for ethical action than the Egocentric. Unfortunately, also for unethical action, as a growth of capabilities is not necessarily a growth to good use of those capabilities.7 A Conformist’s capability to care so deeply for their group can be matched by a violent animosity toward an out-group.
However, if the culture we conform to is one that valorizes a hyper-individualistic conception of the self, as ours does, then we are stuck with a mutuality that can only exist within the bounds of a narcissistic, objectifying view.8 If everyone sees each other as a tool for their own nihilistic hedonism, then there is a competition to dictate to what extent you need to consider others in order to get your end fulfilled. If everyone acts like this, then no one’s whole, sovereign being is ever respected outside of how they can be used in someone else’s narcissistic end.
Yet, this may seem like a contradiction. I’ve said that the Egocentric can only care about others insofar as they are capable of benefitting them. Conformists can truly care about members of their group, being capable of the mutuality of shared experience. If our culture is confined to hyper-individualism where we don’t care about another’s perspective unless it benefits us, doesn’t that mean that our culture keeps us trapped at Egocentric?
I think that’s true to a certain extent, but I also think it’s a little more complex than that.
Someone who can experience only their own perspective or another person’s perspective is Egocentric. The fact that Egocentrists can’t hold both perspectives at the same time means that they can only ever see their own perspective OR another person’s perspective. Conformists can hold both perspectives at the exact same time and that allows them to honestly view another’s perspective as their own perspective.7
For the Egocentric it’s this or that perspective, whereas for the Conformist it’s this and that perspective. This allows the Conformist to really grasp the idea of a “we” because it’s what you and I believe and care about together.7
Remember though, Conformists can have a lot of hostility for the out-group. While a Conformist can hold their own perspective and another’s perspective, they often tend to conflate the two perspectives. The two perspectives being held at the same time means that they often get fused together. They assume that they think the same, feel the same, and this is what makes them Conformists who want to be the same as each other. If someone reveals that they aren’t the same, then that person gets forced out of the group and is seen as too other to be one of us.
As such, if you are a Conformist to a hyper-individualistic culture, then that means that the standard of being a part of the in-group is being capable of hyper-individualism. In other words, if you’re capable of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, which really means you were born with certain privileges, then you’re worthy of being a part of the in-group, and then I can honestly care about you as a part of my group.
If you fail to meet those standards, then it’s not systemic racial or gender issues, it’s not mental health issues, or some other perfectly legitimate reason. It’s that you haven’t taken enough personal responsibility. Your failure is your own fault, you’re part of the out-group. I don’t give a fuck about your self-imposed poverty. You want to be successful? You want to be part of our in-group? Then work harder.
This perspective, unsurprisingly, leads our culture to become a narcissistic, atomizing, and dehumanizing culture, in which there’s a reciprocal narrowing into our own hedonic narcissism.9 Reciprocal narrowing means that the more I do this to you the more you do this to me the more I do this to myself the more I do this to you.
Even as we interact and transact, we’re forced to measure the extent of our transactional interaction based only on how it satisfies our own narcissistic hedonic end. There is thus a competition over the extent to which we consent to allow ourselves to be used and the extent to which we manipulate another to only see those elements of the transaction that would lead to their consent. In such a competitive view of relationships, consent barely qualifies as “informed”.
There is a thus, again, a runaway narrowing to only consider the elements most important to getting the transaction completed here in this moment. It’s a narrow boundary win/win that externalizes any losses to the other in the transaction or to others who were never considered in the transaction. We are biased and incentivized to bullshit each other and ourselves about the relevance of what we want relative to what anyone else wants. Everyone is doing this to each other. If this is how we think of ourselves as selves, then what kind of culture are we condemned to recreate?
To reverse this process, we have to learn to ask ourselves, honestly, “what do You want outside of anything that I want out of you or simply believe you’d want because you’re obviously just like me?”
This, of course, runs the risk of leading us to the opposite extreme, and one that Anderson criticizes Levinas for making. Where the transactional leads to this unilateral dominance over the other for the sake of yourself, the prioritizing of the other in lieu of yourself risks the losing of yourself in the other. Flipping the dominance of self into a submission of self recreates the very hierarchy it seeks to upend.1
We instead aim to find the optimal grip between the pursuit of my end and the legitimate caring of another.9 When both are brought into alignment that is what makes a more humanizing relation. It isn’t as consensual as it needs to be for me to get what I want for my narcissistic hedonic end, but about what we can create together toward a more complexifying understanding of each other and the world.
We instead ask, “How can we democratically contribute to the flourishing of an increasing number of people such that more people can even consider what it might be to contribute in a way that leads to the flourishing of more people capable of such considerations?”
I realize that was a bit of a mouthful, but really consider that as a possible definition for what it means to create solarpunk selves capable of creating an increasingly solarpunk society capable of creating increasingly solarpunk selves.
Connect all of that to the idea of the sexual citizen, the person who is able to pursue their own self-interested sexual goals while also pursuing the other-interested care to respect the same right in the other.2 Not in the pursuit of one’s narcissistically hedonic need to ejaculate, but for the creation of selves capable of more deeply experiencing each other as sovereign beings outside our desires for the other.
Obviously this works best when we are both consciously co-creating each other in this way, but the reality of the world is that not everyone thinks this way. While finding others who think like this is necessary, remember that we’re student/teachers, both each other’s student and teacher. As my student, I give compassionate hospitality for your mistakes, but as my teacher, I aim to learn from you so that I might attain a higher perspective in which I can learn, teach, and act in better ways. There is no panacea strategy that will make everything work out fine, but some strategies are better than others depending on the context and we can help each other learn what that means.
Additionally, we have to consider how we can create a culture in which an increasing number think this way. That leads us to ask what exactly does “consent” mean when we’re born as infants into a society we didn’t consent to. We’re given rules, regulations, and norms about gender and otherwise, that we didn’t consent to.
In the case of gender then, we’re given specific rules and roles, and are then cast into that world to survive and function. Not merely in games of capitalist survival, but in just trying to deal with other human beings who are, again, their whole sovereign being beyond whatever we could want from them or how we would define them.
Where in that is informed consent?
Vervaeke has defined love as being in a certain mode of relating in which we’re participating in each other’s mutual growth.10 We see the other as a sovereign being not contained by our conceptions of them, but as a sovereign horizon of possible becoming wholly unto themselves, thus honouring the co-creative emergence of that becoming in our interactions with them. It’s a way of relating to somebody else that helps them develop in ways that are authentic to them, which in turn allows you to develop in ways that are authentic to you.
By contrast, Pinkard discusses the Hegelian master/slave dialectic in which the master’s individuality is affirmed by the slave who sacrifices their own individuality in affirming the master. The master is thus, ironically, dependent on the slave. If the slave realizes this, then they now gain the power to take away the master’s individuality by refusing to affirm the master. There is thus a paradoxical competition between the master and the slave for affirmation as an individual.11
The liberal individual takes itself to be the master without need for affirmation from anyone else. While this is a nice enough idea, we’ve already gone over why this is wrongheaded here and elsewhere. We are not separated, atomized individuals. We’re deeply interdependent and co-creational.
What we seek then is that optimal grip where our authenticity is born out of our mutual affirmation of the other’s authenticity in a way that’s not inauthentic to me, and vice versa. We’re brought into a reciprocal dance where we’re trying to find an optimal grip on the development toward a relational-autonomy.
The paradox is not a bug, but a feature. It’s the very foundation from which autonomy can emerge. The right kind of autonomy is the product of loving, humanizing, consensual relations. There can thus be no utopian endpoint at which we have attained autonomy, but a complexifying move toward greater capabilities for autonomous action given the deep interdependence of the student/teacher affirmation of and from the other.
This is why, as Levinas says, ethics may have to be first philosophy.12 Any philosophical question ultimately arises out of relationality, which means that it feeds back into reality. Not only is your ability to philosophize dependent on how you have been produced by relations, ethical or otherwise, but the way in which you philosophize will influence a world that will ultimately feed back around to influence the quality of your philosophizing. You’re called to make your relations with others more ethical so that you can even continue to do philosophy beyond the ethical.
Anti-life philosophy is an example of the failure mode of the atomized subject that would seek to eradicate all life to end suffering. It’s ultimately one of the most narcissistic philosophical positions you could take. You’re choosing it from your own limited perspective and enforcing that on all life everywhere for all time. Such a philosophy is arguably the inevitable endpoint to the utilitarian atomization of the self, where the only possible avenue of meaning in life becomes a nihilistic hedonism. How can suffering have any meaning to flourishing if all that matters is pleasure?
This is also why romantic relationships are exemplary of ethics. They are the relation in which equals meet each other in a transaction that must be more than a transaction. We’re repeatedly called to overcome our own selfishness so that we may love our partner while simultaneously standing for our own values. The friction can cause us immense suffering, but that friction is what opens us to see beyond our limited, narcissistic egoism so that we can see the beauty of mutual growth that romantic love can afford.
In our culture, love is reduced to pleasure that I get from another who exchanges it for pleasure in return. An anti-life philosophy is by definition not a relation between equals who are each capable of autonomous choice in the preservation of their own life or the lives of other equals. It fails to see how it is the very suffering of coming up against the infinity of the other’s sovereignty that allows mutual growth to higher and higher orders of flourishing.
However, this brings us up against the limits of what exactly we mean by equals. What exactly do we even mean by human? If we say that reciprocally humanizing relations are a failsafe against dehumanization, what are we to make of the hidden cultural boundary around human and the excluded animals that so many of us torture to eat every single day merely because it is the standard, “natural” way of things?
This is where we’ll turn in a future essay.
Assignment:
1. Is there a meaningful difference between humanizing someone as recognizing their humanity, and humanizing someone as in creating them as more human given those recognizing relations? See if you can find your way to the hidden assumptions embedded in this question.
Until the next one, thank you so much for your time and attention. Please hit the like button and subscribe for more conversations on solarpunk, psychological development, and the cultivation of a personal mythology. Thanks again, and all the best to you on whatever journey you find yourself on.
References:
1 – Anderson, E. (2019). From Existential Alterity to Ethical Reciprocity: Beauvoir?s Alternative to Levinas. Continental Philosophy Review, 52(2), 171–189. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-018-9459-3
2 – Hirsch, J. S., & Khan, S. (2020). Sexual Citizens: A Landmark Study of Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus. WW Norton.
3 – Wilber, K. (2000). Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution. Shambhala.
4 – MacIntyre, A. C. (2011). After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Bloomsbury USA Academic.
5 – O’Fallon, T. (n.d.). The Three Questions, Stages International. Retrieved March 14, 2026, from https://www.stagesinternational.com/thethreequestions
6 – Lewis, P. M. (2018). The Discerning Heart: The Developmental Psychology of Robert Kegan.
7 – Stein, Z. (2010). Now you get it, now you don’t: Developmental differences in the understanding of integral theory and practice. In S. Esbjorn-Hargens (Ed.), Integral theory in action: Applied, theoretical, and practical applications of the AQAL model (pp. 175–203). SUNY University Press.
8 – Brown, W. (2017). Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution. Zone Books.
9 – Vervaeke, J., & Mastropietro, C. (2024). Awakening From the Meaning Crisis: Part One: Origins (S. Coyne, Ed.). Story Grid Publishing LLC.
10 – John Vervaeke’s Lectern (Director). (2023, March 3). After Socrates: Episode 11 - Proper Proportions & The Right Mode | Dr. John Vervaeke [Video recording]. https://www .youtube.com/watch?v=7-d69SP7EvU
11 – Pinkard, T. (2010). Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason. Cambridge University Press.
12 – Levinas, E. (2011). Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (A. Lingis, Trans.). Duquesne.