{"id":668,"date":"2007-02-05T19:26:00","date_gmt":"2007-02-05T19:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2007\/02\/philosophy-specialness-of-man\/"},"modified":"2007-02-05T19:26:00","modified_gmt":"2007-02-05T19:26:00","slug":"philosophy-specialness-of-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2007\/02\/philosophy-specialness-of-man.html","title":{"rendered":"Philosophy: &#8216;specialness of man&#8217;?"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>\u201cThe people of your culture cling with fanatical tenacity to the specialness of man.  They want desperately to perceive a vast gulf between man and the rest of creation.  This mythology of human superiority justifies their doing whatever they please with the world, just as Hitler\u2019s mythology of Aryan superiority justified his doing whatever he pleased with Europe.  But in the end this mythology is not deeply satisfying. [It leads to] a profoundly lonely people.  The world for them is enemy territory, and they live in it like an army of occupation, alienated and isolated by their extraordinary specialness.\u201d \u2014 Ishmael (p.146)<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7907151-7365145102194370251?l=americanbuddhist.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThe people of your culture cling with fanatical tenacity to the specialness of man. They want desperately to perceive a vast gulf between man and the rest of creation. This mythology of human superiority justifies their doing whatever they please with the world, just as Hitler\u2019s mythology of Aryan superiority justified his doing whatever he [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Philosophy: &#039;specialness of man&#039;?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"&quot;The people of your culture cling with fanatical tenacity to the specialness of man. They want desperately to perceive a vast gulf between man and the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2007\/02\/philosophy-specialness-of-man.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Philosophy: &#039;specialness of man&#039;?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&quot;The people of your culture cling with fanatical tenacity to the specialness of man. They want desperately to perceive a vast gulf between man and the\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2007\/02\/philosophy-specialness-of-man.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"American Buddhist Perspectives\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-02-05T19:26:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7907151-7365145102194370251?l=americanbuddhist.blogspot.com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Justin Whitaker\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Justin Whitaker\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2007\/02\/philosophy-specialness-of-man.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/2007\/02\/philosophy-specialness-of-man.html\",\"name\":\"Philosophy: 'specialness of man'?\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2007-02-05T19:26:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2007-02-05T19:26:00+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/americanbuddhist\/#\/schema\/person\/abfb8f851f671638c4c7536b963f9da9\"},\"description\":\"\\\"The people of your culture cling with fanatical tenacity to the specialness of man. 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