The net result of millennia of , and roughly two hundred thousand years of the reign of Homo sapiens as a whole, is hideously visible in the current … - Steven Best

There can be no full or even adequate understanding of the systemic problems of capitalist society, of the origins and dynamics of hierarchy, and of a future rational, autonomous, ethical, and ecological society until we address the 10,000-year legacy of speciesism and the barbaric exploitation of other animals.

Throughout the last ten thousand years of history, human empires rose and fall, crumbling into pebbles and dust. Over the last two hundred thousand years, an even larger empire began its mighty and perilous ascent. From its home base in Africa, it established its presence everywhere throughout the globe, expanding endlessly in all directions, growing exponentially in numbers, colonizing land, other species, and entire peoples. Insatiable in its consumption of natural resources, addicted to growth, it left death, extinction, and destruction everywhere in its wake. This vast conglomerate was not the Persian, Greek, Roman, Mayan, Ottoman, English, or American empires, but the consequence and aggregate of all particular empires and unsustainable hierarchical societies, namely, the human empire.

By no means is globalization to be understood as an inherently negative dynamic or consequence of human history, as if the desideratum is fragmentation, isolation, provincialism, and nationalism. Ever since Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa and dispersed itself globally across the continents, human existence has been a global dynamic and knowledge, culture, and technologies have spread in all directions, such as with the influence of Islam on the West. Certainly, from the standpoint of the natural environment and the countless animal species driven into extinction, the rapid global growth of human populations, technologies, and economies has not been a positive development. But dissemination of knowledge, culture, and people is a positive and enriching process; indeed, it is now urgent that the paradigm shift from economics and growth to ecology and sustainability take root on a global scale. A salient distinction to be made here is between globalization from above (as dictated by multinational capital) and globalization from below (as realized in self-organizing and democratic ways by people in cultural exchange and open movement).