Species-level collective experiences of identity loss are as real as individual life-history crises

Evidence

Socialized individuals are only sustained through group identity, which contrasts with animal societies which must be constantly built up, destroyed and formed anew. They can only secure their existence through processes of adaptation to their natural environment, and through re-adaptation to the system of social labour in so far as they mediate their metabolism with nature by means of an extremely precarious equilibrium of individuals amongst themselves … Everyone repeats such experiences of impending loss of identity and the silting up of verbal communication in the crises of his life-history. Yet they are no more real than the collective experiences in the history of the species, which the total societal subjects have made for themselves in their confrontation with nature. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2428

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the earlier Frankfurt School theme of the endangered subjective identity against instrumental rationality. — connects to: Species extinction is experienced as extinction of possible selves; Animal species loss inflicts spiritual and psychological harm on Indigenous peoples — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1649; Observing other species’ lives can recover a forgotten common language — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural…, 36
• QUESTION: How does Habermas’s claim that species-level crises are ‘no more real’ than individual ones square with his later universal pragmatics?

Broader Connections

• Species extinction is experienced as extinction of possible selves #corroborates (0.90)