Most people in the west have this idea, or the paradigm of The Great Chain of Being deeply rooted in their minds. On the hard disc if you will. It's based on a hierarcy:
Fish and creatures of the sea are at the bottom, insects and plants are at first and second base, then birds, then mammals, then different kinds of mammals. Apes, then different kinds of primates, humans... different kinds of humans like savage, barbarian, noble savage and finally civilised. And on top of that whole thing reigns a male creature, Mr. God Almighty, the White Wonderful Man, The Ultimate Supreme Being of all beings.
This image really, seriously affected Europe in the middle ages,and obviously for some ages before and after that, as in for example the Greek mythologies where the white bearded Zeus, ruled from the top of mount Olympus, as close to heaven as one could get.
The church, those layers of existence and the messages from the almighty father, inspired hundreds of thousands of men to exploit and convince others, that they defined as barbarian, witch, slave, or anywhere lower in the great chain of being that they were „less than good“ and should therefore carrie the burden of a of shame. The different things that were supposed to make you feel shameful were published in the book and the book was translated and published by white Europeans who had a full time job representing „The Ultimate Supreme Being“. Priests to be exact and later many different kinds of officials. All men, apart from one or two queens.
The great paradigm
Although Darwin was a self proclaimed agnostic, he probably didn't have another sorting system, or paradigm, grid, map... than to sort creatures into categories that ranged from unimportant to important. From wild to tamed. From dark to white. From underdeveloped to developed. Chaos to order. The idea didn't exist in his head because the world hadn't come any further at the time. Our minds didn't work on those things yet. It was all still pretty two dimensional.
Darwin was a white guy, who had important conversations with other white guys who also went around the world to explore and "discover" animals, cultures and people. And those guys came up with theories about the survival of the fittest, being on top of the food chain and racial cleanliness. All while exploiting Africa, Asia and America, enslaving „savages“ in the name of their patriarchal values and christian views on how we should act.
The unfair deal is that all of this is still going on just in a slightly different form. The white bells of the patriarchy don't ring from church (dick)towers anymore. They ring from the phones in top floor offices in tall skyscrapers in Dallas, Dubai and London. The white panorama offices on the umpth floors. High up, - closer to God than the rest of us... or so they think.
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