OMNIOCRACY

Laws proposes a revolutionary plan for a truly just existence.

The author opens her rabble-rousing new book at full throttle, describing the current world as “a hell-hole, slaughterhouse, and never-ending Auschwitz from the perspective of nonhumans” filled with “millions of little Hitlers, wantonly splattering blood, asserting unfettered dominance, desperately clinging to the theory that ‘might makes right,’ and deluding themselves into believing humans are the anointed ones.” This is strong stuff—necessarily so, since Laws is here proposing an entirely new set of governing principles deeply rooted in the ethos of the animal rights movement and dedicated to addressing the practical issues of free will, agency, and collective good. She points out that the world’s natural resources are dwindling due to human activities such as deforestation, grazing, and urban sprawl, with the obvious observation that this is a concern to all living beings on the planet, whether they are aware of it or not. The author describes the role of animal “advocates” who act as decision-makers in the “omniocracy” she proposes, humans who “become collectors of interest, seekers, investigators, and scouts, always open to further inquiry and passionate about evidence.” Laws is tremendously passionate and convincing about all of this; she lays out a program that certainly seems workable—in the likely impossible event that the international community would ever adopt it. “All oppression is woven together like a patchwork quilt,” she writes, making an argument that will fall on deaf ears, even though she’s entirely right; the system Laws envisions would benefit humans every bit as much as it would all of humanity’s countless victims. She movingly asks her readers to take down the artificial barriers they’ve erected to this kind of thinking and allow all other living things to “join the human on the elite side of the divide”; one can only pray she changes some minds.

A heartfelt and richly detailed thought experiment positing a better, fairer world.