'The Cove' | Will Taiji End Dolphin Slaughter?

via Flickr’s Takver

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Last night’s Oscar-winning Best Documentary ‘The Cove’ asks one simple question: do dolphins live or die?

According to Coco Masters of TIME Magazine, ‘The Cove’ leaves out information about the reverence Japanese tradition expresses for dolphins slaughtered for human consmption.

For the fishermen of Taiji, the dolphins are a ‘resource’ like rice and whole grains. They exist to be eaten by man and used as he sees fit but he slaughters them with an anthropomorphic reverence for life, even as he hears the sounds of anguish coming from these splendid creatures.

Since the beginning of time, man has expressed reverence for life in unusual, bloody ways.

The popularity of ‘The Cove’ and the stated desire of backers of the film asks if man is entitled to slaughter dolphins forever, because it’s an ancient tradition.

Men make the same ancient-rite argument about flogging women.

Using a technique called drive fishing, hunters in a line of motorized boats create a “wall of sound” between the dolphins and the open ocean by banging on metal poles lowered into the water; the poles have bell-shaped devices at one end to amplify the sound. The dolphins, who rely on sonar to navigate, are immediately disoriented and terrified and swim frantically to shore to escape the noise. There they are coralled into a small cove and trapped overnight by nets; at sunrise the next morning they are herded into an adjacent “killing cove,” where they are stabbed to death by hunters using harpoons, fish hooks, and knives. The emerald waters of the cove literally turn red with the animals’ blood. Some injured or exhausted dolphins simply drown. Fishermen drag still-living animals onto boats with hooks and harpoons or tie them to boats by the tail, forcing their airholes under water. The animals are hauled by truck, or dragged over concrete roads by their tails, to a nearby warehouse for butchering; those who are still alive are stabbed again and left to die of their injuries or bleed to death. Some drown in their own blood. via Brittanica.comYes, we have tied dolphin slaughter to women’s rights and war at Anne of Carversville. Most of my life, I’ve resisted calling men blood-thirsty. Being an egalitarian person, I only looked for the good in men, even when they insisted to me they were ‘dirty, rotten scoundrels’.

‘No, you’re not,’ I always responded. ‘Yes, Anne, we are. We really are dogs.’ They insist I acccept this vision of men instead of whitewashing the truth into my preferred vision of male goodness.

Revised tribal customs of stoning people to death and cutting off hands for stealing a loaf of bread in Somalia suggest that my men friends are right. In many parts of the world, men want to reinstate old customs, honoring what was, no matter how violent.

Men have dominated human existence for thousands of years — not because God gave them the right — but because they took it, more likely on impulse and hormonal functioning, than based on strategic thinking. Watching historical reenactments of Biblical lands dramas, I’ve faced the fact that men exibited unimaginable cruelty to each other, to women and children.

The evolution of civilization is bloody and horrific. The romantics among us — me for one — want to paint a rosy picture of positive human capacity. But the picture is bloody. The history of the world is a violent, unending struggle for mostly-male dominance. 

If you believe in Jung’s concept of collective unconscious, then we’re born with a great capacity for violence because we’ve inherited it for centuries. Personally, I’ve come to the conclusion that this destructive capacity for violence is humanity’s original sin, not human sexuality.

via Flickr’s heart means everythingSexuality as sin reflects men’s need to control women’s reproductive capacity as life-giver. Women aren’t responsible for getting us thrown out of the Garden of Even, because we are the temptresses. Women, in particular, exist as vessels for men to accomplish their bloody missions. The need to control our reproductive capacity is a primary male need, unless you are a man with an advanced consciousness.

Man’s capacity for violence, including sexual violence, is the sin of humanity.

Rather than take responsibility for his hormonal stew — probably impossible when man was little more than an advanced animal — man has blamed woman for the ills of the world. That’s very clever strategy.

Without whitewashing female life in 5th century BC Greek civilization, Athena was the goddess of wisdom. How then did women get so unbearably stupid and wicked in the Bible? God decided to set the record straight about women?

Perhaps man’s fatal flaw is a missing piece of DNA or too much testosterone. It’s reasonable to argue that we needed testosterone to defend ourselves from the lions. When do men take charge of their testosterone? The questions for today’s world is simply: are men animals or higher beings?

Writing in the cozy perch of a New York apartment, I’m mostly removed from the violence of global life. Yet, killing is the order of the day in most parts of the world. The traditions of men pour acid on women for making a simple mistake. Mothers honor the traditions of husbands and sons, cutting off the sexual anatomy of their daughters — purifying her as a ‘real woman’.

Is every tradition worth saving? Are we stuck in the muck of primal existence and therefore it’s ok to slaughter women and dolphins?

Once a savage always a savage? Or does consciousness evolve, depending on values and exposure to the imperfect process we call civilization?

via jenniferbeinhacker.comThe question emerging in 21st century consciousness — and many good men agree with me —  is whether other men have an endless capacity to destroy everything in their path in the name of tradition and religion, merely because life has existed this way for centuries.

‘The Cove’ is a symbol of our human capacity to change, to make wilfull decisions to move forward as humans seeking a way out of our tribal pasts. We understand now that dolphin brains are eerily close to human ones. The cerebral cortex of a dolphin brain is more complex than a human one.

We must embrace the honorable elements of our earlier cultures, while acknowledging that many customs don’t support an evolutionary path for humankind. These customs are deadly and inhumane, and they are particularly torturous against female principles.

It’s impossible to wade in the bloody waters of Taiji year after year and not pay a price for swimming in violence. To those of us not living in Taiji, these bloody waters symbolize the full range of man’s capacity for cruelty.

whale hunt in Faroes in 2003Benevolence and blood exist in women’s world but they are traditionally opposed in men’s. I acknowledge that men have shed blood for noble purposes — the invasion of Normandy, for example — but most wars aren’t noble acts. For every visionary leader in history, we have multiple barbarians.

Dolphins show us another path for humanity. They are symbols for our higher instincts and an ability to choose nonviolence over the slaughter of everything that gets in our way. 

In committing ourselves to the liberation of women worldwide at Anne of Carversville, dolphins have become part of our embrace. Our capacity to kill such innocent, loving creatures is chilling, when we don’t really need them anymore for our own survival.

If we can’t stop killing dolphins — knowing how close their brains are to human ones and having a more complex cerebral cortex than human brains — then the answer is clear that we will not stop killing each other.

Violence wins, as it has through most of history. Man is an animal, and we must face the bloody truth, once and for all.

Moko in Whakatane, New Zealand

Dave sent a new video of Moko this morning, playing in the waters of New Zealand with new friends. You can track Moko in his new ‘digs’ in Whakatane.

How do the men of Taiji argue that killing this splendid creature is necessary or justified in the 21st century? 

It took the men of Toyota much too long to understand that their car problems could not be swept under the rug, because they were real. The world’s people are serious about protecting dolphins, and the men of Taiji must open up their ears and listen.

Global cultures are no longer closed to each other. Taiji’s tradition of dolphin slaughter must end now. If they wish to start a campaign against Americans for eating beef, they are free to do so.  Anne

New Zealand’s Moko Has Major Dolphin Moxie

Dolphin Brains Rival Humans’ | The Japanese Slaughter Disgrace Continues

Female, Dolphin-Loving Principles Can Win in Blood-Thirsty, Male-Dominated Taiji, Japan

Let’s Hope Smart Sensuality Dolphins are Smart Enough to Stay Out of Japanese Waters