Does our activism really believes in what they preach ?

I am forced today, after years of doing nothing, to reach the honest conclusion I always knew deep down : no one really believes in these high principles and hypothesis. All of this has to do with power - an extremely shriveled, ill, petty form of power, reduced to the confines of a mostly virtual activism which reacts to facts as a paper tiger. And we all need to fully realize this to move forward. 

Take the instance of this “New Age” take on cetaceans, which is a widespread conception today including among many so called activists. Many among us fancy this phenomenon as marginal, as just some crazy rant gravitating around a more “mainstream”, reasonable take on cetaceans. Unfortunately it is not the case. If there is something I am firmly convinced about this New Age conception of dolphins, is that no one which claims to believe in it actually genuinely believes in it. Everyone knows deep down that it is bullshit. The whole point of this New Age discourse ; and everything that comes from it, is to maintain a certain form of social cohesion among activists, and more largely the cohesion of a certain discourse around cetaceans and a certain use of cetaceans. Basically it’s just another way to keep their understanding as animals and their use as property ; as a more “mainstream” scientific discourse also does today. 

For a long time, I claimed to fight people like Marino, Visser, O’Barry etc. For the ideas they believed in. I now realize that they don’t even fully believe in them, that they’re worst sin isn’t in refusing a certain number of empirical evidence or embracing a wrong epistemology or even flirting with certain figures from the dolphinarium industry, but rather that even their most sincere emotional talk is nothing more than a masquerade to maintain power over cetaceans, and nothing else. 

The worst wrongdoing of someone like Visser isn’t even her use of behaviorism : she isn’t some Skinner-like figure fanatically trying to endorse a dead take on animal behavior. But precisely the fact that it is not even a sincere belief in it. If she was sincere in her take on behaviorism, she wouldn’t also promote with such passion the very opposite conception ; the idea of cetaceans as people with feelings and such. She would just conceive cetaceans as mindless mechanical machines or at least deny any posturing on their mental states, intentions or cognitives capabilities, and surely not claim publicly that cetaceans are people who care for their families. But on the other hand, if she was sincere in her pursuit of cetacean personhood, she would have utterly rejected behaviorism as an epistemological tool from day one. Behaviorism is here, merely a tool used in a way to maintain the status quo of power ; human power over cetaceans, wherever the player may be. 

The same can be said about their take on cetacean sapiency. Nobody in our activism really believes in it. There is again enough proof of it in facts themselves : major organizations which supposedly promote the idea, such as the WDC (most notably through their « declaration of cetaceans rights »), are adamant in pursuing a politics of control over cetaceans which is indistinguishable from any other form of animal welfare. The same can be said of the main charismatic figures of this activism even since the seventies, claiming sometimes that dolphins are more intelligent than humans but ruthlessly defending sanctuaries without a grain of doubt, calling them « wild animals » which live in « nature » and maintaining false statement about their psychology and behavior. Cetacean sapiency is a spook. It is here - again - used to justify the unjustifiable. Not only it isn’t taken seriously, but precisely by maintaining it not as a naturally known fact from daily experience but as a subject of fantasy and scientific scrutiny, a fading icon in the distance, they’re allowing cetacean exploitation to continue and thrive by making it a point of debate ; something that wouldn’t be if contact would have been seriously engaged decades ago from our part.

Ironically, even a figure like Justin Gregg ; which I am confidently miles away from sharing his positions on cetacean sapiency and personhood ; is more sincere than any of these popular figures in his beliefs. At least, he comes from a sincere position on epistemology and science. Marino and co do nothing of the sort ; their discourse not only is founded on hypocrisy, but most importantly is merely here to justify a localized position of power which, to exist, needs the maintaining of the usual status quo regarding cetacean treatment. There is nothing revolutionary about their current actions and goals. 

For a long time I kept pretending nothing was wrong with the way I managed our small online group. I now realize how wrong I was, clinging to all this bad politics, the little schemings, the plotting, the deep seated hate against competing figures. We are straying by keeping ourselves into the tight frontiers of these activisms, where what matters is how much power and influence one has in those circles. Cetaceans don’t matter at the end : power does, more specifically the factual standing one has inside of a tight circle of activists. « Saving cetaceans » is just another carrot at the end of another stick.  

No one really believes in cetacean communication. The very function of the idea of talking to cetaceans one day is to work as a a fantasy : a distant image to chase for in order to justify specific systems (schemes !) of power. There is enough proof of this in both the daily behavior of activists as well as in the history of our militancy itself. From Lilly to Marino passing by a plethora of colorful figures through the turn of the century : Scott Taylor, Wade Doak, Jim Nollman, Paul Spong, Denise Herzing, Ken Levasseur etc… the idea of contacting cetaceans was always flirted with, sometimes half done (I think in particular of Wade’s experiment with a dolphin named Rampal and some other events such as the one surrounding NoC) but never seriously put into practice despite many evidences that the feat was technically possible since the sixties. 

I myself had many reluctances in pursuing that objective when I first started this group in 2013 and dismissed it as a trivial pursuit in favor of a more theoretical approach until two years or so, and even then I still express difficulties in taking the matter seriously ; let alone putting it in place myself. As we speak I am starting the construction of my own version of the said UQC-like device as theorized by Russel. This is unfortunately not surprising. As everyone else, my approach is bumpy and imperfect. It is difficult for me to part with an obsession for theory and politics which at the end mainly translates itself into an obsession for influence and virtual power inside of our cetacean circles, which is nothing but another useless pursuit for power. I am as much an idiot as everyone else on this one. 

There is, in any case, nothing to worry about regarding the reaction of these « leaders » and the mass of activists that follow them : the very fact that figures such as Marino and Visser have to resort to angry, distraught reactions in order to defend sanctuaries, and more largely that subjects such as stranding euthanasia, harassment of free populations by researchers or the tacit collaboration of our activism with components of the dolphinarium industry have to be defended in such a neurotic way and through such things as bullying and appeal to authority already speak volumes. If their position would stand to reason, they would defend it from reason. There is in any case one hard to deny fact : no matter the faux discourse about « care » and « love », no matter all the benevolent worries about whatever « what if » that could happen to freed cetaceans, everyone knows deep down that cetacean sanctuaries are fundamentally problematic. They wouldn’t defend them with such aggressiveness and ostentation otherwise and deny the legitimate right to openly questions those projects publicly.

In any case, I’m forced today to reach one conclusion : we must follow an imperative of living ; breaking the cytoplasm of activism toward the cetaceans themselves. Concretely, it’s about talking to them at once : following our own efforts in building such devices and understanding this problem as a concrete living issue to solve and not as distant fantasies to enact as such in order to maintain mediocre forms of power. Contrary to these charities and charismatic leader figures, we as a small collective do not offer you any hope or optimism or sense of purpose everyone pertinently know is fake. We’re offering you the possibility to be true to ourselves and genuinely reach them out as people and not as objects to use and fantasize on. When you will truly understand that this is about life ; not in this bullshit new-age or vitalist sense but in when it comes to the very expansive nature of existence and relations - then you will truly reach out to them as individuals.

Should we continue understanding cetaceans and elephants as “animals” ?

The problem doesn’t root itself in biology : we are, obviously, all “animals” from a plain biological point of view - but is a social and conceptual one. Simply put, the current use of this notion in our societies and organisations devoted to the protection of non-humans is one where “animals” are by definition understood as usable and disposable property by humans, particularly states and companies, and as cut from any social and political reality. Non-humans are understood as goods, which can be traded and handled under a market logic, and while laws exist to regulate such trade, they are here precisely to minimize the impact of such politics, rather than stopping or disrupting it. 

Here again, the issue is far less a simple conceptual one - the problem isn’t that the term isn’t politically correct or moral - but that its current use implies and is linked to a stream of decisions and actions which clearly go against their autonomy as a people. Cetaceans and elephants alike are ruthlessly destroyed, captured and managed. Aside from the well known fate of captive cetaceans and
elephants worldwide, “free” populations are the subject of human pressures, and in particular elephant populations worldwide - as well as some coastal cetacean populations - are the subject of invasive management by national parks or research and conservation agencies, which include, for elephants, culling, hunting and captures for the captive industry, and for cetaceans, invasive tagging, marking, biopsies, captures for weighing, harassment, and near-systemic euthanasia of stranded individuals. Many “free” elephant populations worldwide are factually captives, particularly in southern African national parks and game reserves. Their spaces continue to be understood as a “wilderness”, meaning a disposable, usable space by humans, rather than as a socially and politically mediated areas used and modified by cetaceans or elephants, which should be recognized by states as integrally belonging to them. 

As such, we cannot continue to understand cetacean and elephants ; and arguably other species at a certain extent, such as great apes, as “animals”, simply because the kind of relation we’re ought to have with them imply consequences which directly contradict our traditional understanding of what an “animal” is. Unless we completely overturn our understanding of the term ; using it for instance to fully include us and all other species in a flat, horizontal network of relations, without a priori hierarchies and relations of property ; the notion cannot but be deemed as harmful in the current context. An activism which truly seeks the rightful autonomy and equality of these species cannot abide for such a notion and its corollaries without bumping into serious contradictions. 

This doesn’t mean obviously that the current understanding of “animals” in their globality is right. Sapiency or not, the current understanding of other species as usable and disposable property to be handled and destroyed at will is difficulty justifiable. One would be foolish to “include” some species into a very closed club of sapiency and then continue to understand a “mass” of non-human species as disposable and usable property as we traditionally did for centuries, ignoring everything these perceptions of non-humans brings in terms of suffering and destruction. For instance, continuing understanding the preys cetaceans hunt (say, mullets or flounders) as simple “resources” under a market logic, without any consideration for what they may feel or live through. Nonetheless, if the notion constitutes a clear issue in any case for any species, its use for what clearly are people or at the very least species with a degree of awareness and insight close to ours is even less understandable and justifiable.

In the same way, context forces us to admit that, for instance, the problem of feeding cetaceans, fishing with and for cetaceans, or the destruction and robbing of the preys cetaceans hunt is an issue of property and theft at a certain degree. The idea of having law understood the preys cetacean hunt as their “property” and “resources”, even loosely, isn’t necessarily a wrong, although it is clear that the notion of property and resources in the west are extremely different from the one of traditional indigenous people and obey to a market logic which is far from the way cetaceans undoubtedly understand the issue. It is arguable that the very concept of property and resource must be destroyed precisely so the preys cetaceans hunt won’t be understood as usable and disposable at will by humans anymore. 

As such, it could for instance be beneficial for cetaceans and elephants for their spaces and “resources” they use to be understood under the very rules and concepts they use. It is easily arguable that if those species possess an understanding of some spaces and elements as « theirs » such an understanding of ownership is far more fluid and complex than in ours, and comparable to what we find in many indigenous and/or nomadic populations, where certain goods and spaces are generally understood as shareable to certain degree.

The principle behind the device

Toothed cetaceans such as dolphins hear and communicate between roughly 5khz to sometimes up to 160khz or more. On the other hand, humans can only hear up to 20khz. This means that communication between humans and cetaceans is in practice extremely difficult if not impossible because of this gap, or at least a pipedream without an eager will from both ends to close that gap.

The idea brought by Russell Hockins is to create a radio-like device capable of taking what we say between the 0-20khz range, and extrapolating it at a higher frequency with a similar range, for instance between 60khz and 80khz, 70khz and 90khz, and so on, depending on the preferences of the other end. This also means that the interlocutors - which usually communicate in quite large ranges, need to adapt their speech to the quite narrow range used by humans before speaking. This idea wasn’t initially created by Russel but rather took the principle from previous existing devices or attempts, particularly radio like systems used by the military for communication between divers or submarines, such as the UQC. 

It is possible if not probable that cetaceans, in order to accomplish this feat, will simultaneously speak and emit a lower frequency sound which will effectively mix both, generating something which could be heard in our range. Russel hypothesize that, in the long term, cetaceans may learn how to use such a process in order to effectively be understandable without the use of a device, making the last obsolete.

The idea could also be extrapolated to elephant and baleen whales, which on the other hand communicate with infrasounds, meaning far below our audible range and on the hertz level. This would involve a simpler process of frequency dropping, meaning that whatever will say will be and sound way lower to them, and everything they say could be heightened to have a higher pitch similar to how we speak. This would involve bigger devices with subwoofer-like megaphones and a microphone capable of receiving extremely low frequencies. In their case, though, devices may be necessary at all times, as they cannot mix sounds like toothed cetaceans can. On the other hand, two cases of captive elephants ; one in Kazakhstan and another in South Korea ; suggest that the last may learn to speak at our level by blowing in their trunk and releasing the trapped air as a modulated sound, effectively imitating our speech. 

Also see :

https://www.kintocetaceans.org/human-cetacean-communications.html

Alternative draft (nov 2016)

(note: this is my old draft, I posted it on Facebook in our group and send it via email few times already, but while our blog definitely not most visited - may be this text eventually will find its reader)

Ken Levasseur and his “Third Phase program” :

Ken’s Levasseur, an american scientist now living in Hawaii, is both famous for his liberation of two captive dolphins from Lou Hermann’s laboratory where he worked in in 1977, than for his “Third phase program” project : his views and papers are being completely ignored by most of the activism since several years, and we think this particularly unfair, as his ideas and projects were paradoxically highly praised by several actors of the activism less than a decade ago. The fact that his views are being ignored is symptomatic of a larger issue with disregarding alternatives or movements going beyond sanctuaries as the “only solution” for captive cetaceans.

1) It relies completely on having a genuine, equal relation between two species - if the humans fail somewhere, the dolphins have all the rights and possibility to leave.
2) It has put forward the idea of making some unusual high-level, two-way (where dolphins/cetaceans become real practitioners, whose words matters!) communication as part of social reality.

Wording was aimed at scientifically-minded auditory, and some problems were left out of main articles in attempt to provide just most important points. It was in 1996! Unfortunately, work on those ideas stalled, and even with my small additions on replacing (gradually?) ‘feeding’ with cooperative hunting (fishing) and finding new ways of doing medicine, and a bit more polishing on how to show language and how to choose first subset of language to use together - those remain more like ‘nice ideas’ than complete plan from A to Z. But may be making plan from A to Z on very beginning is wrong exactly due to unflexibility of such plans. Russell Hockins for example hopes at least Orcas can master use of interspecies language without spending too much effort on simplest concepts. [2] Only practice will tell.

In Ken’s own words [1]: “According to this proposal, three basic (but related) changes must occur in the classical dolphin holding facility management plan. The first change must be to the use of social reinforcement, exclusively, in training and communication with dolphins, rather than food reinforcement with its food deprivation as motivation control. This change is implemented through a language program utilizing a human whistled language. The second change must be a "feed at will" policy that can be expected to double the food budget at participating facilities.”.... “Human language does more than command a subject to behave a certain way. True language communicates abstract social signals between practitioners which involve positive as well as neutral and negative attitudes. Human language allows the subject to reject commands while maintaining integrity! The result of this form of abstract communication is the creation of complex cultural systems as well as the reinforcement of social bonds between language users. The use of immersion language training, instead of operant conditioning in a new approach to interacting with dolphins, would help create the social bonds needed to make the replacement program work. The flexibility and specificity of language would remove much of the frustration and resulting stress from close human / dolphin interactions. A truly positive environment for learning and exchange could evolve under such a program.”.... “It is still scientifically possible that dolphins may someday demonstrate communication abilities at or near the adult human level using a human whistled language or a deciphered dolphin communication code. For this reason dolphin subjects must be accorded the same respect as humans if they are to be used in language experiments and programs. Because of this potential and the need for trust in order for the social approach outlined above to work, this respect must be built in and implemented from the planning stage of developing the language and human / dolphin interaction programs. “ ..”The Third Phase open-ocean programs may use enclosures where the dolphins can go and be secure, day or night, but access to and release from the enclosures must be available to the dolphins.” ..”Obviously for a program like this to work, the dolphins will have to want to stay or return to man-made enclosures. The best incentive for this is excellent treatment along with human companionship, as well as the obvious, interest generating activities. Under these conditions, these speaking / whistling dolphins would literally become ambassadors. “

Of course, initial idea was a bit too tourist-based for my new views, yet we are not forced to follow just one text, there are others related philosophical works about finding our new place in the world, where tourism will be replaced by ..pilgrimage? Hard to name it accurately - something deliberately uneasy, and wonderful, with rules of interaction based on understanding of this wonder and relative fragility of it. See Anthony Weston’s ideas, for example : “Environmental Ethics as Environmental Etiquette: Toward an Ethics-Based Epistemology”, published in vol. 21 of magazine Environmental Ethics, summer 1999, here is quote from p. 126-127, - “To begin with, certain kinds of self-fulfilling prophecies turn out to be crucial in ethics. There is, in particular, a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy in which one of the main effects of the “prophecy” is to reduce someone or something in the world—to make that person or thing less than they or it are or could be, to diminish some part of the world’s richness and depth and promise—and in which this reduction in turn feeds back not only to justify the original prophecy but also to perpetuate it. This process is therefore self-validating reduction. There are all too many examples. Animals reduced to pitiful or hostile vestiges of their former selves, whose incapacities and hostility are then taken to justify exploitation or further violence. ”.... “  To break this cycle of “reduction,” it is necessary to invoke a parallel cycle of “invitation”—indeed, quite precisely, self-validating invitation. Here the kind of practice asked of us is to venture something, to offer an invitation to, or to open a possibility toward, another being or some part of the world, and see what comes of it. We are called, in fact, to a kind of etiquette once again, but here in an experimental key: the task is to create the space within which a response can emerge or an exchange coevolve. “ [....] “ Places, buildings, communities can be more or less inviting: we need to plan for what Mary Midgley calls the “mixed community.” Considering—inviting—other animals in this sense, for example, partly means designing places and media where we can meet each other halfway. Sometimes it is as simple as designing places that they and we can safely share.”

Speaking about wrong kind of relations embedded in current capitalist mentality I (A.R>) wish to add one more important bi-quotation.

First there is quote from Anarchist FAQ:

As well as economic incentives, the creation of externalities flows from the price mechanism itself. The first key issue, as green economist E. F. Schumacher stressed, is that the market is based on “total quantification at the expense of qualitative differences; for private enterprise is not concerned with what it produces but only what it gains from production.” This means that the “judgement of economics ... is an extremely fragmentary judgement; out of the large number of aspects which in real life have to be seen and judged together before a decision can be taken, economics supplies only one — whether a thing yields a profit to those who undertake it or not.” [Small is Beautiful, p. 215 and p. 28] This leads to a simplistic decision making perspective:

“Everything becomes crystal clear after you have reduced reality to one — one only — of its thousand aspects. You know what to do — whatever produces profits; you know what to avoid — whatever reduces them or makes a loss. And there is at the same time a perfect measuring rod for the degree of success or failure. Let no-one befog the issue by asking whether a particular action is conducive to the wealth and well-being of society, whether it leads to moral, aesthetic, or cultural enrichment. Simply find out whether it pays.” [Op. Cit., p. 215]

But exactly this kind of objection was made by Savage-Rumbaugh (as quoted by Kenneth LeVasseur) against not just one researcher, but whole idea of operant conditioning!

". . . unlike the child, all of the actions carried out by Ake, Rocky, and the others in the test paradigm achieve a single goal--the receipt of a fish to eat (Herman et al. 1984; Herman 1987,, 1988; Schusterman & Krieger 1984, 1988). In the routines of daily life, a child learns to carry out different actions for different ends and becomes a functional partner in the interactions. The correspondence between the communication and its result, that is natural for the child, is not present in the dolphin and sea lion studies. . . .

" . . . The dolphin, however, has little reason to learn in this way, since it

a) cannot make the signs the experimenter makes and

b) probably does not particularly want to 'take the frisbee to the hoop' in any case.

It is more interested in reinstating the 'effect' of receiving a fish than in the actions that were the result of the symbols 'take the frisbee to the hoop.'

". . . This is not to say that these animals lack intentionality and do not communicate to each other or to humans. Within the test situation, however. these capacities have no opportunity for expression. . . .

Children learn many words that permit them to affect their world in many different ways. Dolphins learn many words that affect the world all in the same way (they produce a fish). Until training paradigms are utilized that permit the animal to do more than obtain one type of reward, the subjects cannot be expected to realize their potential for symbolic communication."

So, removing totally wrong set of relations between humans and ex-captives (dolphins)  also very much demand different, non-hierarchical, non-reductionist relations between humans. Especially if we consider Frfact whole thing will most likely happen in standard capitalist society, so following will be more than applicable unless human/human relations at whole project site will be vastly more supportive towards each other (in additional to being supportive to ex-captives!) in direct sense (so skewed economic power overrepresented in std. society will have less impact than usual on those humans) than it is typical for modern times!

Another quote from AFAQ:

“Thus if the president of company X has a mystical experience of oneness with nature and starts diverting profits into pollution control while the presidents of Y and Z continue with business as usual, the stockholders of company X will get a new president who is willing to focus on short-term profits like Y and Z. As Joel Bakan stresses, managers of corporations “have a legal duty to put shareholders’ interests above all others ... Corporate social responsibility is thus illegal — at least when it is genuine.” Ones which “choose social and environmental goals over profits — who try and act morally — are, in fact, immoral” as their role in both the economy and economic ideology is to “make much as much money as possible for shareholders.” [The Corporation, pp. 36–7 and p. 34] “

For combating such outcome much more direct support between humans should be maintained. (who also must be deep thinkers, be able to regulate themselves, self-critical and seek some unusual goal - so even if they not politically anarchists - they better to share some of key features of anarchism!). Relying on external monetary donations or rich visitors will easily put whole project under hammer of very system it tries to at least avoid, and at best successfully combat as example of different kinds of relations, not limited to anthropocentered relations!

Whole AFAQ located at http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-anarchist-faq-editorial-collective-an-anarchist-faq

But this relatively lately found by me (A.R.) anarchist view put serious doubts on realisation of Ken’s initial idea about transforming dolphinarium into such community place, where really mutually supportive mixed-species commune may live. What kind of event must happen to even ‘progressive’ dolphin owner for him or her (unfortunately female dolphin trainer, dolphin owner, etc not really softer than males!) to abandon not just dolphin exploitation, but human exploitation, environment exploitation, and so on? May be such transformation still possible with some humans, but at least Ken’s own attempt at it while filming “Beneath the Blue” movie failed - none at this captive swim-with facility was moved enough to become visible supporter of idea! (for some details you can start at https://wayofthedolphinblog.wordpress.com/dolphin-issues/ )

In personal communications with Ken we agreed this everpresent in capitalists fear of bankruptcy (“what we will do if most/all dolphins will need to go for some even more extended period of time?”) must be realistically addressed, probably by completely shifting monetary-generating activity from being _depended_ on dolphin’s real continued presence - yet now I’m not sure just allowing same mindset to ruin just slightly different part of life is acceptable. Probably some can be convincing by showing how capitalism as practicized today IS reductionism, and thus ignoring ‘capital’ of social relations, and dolphins know how to make a lot of very attractive relations with their human friends (they are masters of such relations, not depleted by all our material culture confusion! Yes, ors are depleted, because we can easily confuse social and personal relations with desire for some material items or money, and all this exaggregated by specific of our dominative nature).

Scott Taylor in his vision of ‘Dolphin Village” did remarkable error, assuming whole dolphin/human place must be multi-deca-million-dollars luxury resort, attractive and factually accessible only by rich elite. Lets not resort to such thing, especially because it was envisioned as nothing more but even more glamorized captivity! Place must be attractive by its ability to support life, starting from very basic food (for both or more than two species ...with dolphin’s area much extending into sea/ocean, literally limitless) and spiraling up to all kinds of social support we value.

Another key point from both anarchist’s tradition and philosophy - is to make direct action/practice, not just use ‘donate’ button. Why? At very least because it gives a lot more - feels of temperature and distance, sounds of the sea and rocky landscapes, better understanding of your limits and limitations and possibilities hidden in reality. I (AR) experienced this myself during failed attempt at freeing captive dolphins Delfa and Zeus in late 2015-early 2016.

But main problem in realization of any truely alternative project seems to be (after overcoming initial unability to think outside the box, and when ideas become widespread enough to become workable) exactly highly unequal and hierarchical nature of current human society - any ‘deviant’ project torpedoed not just by existing laws, but by more mainstream activists and their organizations! Our documents hopefully will help to make some ideas more advanced and coherent - but they alone can’t help with breaking this barrier between theoretical possibility and practice. May be law-related problems sometimes overestimated and overstated by proponents of mainstream views - especially if we talk about supporting ex-captives by human people who already live in area, not some specialized ‘project’ with its need to be law-obeying to the last dot in lawbook. But then if exactly moving captives to sea currently tied to some mainstream perspective about ‘providing safe and professional (!) secured (!!) place’ - we definitely need some political work! Political in sense of providing transfer for captives (this process in itself was mostly ignored by activists - even if it remain quite stressfull for cetaceans and their experience during it may hugely impact their behavior on arrival! We developed some ideas about starting human/cetacean re-relations very early simply for facultating even transport process itself in much more cetacean-friendly manner than it currently can be done by dolphinarium industry standards of (non)care, yet attempts at implementing those ideas also blocked by unsettling hierarchical power from dolphianrium industry, now also way too well represented in ‘anti-captivity’ activist’s circles), yet effectively suppressing development of new captive place! With usual caution about nature of human politics - in attempt to buy support humans often make all sort of nice promises, yet after coming to power they even literally shot down ex-comrades, and break from their promised goals! So, allowing anyone to gain even ‘moderate’ by society’s mainstream standards control over how it must be done, about who will allowed to enter and who will not, any reuse of State/corporate/institutional power must be effectively resisted. “How?” is very open question ....

Notes

[1] - http://whales.org.au/published/levasseur/levass3b.html

[2] - http://www.kintocetaceans.org/human...

[3] - http://dolphintale.com/Interspecies... - “Large scale thinking is required, and a huge commitment by the Human family to this new level of relationship. To develop the type of coastal environment ideal for the interspecies villages of the future will cost tens of millions of dollars. (The Waikaloa Hilton Hotel on Hawaii has Dolphins living in it’s artificial lagoon, and the development costs of the hotel were reported to be around $350 million dollars.....)”. Speaking about what was envisioned by Lilly - at least in the “The mind of the dolphin” he emphasized and highlighted necessarity of _voluntary_ contact. Quote from very end of book: (p. 275) “It is suggested that shallow water "parks" be established. Such parks would be in areas which the dolphins naturally seek. The underwater and abovewater facilities are to be designed so as to allow voluntary contacts between the species. Neither man nor dolphin are to be constrained in their own or in the other's medium. “ (word voluntary was highlighted in italics in original text) But I guess this fixation on hugely visual attractive luxury resorts as model disabled most of real development, even at concept level. Yes, there was small ‘interspecies village’ at Hawaii around local libre dolphins, yet its impact on situation with human/cetacean relation was nowhere big enough - it just survived in parallel with bigger captive place!  :( -  http://www.joanocean.com/Human-do.h...

Just many questions about our human condition, with very few half-hints at answers.

Humans, why we sucks and what to do about it.

1. Problem at developmental stages.

1.1 excessive authority of parents/school

1.2 not so symbolical (just expressed via symbols/language) violence

1.3 natural shitstrorms at specific age

1.4 behaviorist approach, like when teachers more interested in external aspect of behavior than in cultivating deep thinking

1.5 competative in wrong sense setup

1.6 may be even completely wrong pace of teaching, dictated by need to make human part of (arguably broken, sucking them and everyone) society.

1.7 Culture transferred as a whole, without attention to  how elements of it actually affect beings

1.8 even currently-known bits about psychological quirks (like Milgram’s experiment on authority’s dangers) really ignored.

1.8.1 Abuse of dominance theory ….

1.9 Our child tales too...removed from real-world, cultivating idea we as adults  rel. easily can solve, or worse SOLVED already our biggest problems, while in fact we can’t

2. Problem at ‘adult’ stage

2.1 You forced to spend too much time just making sure you will have most basic things, like food and house.

2.2 very few humans remain curious about how world work into their 30s and 40s and beyond.

2.3 Humans confuse (very dangerously) quest for knowledge with quest for power, unfortunately current society leaves them little to no alternative

2.4 Late years (post 60ish?) tend to be marked  with at very least bigger and bigger time required to get new idea, let alone  less and less desire to dive into NEW concepts and details, especially if you were beaten over attempts at making progress in all your previous life

2.5 Amount of truely free time/effort one can give to others tend to be small.

2.6 assumptions about equality of two groups of humans often turned out to be untrue (more powerful human nearly always less sensitive to voices from around, and thus makes greater errors and least like to ack this, blocking progress much more than helping it)

2.7 Humans stuck into improving easy parts of problem solving, like writing about it, but when it comes to action often no-one actually can carry it out, with real-world pressure against implementation true to plans.

2.8 Humanities currently in some kind of stone age, compared to other sciences. Humans just thrown their own behavior at wall and hope it somewhat will help them. Human engineering can’t be done if we just ignore half of forces and phenomena in human life because we dislike them, and prefer them to disappear. Human engineering often misused as way to craft humans into serving current society… Anthropocentrism thus is all about human narcissism, not geniue understanding of ourselves.

2.9 Not being honest and being overly optimistic about real amount/quality of moral (ethical, better) progress actually play very bad joke with us ..humans told everyone they change, while in fact they not change enough.

2.10 Humans much more interested to maintain their current position (within current society), even if it knowingly will lead to problems to everyone at some point later..

2.11 Thinking without way to carry it out is disabled (sorry, repeating myself)

2.12 Some associations work for too little time, like year or two instead of 10 or 15 years required for cementing new way of thinking/acting.

2.12.1 Having more than two different humans support each other tend to be uncommon, if all of them  above-mainstream in their quality of understanding....

2.13 Having majority of untrusted humans around you sucks big time, likewise having trusted humans who just overstate themselves and fail too easily also sucks…

2.14 humans still confuse authority with objectiveness.

2.15 perfecting one narrow field completely block progress in required associated fields (like, going vegan in food after some point just consume all your  thinking resources and you become blind to real live beings around you …)

2.16 real self-discoveries, and real picture of the world tend to be dark, so humans  retract into _unfounded_ optimism about themselves and fate of the world around them.

2.16.1 But being warrior for change by itself is trap, if you follow usual road of gathering more and more power, because you can’t honestly outdo exploiters (who already out there, gathering their crowds by demagogy), without becoming one...

2.17 Truely revolutionary thinking tend to lurk in some unlit corners, done often (but not always) by lesser-known authors..so, they ignored as ‘freaky’, because 2.14

2.18 Nearly all words/ideas and concepts already very used by humans who make them 180 turn on its head, so you can’t simply say this idea will work because it contains all good words and intentions. Worse, tons of overlysugared words usually come from worst humans, who attempt to make themselves look 101% good. (at least this can be indicative!)

2.19 As fast as you assume you can’t make error - you will make one. BIG one, usually ….

2.20 Is our demand for debate actually makes us _nothing more_ than debaters? “Convince me!” become not call for finding some hidden reality, but _just_ call for intellectual fight. It can be impressive when you first see it ...but impression quickly become negative one, after you realize this type of battle mostly breed  fighters and pushers, who often just easily drop all this uncovered-via-hard-work-‘truth’ for some cont. debate/social  reason :/ How to combat this tendency? May be by helping loosing side (less mainstream, less supported) as  a rule? Like helping your opponent with ideas, materials, books, carrying out something, be it observation or building, alongside your own line, and looking for similar behavior from ‘opponent’?

2.21 Are we fail into overspecialization trap, where required/extreme inclusiveness, acceptance and support of new ideas and unusual humans just never progress beyond some group? Like programmers can be extremely sensitive to some technological angle, and completely deaf, even aggressive against philosophy and other ‘soft sciences’.  And counterpart of this problem, when humans proclaim their so universal humanity you started to wonder how they supposed to pull it off IRL …. {we can’t realistically support ALL humans, only some quite small number of them in any given time}. Of course last one apparently driven to absurd extreme by bigger and bigger demand for humanity/humane, in the world where a lot of officially supported trends exactly drag you backward, combined with some self-image inflation...

2.22 unability to actually abstract problem from real-world examples AND use this new understanding for preventing similar, or less-obviously-similar problems from occuring also ...sucks. Yes, this is again about overspecialization, too - too few humans  accept thinking as normal mode of life, as something truely required, and important. Humans prefer to think thinking only needed at work, or in some situations, and/or only should be done by some humans...well, thinking is painful and effort-heavy. And alone and in itself not helping. And can’t be performed alone. But with ‘dark’ side of progress pushing forward and forward into more complexity...do we have any real way but TO THINK with better quality, as much as we can, not as little as possible?

2.23 Our life is not homogene, so years of living as honest man can be relatively easily undone and worse (with some kind of megaregression, esp. dangerous because previous history not indicated this as likely variant) by just few giveaways under pressure in critical moment. Likewise, some situations and activities much more provocative, thus, looking again at my dog, our indoor living not really represent our living in general, because rel. short outside walks in fact quite restrictive for dog, and lead to amount of violence (!!) from my side ..yeah, stopping dog by physical force IS violence.

2.24 Demanding from solo human to outperform whole asshole collective is not going to work. (and making another asshole collective for fighting first one is not giving anything positive, just more assholes!) Likewise for asking one to outperform  ALL humans who were unable to solve some hard problem (outside of very specific narrow field, like math) in all those years since start of written history.

2.25 Books are awesome, they can show you [parts of] life as lived by very different to your time and location humans, yet ...they usually unable to make you even remotely as good in personal qualities as even most real writers themselves were ..so, transfer fail …. (I was reading Ken LeVasseur’ and Ben White stories (ref. 2.24 - they both HAVE/had friends who helped them! So, it all was done NOT alone), along with many others ..but while they surely motivated me to behave in more coherent and brave manner in my field - I’m still very far from actually being able to stand for real cetacea ...even for my dogs results are mixed - in some cases I was able to stand and protect them, in others - not.) Meh, I mean you can’t download practical resistance from book!

2.26 There seems to be confusion about peak and sustained resistance ….

2,27 Supporting oppressor equally with those who oppose it - less than half-assed service, more like disservice …. {it probably can be said we *all* serve currently very oppressive humanity as a whole - yeah..I tried to pick those who, IMW, serves this wrong humanity least …}

What to do about all this?

3.1 May be play some self-tricks on yourself, guiding your actions against usual flow? Like, making little good things each time you can (and making sure you will not take this back, so good work not become undone lately), and  for example shutting down computer instead of making angry outburst if you feel too bad? Putting yourself in situation you know (or suspect) you will behave in necessary, but hard to move on your own, direction?

3.1.1 Learn to live on very low-power budget? I mean, don’t drag your dog even if you feel you must, for example …

3.1.2 Making some non-standard type of living (relative to current mainstream) still helps even if not others but at very least you, to  have resistance.

3.1.3 Try to assemble best possible ethical theory of action , from available best literature, and try to live just one step even further from all those works? Ok, this sounds too ambitious, but I try to live by it, even if with just dog atm? I mean, ideas from Erich Fromm on humanities and capitalism and society, ideas from John Lilly on scientists and non-humans with cetacea as focus, ideas of Sue Donaldson and Kymlicka on domesticated non-humans, Alexander Nevzorov’s ideas on horses, Anthony Weston’s ideas on bigger world /mostly libre beings / ..I combine them all in my head, and try to live by resulted combined ethic? Not dismissing any real being, no matter how labeled by humans? Ok, Nevzorov will facepalm looking at my dog walks … :/ Not like living honestly for even ‘just dog’ is easy thing today ...at least in given city.

3.1.4 May be giving some recognition to humans who can stand psychological pressure, because in modern world a lot of hits {with extremely catastrophic consequences}  go via psychology, not via physical punch… Bravety shouldn’t be restricted to physical side only.