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.