Tradition and identity no excuse for killing dolphins
- By Ni Tao
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, January 30, 2014
Ritualized killing
These carnages are a constant reminder of the animal still left in us.
When an indigenous eating habit is under attack by foreigners for perceived cruelty to animals, the knee-jerk reaction of the native population is to justify the killing as cultural heritage.
An attack on local food is equated with an attack on identity. Naturally, many people become indignant and assert their òrights.ó
When identity is at stake, debates become highly politicized, which is detrimental to true understanding of the issue ? why it makes us better men to stop killing for kicks rather than for survival.
What perishes together with the dolphins, sharks and other creatures is our innocence and conscience. In subjecting other species to our brutality and excesses, we are becoming apathetic, and disrespectful to Mother Nature.
In his 1975 seminal work "Animal Liberation," philosopher Peter Singer compared humane treatment of animals to the emancipation of women and African Americans.
Humane treatment of animals speaks volumes about advanced civilization, as we develop empathy for the suffering of animals dying for our perceived needs and become less liable to do to them what we don?t desire for ourselves.
This ethical awakening is most profound in people who once took pleasure in killing animals just for sport.
Painful reflection
In 2012, bullfighting was banned in Catalonia, Spain. Although the ban was met, not surprisingly, with some opposition on culture grounds, it was enacted anyway, not under global pressure, but as a result of Spanish soul-searching.
Animal rights advocacy groups protested the ritualized killing as a blot on Spanish ethos, and argued it was shamful to cash in on a national stain.
The Catalonian ban on bullfighting is a sign that the era of human beings taking liberties with animals as their self-appointed masters is gone.
Again, this is a result of social progress, where painful reflection begins on ritualized killing that?s become so typical of certain peoples. This is a global trend, not a question of indigenous cultures being threatened by homogenizing òenlightenedó Western values, as some cultural apologists say.
The cultural excuse Abe promoted is actually doing a disservice to Japan. Japan is the one of the few countries that hunt dolphins and continues commercial whaling, under the ludicrous pretext of scientific research.
Japanese defiance in the face of global criticism only backfires, because few subscribe to Abe?s argument. Will Japan lose "Japaneseness" if the country stops whaling? Absolutely not.
As for those fishermen, they certainly can land other livelihoods, at the price of perhaps earning only a bit less.
As such, greed is the true motivation for killing, not some ostensible cultural identity excuse.
Most of us will remain carnivores, to be sure. So castigating others for eating the "wrong" animal does smack of hypocrisy. But wholesale killing of dolphins, and similar human barbarity for that matter, has no effect other than exposing the ugly beast in us.
