Save the Whales

 The recent arrest of a prominent anti-whaling activist has put the controversial tactics of these campaigners back into the headlines. I, predictably, am of two minds on the subject. On the one hand, whales are complex, intelligent creatures capable of forming strong social attachments. Killing them is inhumane under any circumstances—and the fact that human beings have hunted them nearly to extinction at various points of history is an atrocity. In principle, then, I support whatever nonviolent tactics might protect them—even tactics that some perceive as annoying and self-righteous. 

Yet, this tentative endorsement of the tactics of these campaigners depends on their strategy actually working—and some of the available evidence suggests that it can actually prove counterproductive. Particularly when the anti-whaling activism is seen as a form of cultural imperialism or chauvinism, it can backfire, and end up stoking an increase in exactly the activity it aims to combat. 

This is what appears to have happened in the Faroe Islands, for instance. Whaling as an industry was reportedly waning there. But after confrontational foreign activists started buzzing whaling vessels and shouting at people through megaphones, the islanders doubled down on the practice. They came to see the whaling industry as one of their "cultural traditions" that was now under threat from finger-wagging outsiders. The net result has been that support for whaling may have only increased in the Faroe Islands, in the wake of these activists' arrival. 

Obviously, this same risk of backlash is present in every form of activism. Shame is a complex thing. It can be a powerful tool in reforming human behavior. But it also spawns a deep well of resentment. On some level, people want to reject the shame. If a demagogue comes along and tells them: actually, you don't have to feel shame about what you are doing; actually, they are the guilty ones; not you. You have done nothing wrong—people will obviously respond to that message. And they may only end up doubling down on the original wrongful behavior. 

In other forms of activism, however, we usually have the alternative option of at least deferring to people who understand the local context, and letting people who are themselves suffering from the bad behavior in question make the case against it. In the case of marine mammals, alas, there is no possibility of hearing from the "directly impacted." Whales cannot communicate in any language human beings have learned to understand. If people could hear from them: "please, stop killing us," it might be harder for them to dismiss the plea as the concoction of self-righteous outsiders. 

But since that is not an option, we are left with human activists who are willing to take on the cause. And so, the whales who are actually affected by all of this get no voice in the matter one way or the other. The confrontation becomes one between different forms of human egotism—and the whales that this was all supposed to be about in the first place are forgotten. 

I am reminded of the ironic closing line of W.S. Merwin's poem about humankind's destruction of the Earth's biodiversity. Merwin imagines whales, after their "Coming Extinction," departing this world to enter the realm of the dead, inhabited by the other lost animals and entire species that human beings have destroyed—the Great Auk, etc. He asks the whales to remind the other deceased animals gathered there that "it is we [the human beings] who are important." 

That is what we seem to be doing, in all of these debates about whaling. We are thumping our human chests and strutting about, projecting our own anthropomorphized egotism onto innocent sea life. We are reminding them that "we are the important ones." And meanwhile, despite all the performative activism, the whales are still getting killed—at least in a handful of parts of the globe where the controversial practice continues. And this is not even to speak of the other innocent creatures who are daily butchered in factory conditions around the world for the sake of human consumption. 

Human beings clearly have decided that "it is we who are important." And since the animals cannot speak to us, we are not likely to hear anything different. We are forced to rely, then, on human activists, who will always be imperfect vessels to deliver this message—who will never be able to transcend their own human egotism when they do so. But—since they are all we have, and no one else is stepping up for the job—I have to applaud them. They may be self-righteous, but that is better than being uncaring. And they certainly don't deserve to be arrested for putting themselves on the line to save the whales.