Which is more ascendant in today’s world, good or evil?  In which direction is our species headed?  Should I be optimistic about the future?  Is the world getter better or worse?

Today, we’re going to  take a momentary step back from the day-to-day battles that engage us, and will continue to do so for many years to come.  We’ll take a look at the world from a high-level view, and reflect on how we might tackle the big questions, such as those above.

There is, in our media, a bias towards bad news.  The reason for this may not be (or not only be) simply that bad news sells, attracts more eyeballs or draws more clicks.  Big things out of the ordinary will often be undesirable things, but they are generally unexpected as well.  We spend a great deal of time and effort to keep things ordinary, because that’s how we like them.  In some times and in many places we’ve been remarkably successful at keeping them that way.  We’ll focus our attention on what goes wrong more than we will on what we expect to happen.  Anything that threatens the stability we need to enjoy all the little things that are really what we value most, those are what we’ll notice. 

It will be news in your community if bad weather and adverse conditions lead to a 20-car ‘pileup’ on your morning commute.  But it won’t be on the countless other days you arrive safely.  It won’t be news that today you went to work and did your job well, and added a little increment of value to the world.  It won’t even be news that hundreds of millions of people did the same thing.  In our working lives, we tend to fragment our moonshots into an infinite number of manageable pieces.  The cumulative effect of all those efforts is enormous in terms of the gradual improvements in our daily lives.  This pace of change is quite obvious when we look back and compare a decade or two, but on a daily basis we don’t notice it, even though it’s very much there.

We depend on one another and the unique skill sets we bring to the table, and it’s from this that progress is generated.  The really big issues of our time won’t be solved by any one of us – not even our most brilliant scientists, industrialists and philanthropists.  It will be the aggregate of all those things each of us does every day.  On a personal level, what will matter – our distinct determining factor in whether we find fulfillment – is the extent to which we can devote those precious hours of our days to things that can ignite our passions.  What those things are will be entirely up to you.

Here at CCA, we happen to be working for the welfare of cetaceans.  How that came to be differs a little bit for each person.  For many, the outrage of this particular brand of injustice towards a fellow sentient being proved to be too big a threat to our view of what we want the world to look like.  The very notion that individuals on this planet so like ourselves in terms of their ability to think and plan, to experience love, to know remorse at the loss of loved ones and so forth, would nevertheless  have their lives or their liberty arbitrarily taken from them is unbearable.  The injustice of it cried out for a response.  At some point the call became too loud to ignore.

In a very real sense, for most of us it wasn’t something we thought long and hard about until we made a decision to choose this path.  More likely, it chose us.  We hope that such a moment will inevitably occur in everyone’s life.  The satisfaction we reap from our working lives has certainly been greater since.  That’s despite all the heartbreaks that happen and will continue to happen when you engage in this type of activism.  Not much can replace putting yourself in a position to fight for something you believe in.  And there’s no shortage of things in the world worth that kind of focus and attention.  

Someone will lead a successful legal challenge here, a legislative win there.  Another will spearhead a decision that his company will no longer do this, or her organization will no longer support that.  Step by step by implacable step, we’ll put an end to whaling and drive hunts, to dolphins dying as ‘bycatch’ in gill nets, and to the nightmare of cetacean captivity.  And our world will never look back. 

You may be a part of one of those efforts, or maybe it will be something else entirely.  Our hope for each of you is that one day you’ll be able to look back on the efforts of a lifetime and know that because you were here the world is a little bit better.  Perhaps there’s less plastic in the ocean, or more trees sequestering carbon, or more people relying on green fuels to get around.  Or can you impact how our society views and reacts to homelessness, mental health, lack of opportunity, and so many other areas where we’ve got an immediate need for improvement.  Whatever ignites your passion.  Whatever it is that shapes the world in the way you’d like to see it.

I don’t want you to get discouraged by the state of the world you see around you.  On it’s face, the situation can seem considerably worse than it really is. There is so much stupidity in some our public discourse that we can be left looking on in awe.  Speechless.  But don’t be deterred by that.  It’s less relevant than you think.  The quality and richness – of our music, our culinary arts, our literature – is all around us.  These things don’t appear in a vacuum.  They exist because of the tremendous capacity for good that is inherent in us.   You can’t ignore the bad – in fact we urge you to never do so.  But what you shouldn’t do is concede anything to it.  You have more power than you think you do.

The world will continue to move forward, and the villains of today will one day end up in the same place as every villain of the past, and history will not remember them fondly.  In the meantime, none of us is 100% virtuous, or 100% malevolent.  We live each moment with a choice ahead of us, and our contribution will reflect the totality of our choices.  We are all flawed human beings – even those of us who’ve contributed the most, like Dr. King pictured above.  We can aspire to match his intellectual honesty and moral courage, and as soon as we’ve done that, we’re well on our way to helping build a better world.

As a species, here and now in the year 2022, one of our primary challenges is to break down any vestiges of tribalism left in our worldviews.  These tribal barriers were necessary to take us this far, but now they’re just holding us back.  We had to rely on the people immediately around us.  Who and what you knew could be counted on.  Survival depended on it.  Strangers couldn’t be trusted in a dangerous and uncertain world.  Today, this mindset won’t help us.  It could very well kill us.  Given the present impact of human activities on the world, we’ve reached the point where the safety and wellbeing of every one of us means that everyone needs to be considered.  No one of us is safe until all of us are.  

What is it that makes a nation great?  It’s not its territory, or its natural resources.  Ideas are what matter.  Ideas like liberty, equality in the eyes of the law, a universal right to self-determination.  It’s on the individual that we must place the emphasis.  And for that to mean something, it has to be every individual.  Otherwise it really doesn’t apply as an inherent right to anyone at all.  Every person has worth, and none are more or less worthy than others.  (We also need to acknowledge that certain nonhuman animals are deserving of consideration for the bestowing of personhood rights.  Dolphins aren’t the only example, but in our view they’re certainly the best one.)

No person is born with inherently more value than any other.  This is crucially, fundamentally important to where we go from here as a civilization.  That means no royalty, no aristocracy.  No inherited titles or divine right of kings.  No more lords of the manor, no commoners, no serfs.  Nobility will be defined by our choices and our actions, and never by our birth.  

To this end, we’d like to throw down a challenge to our readers who also happen to be fellow Canadians.   Now may be the perfect time to introduce this proposal.  2022 represents the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II (that is, this year the Commonwealth marks the 70th anniversary of her accession to the throne, on 6 February 1952).  One can certainly make the case that our present monarch is a good person.  It would be much harder to make that case for her two first-born sons, for example.  Maybe this is a good note to end on.  Now may be the time to call this what it is – an archaic institution that enshrines inequality by its very nature.  Canada should consider ending its association with the monarchy.  Our future is as a (small ‘l’) liberal democratic republic.  Every Canadian equal in the eyes of the law.  Every Canadian.  

Just a thought to put out there.  Whether Canada continues as a ‘constitutional monarchy’, however you construe that self-contradictory term, may not be a showstopper issue. But it would be nice to acknowledge, at least symbolically, that kings and queens are relics of a bygone era when people were most assuredly not ‘equal’. It’s time to move on!

Wherever you happen to live, and whether this time of year represents Easter, Passover, or simply spring and a time for renewal, be hopeful about the state of the world.  We have enormous challenges ahead, that much is true.  But know that we are, each of us, much more empowered to influence the direction we go from here than we normally think we are.   

For The Orca’s Voice, 

Anna, Phil and the Canadian Cetacean Alliance Team