Every day, our news feeds and social media present us with a steady stream of stories we’d rather not have to see or think about.  For those of us who act as advocates for other species, this is no doubt especially so.  Though most people we know are not deliberately cruel towards animals, enough of them are to produce a totality of inflicted suffering that can be hard to stomach on any given day.   As we try to come to terms with that it can be tempting to want to just turn it off and put our attention elsewhere.  I get that.

We all need to focus on the positives, and to help nudge the world in that direction.  But at the same time, it’s neither desirable nor practical to not educate ourselves about what’s actually happening out there in the wider world.  Further, we don’t want to be oblivious to the negative impacts that our own actions can have.  We don’t have the option to not make choices.   A failure to choose can just as easily mean that we contribute to the doing of real harm.  

Take the Grindadráp as an example, which results in the loss of thousands of lives, mostly of pilot whales and white-sided dolphins.  Let’s ask ourselves – who is really responsible for these deaths?

Readers of this blog are very familiar with the horrific drive-hunts that regularly take place in Faroe.  Sitting 300 KMs north of Scotland out in the North Atlantic, about half way between Norway and Iceland, this group of islands is remote relative to wherever it is that most of us happen to live.  But, given that you’re reading these words, you’re most likely a person who is well aware of what this practice consists of, and you’ve probably concluded that you disapprove, and have no intention of supporting it in any way.  But if you then get on a cruise liner that makes stops there, you’ve nevertheless helped make it happen.  Or if you buy Faroese salmon that’s made its way to grocery shelves in your country.  Or even if you watch a movie that was filmed there (as some of the scenes of James Bond No Time to Die were in 2021).  

The same goes if you do any of these things because you’ve never taken the trouble to know what takes place on their blood-soaked coves and beaches.  We can’t be aware of everything that happens, and I grant you that there are a great many things competing for our attention every moment of every day.  But to the extent that you do know, you empower yourself to provide support to things that are good in the world – either through your voice or your purchasing power – and you have a chance to avoid contributing to those that do harm.  That’s on the level of we as individuals.

At the national level, the same principle applies.  Who is more culpable – the government of the Faroe Islands, or our own governments, wherever we may happen to live?  We can criticize all we want, we can cajole, vent our anger, or use reason to persuade.  Indeed we must continue to do these things.  But that alone is not likely to make a dent in the Grind.  What else can we do?  In theory, we almost certainly could force an end to these hunts, regardless of what the hunters themselves decide to do.  We choose to engage in trade with the Islands.  In travel and tourism.  And to maintain diplomatic relations with this awful place.  What if those things were withdrawn?  How long do you expect the Grind would last?

So why don’t those things happen?

I recognize how unlikely it is that such measures would be adopted by our national governments, but perhaps you see my point.  Such actions aren’t taken in large part because we lack the popular will that would be required to make policy-and-lawmakers take them seriously.  We want the products, be it salmon or anything else the Faroes export.  We want to visit what is really a beautiful and enticing travel destination.  Pass on seeing the latest James Bond?  For most of us that would be “No, I don’t think so”. 

What it all adds up to is that whales and dolphins continue to be driven onto the beaches and murdered in the most appallingly cruel ways (and the physical pain of the killing isn’t the worst of it for these animals).  What it would take to stop it is not only that we vent our outrage, but also that we be prepared to live without the benefits that come with ‘Business as Usual’.  So is this a Faroese problem, or is this also on us?  Our governments still pursue trade deals with such places.  We still travel there, cruise ships make stops there.  We eat the fish they export.  These are all choices WE make.  Not the Faroese, not the killers of the Grindadráp.  Us.  Ultimately, responsibility for the continuation of this cruel practice rests with no-one but ourselves. 

The sad reality is that the world will always have bad people in it.  There will always be those willing to do awful things – especially when there’s money in it.  But what is equally true is that these people needn’t be of any real consequence.  It’s what the rest of us choose to do that matters.  And with amazing regularity, what that boils down to is that we don’t want to pay the extra costs that may come with taking a moral stand.  Examples of such injustices abound…

• Good business means that low cost trade goods continue to flow eastward across the Pacific, requiring us to forget, or ignore, that the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Regional People’s Government and the Party Committee operates what it calls “Vocational Education and Training Centres”, but what we all know to be concentration camps, and a central feature of an ongoing cultural genocide. 

• It means that we like that fish and other seafood products don’t cost more than they already do, in large part because the industry spends little or nothing on preventing the deaths of up to 100,000 dolphins a year in fishing nets.

• It means that we are so determined that beef, pork and poultry not cost more than they already do that we pass ‘Ag Gag’ laws to punish whistleblowers who attempt to bring forward evidence of cruelty and neglect on our factory farms.

I could go on indefinitely, but you see what I mean.  ‘Business as Usual’ comes at a terrible price.  It requires that we look the other way in the face of injustice.  I suggest to you that these things, and a great many others, simply aren’t worth it.  As an individual, you’ll be happier without them.  When one day you reflect on whether the world is better off or worse given the choices you’ve made over a lifetime, you’ll be grateful for every good one you’ve ever made.  None of us will have done perfectly, but some will certainly have tried harder.  Try to be one of those.

Awareness is a big part of it, certainly.  No one is speaking out against things they don’t know are happening.  But I urge you to be open to information about those things – often very unpleasant things – that really make a difference in others wellbeing.  Be those others human or nonhuman.  We each need to ask ourselves what we’re prepared to have done in our names by our elected representatives.  And we need to check our own behaviours. Attend a dolphin show at SeaWorld?  Buy tuna at your local market that dolphins have died for?  Use travel sites that still offer tickets to captive dolphin attractions when you could just as easily use one that doesn’t? 

Keep venting your anger on Twitter or Tik Tok or what have you, when you encounter something outrageous.  I do it too.  But also ask yourself what the choices you make in your own life may contribute to.  Ask yourself where we may need to demand more of our governments.  Be selective in choosing the companies you’ll do business with.  Which products and services you buy.  What counts as entertainment in your life.

When the situation calls for it, we need to take away the opportunity and the economic incentive.  Hurtful people will respond to little else.  You don’t argue with killers.  You take away their ability to do harm.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of our present civilization is that, in a great many places, we are not indifferent to the suffering of others.  When this is all we’ve known, it’s difficult to appreciate just how rare a luxury and a privilege this is, historically.  Having raised our level of affluence sufficiently that we aren’t preoccupied with our own day-to-day survival, we’ve been able to extend our moral frontier beyond where our forebears were able to go.  Not only is this something we need to preserve and protect, it is important that we be aware of which direction we’re going.  Day by day, are we drawing our circles of empathy larger, or smaller?  

How we treat animals, and whether that general level of treatment is improving or not, tells us a great deal about which direction we’re going as a society.  This is a clear signal for how we’re likely going to end up treating each other.  As well, remember that a number of species besides ourselves possess an emotional and cognitive sophistication that makes them capable of great suffering, of a type we know ourselves, and which goes well beyond mere physical pain.  If we can be indifferent to that, it does not speak well of where we’re going as a species, and as a civilization.

Fortunately for us, we all have an opportunity to lead by our example.

For The Orca’s Voice, 

Anna, Canadian Cetacean Alliance