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The "part of our cultural heritage" excuse is not a positive argument, as many cultures have some pretty horrible practices in their heritage. In fact, some cu
by blunte 5y ago
The "part of our cultural heritage" excuse is not a positive argument, as many cultures have some pretty horrible practices in their heritage.
In fact, some cultures were successful colonists. Should they be allowed to capture the Faroe islands and enslave the locals under the guise of "cultural heritage"?
Times change, and human society on the whole must change. Cultures that refuse to change can and sometimes should be cut off from the rest of society. How well would they handle being isolated by the rest of the world, with no commerce or outside support? I suspect they would suddenly decide to leave some practices in the past.
- kspacewalk2 5y agoI agree with the argument you're making, but not with your colonist example. Dolphins, after all, are animals, not people. "Cultural heritage" argument is in a league of its own when it comes to harming humans.
- jnwatson 5y agoWe do indeed make exceptions for humans. We frequently ignore issues like child marriage. Widespread pederasty was ignored in Afghanistan for respect of their culture. Even in the “Western” world the lack of statutory rape law in France (just changed this year) was mostly ignored because it was just considered part of French culture.
- goohle 5y agoDolphins are "non-human person". We have no specialized word for creatures like dolphins, but they are not "animals", they are "persons". https://www.giveindia.org/blog/four-reasons-why-india-recognises-dolphins-as-non-human-persons/ https://www.giveindia.org/blog/four-reasons-why-india-recogn...
- tasoga 5y agoWell that's just your cultural upbringing. Maybe my cultural heritage involves cannibalism, after all, humans are just meat as well
- blunte 5y agoEven so, it's one thing to eat a human who has died naturally or by accident vs chasing down and killing another human to eat them.
- toss1 5y agoYes they are "animals". So are we. Our intelligence is not much superior to theirs (it's arguable that only the lack of opposable thumbs prevents them from getting on the ladder of developing technology — they already use tools), and they experience the full range of emotions as we do. How would you feel as your entire clan was herded into a box canyon and slaughtered with knives, as you wade through their blood awaiting your knife? The "Cultural Heritage" argument is indeed nothing more than an utter bulls*hit excuse when it comes to such barbaric practices. By the same token, we could justify punishment of being tarred, feathered, drawn and quartered in the town square. I'm not sure it will be in our lifetime, but I fully expect that eventually all eating of killed meat (vs cultured/lab-grown meat) will be seen as barbaric as other barbaric middle ages practices, and as slavery.
- dunefox 5y ago.
- toss1 5y agoA claim that it is "preposterous" is itself preposterous and works only if you are ignorant. Dolphins have language, complex society & culture, self-awareness, use tools, use names for themselves & each other, have higher brain/body-mass ratio vs humans, invent games, act ethically, cooperate across species, and that's just the start of the list when we're only just starting to research the topic. With all of those components of intelligence (and some features even more advanced vs human capabilities), it should not take much intelligence to see how having opposable thumbs and the ability to write and build on information is a very small step in terms of actual intelligence, BUT that this yields massive visible differences in abilities to change one's environment. (It's still to be seen if this is an actual survival advantage - the Great Filter may still be ahead of us, and be accidental suicide by technology misapplication). Also, claiming that a single point "invalidates" all other arguments commits a number of fallacies, including Overgeneralization, Non-Sequitor, and Argument from Incredulity... If you want to feel like it's OK to kill and promote killing of other species for no good reason, it'd be better to just own it than to attempt justifying it with dismissive displays of ignorance.
- Grustaf 5y agoWell, every year in the US 121 million pigs are slaughtered, and they obviously live under much worse conditions. The Faroe Islands have 50000 inhabitants, so even if they did this every year it wouldn't really be very significant. It looks graphical, but if they eat them, which I understand that they do, what is really the problem?
- mcculley 5y agoThis would make some sense if we were farming dolphin. Pigs are not endangered.
- bryan0 5y agoNeither are Atlantic white-sided dolphins[0]. It does seem weird to me that people would get upset over this but not our own slaughter of hundreds of millions of animals. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_white-sided_dolphin https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_white-sided_dolphin
- jnwatson 5y agoThe general argument is that cetaceans are smart and are worthy of more protection. At the same time, pigs can be pretty smart. Too bad they are made of bacon.
- mcculley 5y agohttps://hwdt.org/atlantic-white-sided-dolphin https://hwdt.org/atlantic-white-sided-dolphin says there are only 300,000 of them. Killing 1,400 at a time seems like an easy way to endanger the species.
- pvaldes 5y agoWhite-sided are not common dolphins
- docdeek 5y agoAre the white-sided dolphins that are at issue here endangered? Wikipedia says they aren’t, ranked as ‘Of Least Concern’ on the conservation scale. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_white-sided_dolphin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_white-sided_dolphin
- throwaway59553 5y ago>In fact, some cultures were successful colonists. And those cultures are very proud to have been more technological advanced than the colonized and had the vision to conquer and spread civilization. I'd google for "Black Legend" if I were you. >I suspect they would suddenly decide to leave some practices in the past. That's very naive, you just have to look around a bit to see that many cultures don't really care if some people in other parts of the world find them outdated.
- okokwhatever 5y agoThis comment of you indicates a lack of knowledge on so many things and it predicates the marketing campaigns we've been suffering for centuries. It would be better to educate yourself about history and the relations between colonialist empires before trying to sound smart.
- adzm 5y agoAdditionally they are using modern boats and technology; that is much different.
- mc32 5y agoLots of cultures are allowed quotas by their governments to harvest resources other people aren’t allowed. One such is the annual Taiji dolphin catch in Japan[1]. But native Alaskans and Canadians have certain rights too. As long as they don’t contribute to extinction this is better than modern animal husbandry such as veal. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiji_dolphin_drive_hunt https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiji_dolphin_drive_hunt
- soco 5y agoThe quota was 200 and they slaughtered 1400 then said oopsadaisy.