Near the end of the affecting documentary The Cove, the activists campaigning to stop the slaughter of dolphins and whales by the Japanese suggest that it is impossible to explain the ongoing slaughter on the basis of economics, science or gastronomy. Rather they put it down to nationalist and imperialist fervor. Put more simply, it looks like the Japanese in a typical display of human tribal pride, don’t want to be bossed around by obnoxious Westerners. If this is correct, the Western activists trying to shame the Japanese into abandoning their admittedly horribly cruel dolphin massacre may actually just be causing the Japanese to dig in their heals and continue something they otherwise wouldn’t care much about either way.
Whether this is really the case or not, I’m not sure. What is interesting is that this possibility goes totally unexamined by the campaigners and the rest of the film.
If the balance of evidence did suggest that this was the situation animal welfare campaigners faced, does anyone think that they (or we) would decide to ignore the issue in the hope that doing so would make the Japanese more likely to abandon the slaughter? Unlikely. Sometimes we want to (be seen to) fight something we dislike more than we actually want it to stop.
Can anyone think of similar examples?
Tagged: animal welfare, ethics, signalling
