Polluting the English Language to Justify Slaughter

[Guest guest]

Polluting the English Language to Justify Slaughter

 

Commentary by Paul Watson

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society

 

For years I have been annoyed at some of the terminology used in

conservation and environmental circles.

 

I think we should consciously try to think about changing the words we use.

We need to put an end to the utilitarian, consumeristic jargon that is

employed to justify ecological exploitation and the infliction of cruelty on

nonhuman species.

 

Let's start with the Canadian seal hunt. This is not really a hunt when you

think about it. No one is tracking, stalking, or pursuing seals. The

cowardly sealers merely walk through a nursery of defenseless seal pups and

whack and bash them on the head. The little fellas can't escape, they can't

swim, and they can't defend themselves. Let's call it what it is – a

slaughter or a massacre. I like to call it the Canadian National Annual

Obscenity.

 

And the baby killers swinging the clubs are not hunters. They are cowardly

thugs.

And you don't harvest seals or fish or any other animal. That word has to

go. You harvest corn, oranges, or apples but not seals or fish. I notice

farmers don't even use the term for cows or pigs. They slaughter cows and

pigs, they don't harvest them. So, why the use of this word? It's just

another attempt to remove the ugliness of their actions from the language

and to justify our crimes with denial.

 

The Canadian government has even tried to label baby seals as adults by

defining an adult as any seal over three weeks of age. It seems to me that

any seal that can't swim, can't escape, and is helpless on an ice floe at

three weeks of age qualifies as a baby seal.

 

And this word sustainable. This gem was dreamed up by that whale-killing

former Prime Minister of Norway Gro Harlem Bruntland. She was all for

conservation so long as it was outside the borders of Norway and did not

involve Norwegian fishing vessels.

This word sustainable popped up around the time of the U.N. Conference on

the Environment and Development in 1992.

 

What does it mean? After you strip away the spin and the green-washing it

simply means: business as usual.

 

For example, there is a great deal of talk about the value of " sustainable

fisheries. " I can't think of many fisheries that are truly " sustainable. "

Practically every commercial fishery in the world is in a state of

commercial collapse, yet you can still find " sustainably-fished " cod or

salmon, (at least it says so on the label).

 

In a world of almost seven billion people, words like sustainable mean very

little. Just think, if every person on earth ate one fish per week that

would be nearly seven billion fish per week or 364 billion fish a year. The

oceans can not endure this so what is happening is that fish are becoming

more expensive meaning only wealthy nations can afford it which means

sending giant factory ships from Europe and Japan to the coasts of Africa

and India to plunder fish that Africans and Indians need for survival. There

are over one million fishing vessels operating every day on the world's

oceans taking tens of millions of tons each day. How does the word

sustainable even remotely fit into the reality of worldwide fishing?

 

The ecological reality is that all fishing should be prohibited immediately

if we are to protect oceanic eco-systems. There are simply not enough fish

in all the world's oceans to meet the demand of expanding human populations.

When demand far outweighs supply, the word sustainable is meaningless.

 

Another word used these days is " stocks. " It makes it sound like the ocean

is our private warehouse. We use terms in fisheries like " managing the

stocks, " or the " stocks have been reduced, " or the " stocks are healthy. "

 

It makes it sound like its all neat and handy, and already on the grocery

shelf. The correct term is populations.

 

We don't say there is an " unhealthy stock of humans messing up the

environment. " Nor do we say that the " stock of humans need to be managed, "

although Adolf Hitler attempted to do just that. I wonder if the Nazi's

referred to the Jews as stocks needing culling?

 

When you put the three above-mentioned words together, you get the

" sustainable harvesting of stocks " of fish. Talk about separating ourselves

from nature.

 

Sometimes the word fish is replaced by the word " product " . " Yes sir, we

caught a million cans of product this season, all canned up and ready to go

to market, sustainably, and humanely harvested, of course. "

Which bring us to the term " humane, " as in " humane killing. " This term

suggests that killing is acceptable as long as it is humane. It actually

means the killing of animals is acceptable by humans so long as we can

appease our guilt by making it sound okay by " humanizing " the action. When

did killing become humane?

 

 

But if human behaviour is observably cruel then the word humane should

actually mean cruel and not kind. Humans wipe out 70 million sharks a year,

slicing off their fins and tossing them back into the sea. This seems to be

the normal human approach to exploitation and thus I suppose it is accurate

to say that the fishermen humanely kill the sharks if we change the

definition from being kind to being unkind.

 

But we humans really believe we are kind. We just justify our cruelty and

declare ourselves humane. For example, if men with clubs go walking through

the streets kicking and clubbing kittens the media and the public would be

outraged. In fact we are angered beyond measure and rightfully so when the

Chinese authorities conduct mass seizures and slaughter of dogs yet many of

these same people seem to think it is perfectly alright to kick, club and

skin baby seals alive.

 

Homo Hypocriticus or the Hypocritical primate is a word that would best

describe us. We call ourselves Homo sapien meaning aware or intelligent but

just simply calling ourselves this does not make it so.

 

Thus we have the absurd description of the Canadian seal hunt or the

Japanese dolphin slaughter as " humane sustainable harvesting of stocks of

seals/dolphins. "

 

By simply using the word " humane, " we can accept that being bludgeoned in

the head with a spiked club is kind of okay because it is described as

humane.

 

Imagine the outrage if animal shelters put down dogs with a club instead of

lethal injection. Of course, we avoid the word " kill " in the shelters by

saying we put the poor animals to " sleep. " It sounds much nicer.

 

We always hear about how Faeroese whale killers " humanely saw through the

neck of a pilot whale to sever the spinal cord. " It takes a few minutes but

the Danish government has said that the slaughter of pilot whales is a

humane, sustainable, harvest of wild pilot whale stocks.

 

And to add insult to injury we name some whales " right whales " because

whalers viewed them as the right whales to kill because they were slow and

did not sink after they were killed. I would prefer to see the Patagonia

right whale called simply the Patagonia whale.

 

And the poor little Minke whale has been insulted with the moniker of a

notorious Norwegian whaler, a sadistic character by the name of Captain

Meinke who liked to kill whales. I would prefer to have the whale named

after someone who likes whales or defends whales instead of some serial

murderer of whales. We call this whale the Piked whale.

 

And why is it that you can't describe an animal killer as a murderer?

 

Webster's dictionary defines murder as the killing of another human being,

but it also says that to kill or slaughter inhumanely or barbarously is also

murder.

 

Homicide is the correct term for the killing of a human being. Cetacide is

the killing of a whale and simicide is the murder of a chimpanzee.

 

I think that murder is an acceptable term for describing the barbarous

slaughter of a seal or the inhumane killing of a dolphin, a whale or an

elephant.

 

We just like to pretty things up to deny our responsibility in the willful

taking of life.

I also like how people who eat meat describe themselves as meat-eaters. Some

even say they are carnivores. A real carnivore would have a laugh over this

self-aggrandizing description. Human beings are not meat-eaters. Carnivores

hunt down, pounce upon, and rip the flesh from the living body of their

prey. Now, I admit there are a few strange, perverse people who eat live

monkey brains and live squirming eels but the average human does not eat

living flesh. In fact, the average non-vegetarian human is a carrion eater.

They eat dead flesh. The correct term is necrovore.

 

Sometimes the flesh they eat has been dead for weeks or even years. It looks

all red and fresh thanks to chemicals, bleach, and dyes.

 

Humans are closer to vultures, hyenas, and jackals than to the noble lions,

tigers, and wolves they try to emulate.

 

And then there is the categorizing of people into different camps in an

attempt at dehumanization. Environmentalists are often called eco-terrorists

although no environmentalist has ever terrorized or hurt anyone. Yet

corporations like Union Carbine, Shell, and Exxon can kill people and cause

incredible environmental damage without the media referring to them as

eco-terrorists. Usually, it is the employees of these corporations that call

the nature defenders eco-terrorists. It figures.

We don't have a logging industry anymore, they call it silviculture. It goes

along with the Healthy Forest Initiative where a healthy forest is a forest

that is harvested, humanely, and sustainably, of course. The loggers are now

" forest nurturers " who farm and harvest the forests for the benefit of

future generations.

 

And finally the word conservative. What happened with this word?

Conservative means to conserve, to maintain the status quo. When did

Conservative come to mean undermining the Endangered Species Act or the

Clean Air Act? When did conservative mean being anti-conservationist?

 

As a conservationist, I've always viewed myself as a conservative but now I

find that the right-wing, radical, wacko anti-conservationists who destroy

forests, overfish the oceans, and pollute our rivers are now calling

themselves conservative and accusing me of being a radical for working to

conserve nature and endangered species.

I think it is clear that we have a serious language pollution problem.

 

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