I'm wondering if I should be disappointed that Iceland is resuming commercial whaling. The inevitable problem we're on the cusp of facing is the slow recovery of whale numbers combined with rapidly diminishing fish stocks. This raises the small question of what these whales will be left to eat once humanity takes its cut from the oceans of the world.

That doesn't excuse Iceland's actions. Whaling is still morally reprehensible regardless of motive. It's like hunting gorillas, and killing them by exploding numerous firecrackers against their spines. Just enough so that they're crippled and die slowly while you watch. Then you cut them up and eat them. While the morally bankrupt may derive a great deal of entertainment from that, it just doesn't cut the musard for me, and I've almost no morals at all.

The only sensible answer is to get human beings the hell away from the water, and only take fish from sustainable stocks or, preferably, farms. Ooh, I hear the upper classes coo with their astounding ability to defy the most basic logic of the world in their quest for self-gratification through over indulgence, farmed salmon doesn't taste as nice as wild salmon, and it's a different colour!

I really don't give a shit. Sure, wild salmon tastes better (I can't confirm this myself, as I don't eat fish), but a farmed salmon won't be the last one you eat because there aren't any left after you've eaten it. As for the colour, what kind of mentality is that? What the hell has the colour got to do anything? If chicken meat was naturally bright green, would you stick your nose up at it?

It's not just the upper classes though. Did you know we can now make diamonds in a lab that are completely transparent (most natural diamonds are slightly discoloured) and absolutely flawless (diamonds are almost without exception slightly flawed)? Sounds to me like these would be some pretty valuable diamonds. But they're not. Because nobody went underground and risked their life digging it up.

So even if farmed salmon had the same colour and tasted as good as the wild equivalent, people would find a reason to dislike it. I don't get it personally. If it's so important, why don't I see wild chickens littering the country, and a daily procession of people chasing them down and pulling their necks? Why do we insist on the appropriate source for some foods, and yet refuse to question where others have come from?

It's all a pretense, a facade to give us a sense of snobbery; a purpose over which we can be fussed, and sneer down at that which does not fit with the values we place on the elements of life. It is an illusion which fills our empty lives with purpose, social rank and a sense of self-worth.

But what is the price of such things? Should we insist on an automated means of self validation at the cost of not only the earth which supports us, but potentially the continuation of our own species as well?

1 message(s) of denial

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Sir Richard Rigit - 2006-11-02 10:01:07

Ah, diamonds. All a PR stunt by De Beers, apparently. If they had promoted fossilised rabbit dung as a girl's best friend, then Africans (or people with lots of rabbits) would be dieing to produce them and hip-hop "artistes" would be eulogising them in rap. I've never liked Iceland since it stopped being Bejams.

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