The Crikey Ethicist: Colin the baby whale and we the people
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Colin — the abandoned baby whale, whose fate has been played out in public over the last several days — is the new battle-zone in the interminable war of reason and emotion. Colin invites two powerful reactions. Some people feel intensely moved by his story. He was left by his mother, he was innocent and in danger, he could not look after himself. People wanted to help — wanted to keep in him their swimming pool, breast feed him, pay for his education — but it was all too difficult; even the ADF couldn’t save Colin. Then there were the hard-headed, hard-hearted people who spoke about Darwin and “nature red in tooth and claw”, who reminded us that many baby whales die all the time, but don’t manage to do it in public places and so pass unwept. I confess I’m less interested in Colin, more interested in our reactions. It’s sentimental to cry for a baby whale. That’s not because it’s sentimental to cry, but because the passion is not finding its real object. Colin was a symbol. People poured human sympathy into him; as if to say in a roundabout way: “I feel abandoned; I need to be rescued; I need love and kindness.” It wasn’t so much Colin people were grieving for, as for themselves. That’s why it is so dangerous to cross a whale lover; they react as if you had just insulted them — and that’s the giveaway. In the secret recesses of imaginative projection, they are Colin. That’s why talk about Darwin and so on struck them as evil; it would be like spouting the survival of the fittest to a lost and frightened child. And can’t we say much the same of the cool rationalists? Why do they hate it so much when people get worked up about Colin? Secretly, they can’t bear to see all that tenderness going in the wrong direction. Into themselves they shout:
I imagine a good few relationships have soured over this: Colin bust ups, Colin divorces. It wasn’t his fault; it was all about us. Particularly given he was actually Collette. |
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10 Comments
Whale calf euthanasia leaves a lot to be desired……..
Bogus Bindi bitch backers brutally butcher the babe beast callously crucifying cute cherubic calf Colleen…..
Call me a cool rationalist if you like, but I don’t buy at all into the mawkish displays of extreme sentimentality lavished on the poor creature. I agree that the sympathies were misplaced, I think it’s stretch to assume that they were really directed at our poor lost selves! A reflection of a general feeling of helplessness perhaps … I can’t help wishing that a fraction of this emotional energy, and strident demands for action, could be displayed for neglected, abused and homeless children, and their struggling parents.
Err nah. This is why it got alot of attention - it was NEWS. As in new. As in not conceptualised before by current generations in Sydney. It was a confusing, intriguing situation that challenged human arrogant pride they can solve all problems. Ain’t so.
Also the child in PNG tragedy is misconceived (having not died of malaria myself in north coast town of Lae way back when) because better or worse people react to what they know and feel is proximate and ‘real’. It was never a competition and to suggest so sells people short.
And how do folks know about one and not the other? - the power of one newspaper (and it is powerful) making it so prominent. The real accusation is to the big meeja who control size, colour, placement of the coverage. I still wonder if they wanted to embarrass federal ALP ineffectiveness on the whole whale thing generally. And lastly don’t forget the other great misconception that wild animals are pets.
The whale was a sad story and worthy of compassion- which is what he got. A whole team tried to work out if he could be saved, and when it was apparant he could not did their best to give him the same kind end offered your average suburban tabby in distress. Allowance has to be made for the fact she was, in fact, a very big animal in an environment not friendly to human intervention.
What Colin didn’t get, thankfully, was days of enduring every amateur with a plan and a little bag of milk claiming they could save the whale if those damn trained-vets and bureaucrats would only let them. Despite the best efforts of ACA and others to paint Colins demise as due to the heartlessness of government, it is a rare ethical position which argues that, when an animal is in need of vetinary attention, any punter should have a go. Try that one on your own pets and see how long the RSPCA backs you up. Better still, if you have a terminal medical condition open your own treatment up to the average viewship of channel nine for comment. Its worth a try. What could possibly go wrong. That guy with a pair of tin-snips and an anatomy drawing he got of the internet will have that cancer out in a trice.
Here’s another theory of symbols, and a more timely one. Whales were once a widely and ruthlessly hunted species. The subjugation of these giant ocean creatures represented man’s struggle for dominion over nature (eg the tale of Moby Dick). Now that we are rich and safe, and mass destruction of species looms, man rues this past. Saving whales is a kind of reparation, and a symbol of our hoped-for redemption. Babies are vulnerable and represent the future. It is far less threatening to obsess over the rescue of one new-born symbol of our recent enlightenment, than to confront and take rational action to prevent the mass extinctions of species occurring through our very actions today. Is there any wonder the media became hysterical over Colin? Having taken symbolic action, we can continue to deny reality.
We care more about whales than we care about people, so the fact that we couldn’t mobilise to save that whale says a lot about us. Not much of it good. We’re one of the richest countries on earth, supposedly nature loving, eco friendly, green gloaters and yet for six days we watched it starve, as we dithered, checked with the accountants and decided that even though the peasants were weeping, it wasn’t worth the time and money. SeaWorld in America saved their baby whale, but we neither had the passion or the commitment to get it together. When it came to saving Colleen, we just like her, were looking for our Mother’s boob. There are no heroes in this great dry land. The land of milk and nanny. Where was that brat Bindi when you need her?
I liked how some bloke declared himself an Aboriginal “whale whisperer” and was treated seriously as he played his traditional whale-calling instrument (AKA a guitar) for Colin/Colette. Kudos for inventing a wholly fictional aspect of indigenous culture and exploiting it to the hilt mate.
He might’ve tried calling the calf’s mother, although given her gnawed remains were on a beach a few hundred klicks to the south, he probably would’ve been wasting his time. Still, no harm in trying.
What about the immediate and never challenged assumption that the calf was a Colin rather than Collette, Colleen, Colagen or … why, o sage, did the twits that anthropomorphised the poor little blighter think it was a noble boy child??
i thought this article was bloody funny. why all the long whingey faces?
I have a small diesel boat, but if I run it on whale oil, is this an acceptable renewable resource?