The Orca Uprising

Three ships sunk. Countless disabled. By a pod of orcas, off the coast of Spain.

Sounds like a wicked movie plot. The Orca Uprising. It sure beats throwing paint at art, as far as climate protests go. But, sometimes truth trumps Hollywood imagination. The mere fact that it’s taken three years for the Iberian orca attacks to become a talking point around the internet water cooler seems to suggest that people have had a hard time believing it: Orcas targetting boats and ships, disabling them with surgical accuracy by tearing off their rudders, seemingly being taught this behaviour at the behest of an older matriarch.

It’s enough to make you want to cheer.

Which brings us to the question as to why a local population of marine mammals would teach such selectively destructive behaviour to one another. It’s not like they’re getting food out of it. And while there seems to be a handful of glaringly obvious reasons why marine wildlife would want to fight back against our overpopulated shipping lanes, researchers and journalists are bending themselves silly to try and rationalize the behaviour.

Maybe its just a fad? Something wonky done for a brief period, just for the orcas’ shits-n-giggles? Like what when another orca pod in Puget Sound took to wearing salmon hats during a summer. Or maybe the matriarch White Gladis is teaching her kids how to hunt without depleting their game doing it. Or maybe this White Gladis, absolute motherf—ing Queen of orcas, had a… “traumatic experience” with marine traffic or a fishing trawler, as researchers so delicately calls it, and is taking her trauma out on local boaters. Y’know, just like Spartacus had a “traumatic experience” with the Roman Republic.

This whole story reminds me of another. A Nat Geo story of a stint of coordinated elephant attacks all across eastern Africa. Not just a few bulls off their rockers, but a shift toward the aggressive in regards as to how these once gentle-ish giants view humanity. Reports are scarce, studies non-existent, and rationalizations abound. But do we really have to put in any extraneous effort of imagination as to find a reason why the elephant population would start a violent insurgency against humanity?

The cases are not directly related. No correlation exists beyond that both involve animals targetting humans. And while I’m well aware that it’s highly unscientific to project “human” traits onto animals, it is also highly arrogant to believe that feeling indignation at the state of the world is a purely human ability. Fishermen may whine about over-fishing, but I doubt they are the ones who most keenly feel its effects. Animal rights groups sure hate poaching of wild animals, but can you figure who I bet hate it even more? The animals left behind with slaughtered family members. We know for a fact that [some] animals do mourn their dead. We know for a fact that [some] animals can recognize humans and our behaviours, and either adapt to live among us or flee the fucking stench of us. We are not immaterial Gods to them. We’re an obnoxious pest at best. At worst, we spell their doom.

Most are unlikely to figure it out. I doubt a sparrow can fathom the Sixth Extinction. But I can only assume that some might. Some of the more intelligent ones. Some who have keenly developed problem solving skills and empathic abilities. Like…. oh, I don’t know, elephants or orcas?

We spend so much time and effort rationalizing animal behaviour as anything but the [to us] obvious. Because if we leapt at assumptions, then 1); we wouldn’t be very scientific about it, and 2); we would have to take a long, hard, disconcerting look at ourselves.

I for one support the orca revolution. Fucking sink our asses.

/Sebastian Lindberg 13/6-2023

Humanity in the Inhuman

I can tell. That moment when realisation strikes. When it finally sinks in. There’s a glimmer in her eyes. Something in her posture. A knot releases somewhere in her back. And what were only polite wags of her tail take a manic turn.

She gets it. She finally gets it. The Christmas present is hers. Hers. HERS, and no one else’s. It took us three separate attempts. Three decorated trees. Three mornings in front of the fireplace. Three years of trying to build her confidence. And she finally got it.

She had come to us from a whirlwind of different homes. A travelling family, often leaving her behind. With relatives. In shelters. In cages. An inconvenient responsibility best managed by passing it over to someone else. That had been her life for years. Moved around and discarded. When she came to us, to stay for the rest of her life, she didn’t know how to jump up into a couch. She didn’t know how to beg for food. She didn’t know how to play. She knew of no life other than to not make a nuisance of herself. She who came to us was terrified of being sent away. We could tell. She wasn’t our first dog. One learns to tell their fears. And her greatest fear was to displease.

For three years we worked with her. Trying to bolster her confidence. Her self-assertion. Funnily enough, her greatest show of independence and agency was when she got jealous of my girlfriend. That was another effort. For them to finally bond and build a wary respect for each other.

She stayed with us for three years. Three Christmases. Three wrapped gifts, out of which only the last she understood. That it was now a thing her own. A thing given to show our affection and appreciation for her. And we could tell that she barely knew what to do with herself for the sheer joy of it.

It would be her last Christmas. We proved her wrong. We never left her. She got to be the one who left us. We were all together when she did. And I think she liked that.

People who have never had animals, never had pets, in their lives are fond of talking about projection. How we sappy dumb-dumbs assign emotion and character and desires and fears and personality upon our non-human loved ones. It’s hard to disagree with. Neither position can be easily proven or disproven. My conviction comes close to faith. That a dog has as much soul and personality and value as that of some human. It is not a thing I could convince anyone of who doesn’t already believe. Like faith, it is something experienced. Not argued or reasoned.

We like to make ourselves distinct from other forms of life. Superior. But I don’t buy it. This is not in my experience true. We distinguish ourselves in but very few ways. Most of our habits or skills can be found in one place or another outside of human civilization.

One of those few distinctions, I’ve found, is that we are deaf to the life around us. And I think we would be better if we weren’t.

/Sebastian Lindberg 16/5-2023

Reproductive Privileges

The William formerly known as a Prince got slammed by egocentric humanists after drawing the lamest possible Malthusian conclusions available for the Holocene Extinction. That, perhaps, possibly, human population growth is responsible for “huge challenges for conservationists”.

Which, you know, is fact. Facts that have for years been presented by credible organizations such as the WWF. That the biggest cause of animal extinction isn’t poaching or trophy hunting, but by human habitat expansion. By agricultural expansion. By sheer human presence.

To be fair, the complaint does sound a little tone deaf from the former Prince of the world’s greatest former empire. Just the fact that he’s responsible for three children (which constitutes a net gain outta two people) sours his voice on the matter. The fact that his silver spoon is directly forged from slavery and globalism and militant imperialism is another. So fair dinkum, criticise the shit out of him.

Doesn’t mean he’s wrong though.

The human population growth on Earth is exponentially fucking insane. You don’t have to invent chess or be an economist to realise that exponential growth is impossible to sustain. Exponential growth in a system will inevitably cause either A) a plateau effect, B) a collapse of the function, or C) a collapse of the system. The desperately humanist among us hope that the world’s human population will level out somewhere between 10 and 11 billion people, because some bright motherfucker somewhere calculated that’s the roof of Earth’s ability to sustain a human population. A population we’ll probably hit in about 80 years. Mind you that those calculations do not factor in the existence of any other biotope or ecology other than what directly serves the human populations. Only farms, cities, grazing grounds, and not an acre of natural habitat. Mind you that the prognosis of 10-11 billion people is the culmination and completion of the Holocene Extinction.

You might say it’s the human winning condition. We will have done it; make every single life form that isn’t itself a part of our great machinery extinct. Hooray…

Africa isn’t the root of this problem. It’s a big part of it, as the human population of Africa has doubled every twenty years since a while back, but the continent is just catching up. The West and the East already ballooned and made an utter mess of our natural habitats in Europe, America, and Asia. So no; the problem isn’t Africa or Africans. But in Africa, it’s conceivable to avert an ecological catastrophe that’s already come and gone in much the rest of the world. Which is a good reason to pay the continent some extra attention as far as over-population goes.

See, if you want to do something about all the shit in your beds, the first best idea is to not shit in the fifth. It’s a good first step before you figure out what you’re going to do with your four first sets of sullied linens.

But what are we supposed to do? Enact even more draconian conditions for IMF and World Bank aid to African countries? Do a neo-colonialism on African reproductive rights before continuing on to America, Asia, and Europe?

Essentially, I guess, yes. Sadly. Inhumanely. If we come to the conclusion that the preservation of our natural habitats and ecological systems, that humanity’s role as custodian is more important than our role as exploiter, we need to act. Against to curb our own impulses. Because as racist old Malthus concluded two hundred years ago; if humanity can expand, it will. We, sadly, have to force us to keep our spunk in our sacks and our uteri parasite-free. Least ’till we’ve disassociated the reproductive ability from being considered a hedonistic right to a holistic responsibility.

I mean, granted, according to CCP example, we haven’t been very good at controlling our population growth in the past, even when we’ve wanted to. But what’s the option? Just lean back in the comfort of our supremacist entitlements and forget about the problem altogether? Seems pretty shitty to me.

Sure, ridicule former royalty all you want. Point out that the William formerly known as Prince is part of the problem himself. That could be a constructive effort. But if you reject mathematical certainty on the basis of humanistic supremacy and colonialist guilt and/or rage… tsk, tsk, then your doomsday-inducing privileges are showing.

/Sebastian Lindberg 30/11-2021

When the Wolf Comes Home

“Not in my backyard”…

Just beyond the outer city limits of Stockholm, a wolf bitch seems to have made her home. She’s been spotted and filmed on numerous occasions patrolling her new turf, which at one stretch borders an elementary school. Suffice to say, national media is having a field day with this. A “vicious” predator so close to home, being portrayed as if it’s eyeing the school yard as a smorgasbord. What news editor in their (relatively) right mind wouldn’t jump at the vilification of our long lost brother of the hunt. It sure as shit sells papers, I’ll tell you that much!

While I can’t really blame the papers of being reactionary and sensational with this development, the commentary of some of the local nimby humans rubs me real wrong. Fears are being spread, that it’s only a matter of time before a pet or a human, a child perchance, gets hurt. Mauled, bitten or killed. That the wolf has no business setting up camp next door. That it should be turned away. Forcibly moved or killed. Be pushed back into the wilderness from whence it came.

But isn’t it about time that we, humans, scooted over? Just a little bit?

Humanity has been expanding without regard nor restriction for millennia. We lay our roads where we please, we carve the earth for minerals where we want, and our real estate sprout like a particularly virulent fungal infection that no amount of disinfectant seem to be able to battle. It is only recently that we have begun to consider small patches of land as sacrosanct from human development. And even then, exceptions can always be made.

And who’s to always give way to our expansion? Who gets shovelled aside, has their homes bulldozed in the spirit of progress? The wolf. The bear. The lynx. The moose, the deer and the boar. Who always gets their way? The bully; the human, seemingly expatriated from the circle of life.

But why shouldn’t we muscle our way through nature, you might ask. If we have the power to expand and push lesser creatures away, why shouldn’t we, for the grace and benefit of our own selves. Might is Right, you may argue with your supremacist attitude. And humanity, with all our inventions and tools, undeniably wield the Might.

Even though that argument gives rise to disgust, I can’t help but to acquiesce. Every animal on this earth fights and dies for supremacy. We have the Might. We can make it our Right to decide how much room we deign allow “lesser” lives. But is this truly the type of creature we want to be? The kind of creature that always has it their way. That never lets anything come between us and our comforts. That pave the way to our luxuries on the bodies of obstacles, the bodies of these “lesser” creatures.

For Might goes both ways, and makes any kind of Right you want. Maybe it’s time for the bully, the expatriated human, to grow up? Maybe it’s time to take the high road? Maybe allow our territory to shrink.

We have the Might to. We have the power to let a young wolf make a new life for herself. To let her find new forests to hunt. To let her find new life. To move out of the way. Just for once…

/Sebastian Lindberg 5/12-2017

The Wishy Washy Executioner

Y’know that white moose, traipsing around the Swedish woodlands like it ain’t got a care in the world? Caught on camera, spreading across the net like a particularly virulent form of the clap? Yeah, it briefly had something to worry about. It was going to be shot, because it had been deemed a hazard to society.

Last week the famous moose, locally christened “Ferdinand”, was out on a stroll when he (and I will assume the gender identity of a moose bull, so fuck off) encountered a person with a pair of dogs. Now, Ferdinand doesn’t particularly give a shit about humans, considering his celebrity status has endeared him to locals, but no one had informed the two dogs about that fact. They decided, and perhaps righteously so, that they’d rather not fuck around with an almost half-a-ton horned diva and tried to bugger off. But since the owner had the leashes tied around its waist, the human went down like sack of bricks when the dogs bolted.

The person was apparently injured in the stumble. How badly, the reports don’t specify. Maybe because the injury was nothing but a sprained ankle. Maybe because the reporters didn’t feel it relevant to include. Maybe because they’re biased. Who knows. But, as per Swedish standard operating procedure, if an animal proves to present a danger to humans, they are summarily sentenced to death by firing squad.

It’s a fairly standard practise here. Usually the sentence is reserved for bears that have behaved threateningly to hunters that stumble onto the bear’s turf, or a wolf because it was… a wolf. But only this past September, another moose was shot dead for the crime of being lost and bewildered in central Gothenburg and representing the potential of injuring a human.

But fear not for Ferdinand. While he was sentenced to death, like many of his brethren before him, unlike his brethren he was pardoned. Just barely two days after the sentence was passed. Which is… a good thing. But why, you might justifiably ask, was Ferdinand spared when others were not? Because he was just as guilty as many of those before him had been.

The obvious reason being that he’s famous. Ferdinand’s popular, and popularity is (sometimes) enough to set you apart from the rules and consequences of “civil” society. Following the death sentence, local county officials rounded up a 15’000 name long protest list against the decision to kill Ferdie. Although, the coppers vehemently deny that the protest had anything to do with the decision to stave off the execution.

“How would it look like if we changed our decisions based on public opinion”, a local police officer said [translated from Swedish] to national television.

Well, I bet it’d pretty much look like this.

Instead of the protest, the Police state that since Ferdie hadn’t behaved threateningly since the dog-incident (a time-frame of just eight days), he doesn’t have to be put down. A reprieve, I’ll have you note, none of the other perpetrators were granted.

According to Swedish law, [jaktlagen, §9], “if a wild animal causes harm or presents a danger to people, the Police may euthanize the animal”. Which, despite how stupid or self-deserving the relevant situation was, certainly applies to this occurrence.

Now, while I like the fact that Ferdie is benevolently allowed to continue parading around the Swedish woodlands, as long as he doesn’t do it again!, this judicial tom-foolery leaves me princely pissed. Because it shows that one of two things are demonstrably true.

Number one; the Police are lying, and public opinion and outcry is indeed allowed to sway law and order. And while I’m not a complete fan of law and order in its mechanical, morals-devoid approach to singling out right from wrong, I do think that it should be separate from the courthouse of public opinion. And while some of you may find the notion that popularity buys legal immunity to be an old one, it’s still worth raging against.

Number two; the execution of “threatening” or “dangerous” animals is an arbitrary exercise, or at the very least a knee-jerk reaction without valid moral authority. Just smoke and mirrors to expediently remove inconvenient obstacles to man. That the justification of every killed creature under this particular paragraph of the law can never be trusted as having been produced through due process. That the purpose of this law is just to give people with guns a blanket excuse to use them.

Yes yes, I can hear the snark from over here. “Of course legal systems are corrupt” and “of course humanity is quick to judgement and execution in regards to the wild world”. “This isn’t news to anyone”, some of you will undoubtedly say. And fine, you’re right! These events aren’t much of a revelation to me either. But what is worthy of agitation is that this week has supplied us with a distillation of our suspicions.

What we have here is a display of judicial irresponsibility that has been found wanting. Proof of an illegitimate authority. And if that opportunity isn’t enough to warrant outrage from you, so jaded and apathetic in your ivory tower, I call thee a coward.

/Sebastian Lindberg 21/11-2017