On Depravity and Dolphins

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For those of you that have never read Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy,” there’s a line stated by the dolphins of Earth as they are fleeing from a Vogon fleet sent to demolish our planet to build a hyperspace bypass, that goes, “So long and thanks for all the fish.” Adams describes dolphins as interstellar sentient beings that are residing on Earth for now but are intelligent enough to know when the Vogons are coming. According to Adams, they attempted to warn us silly humans by using their language of flipping out of the water and jumping through hoops. As the story goes, we never get what’s going on and eventually the dolphins get fed up and leave the planet. Then the Earth gets destroyed.

Now as funny as this series was, Adams is playing on the very real and scientifically proven intelligence of dolphins. Wikipedia defines dolphin intelligence as, “The ability to possess self-awareness shows highly-developed, abstract thinking. Self-awareness is the precursor to more advanced processes like meta-cognitive reasoning (thinking about thinking) that are typical of humans. Scientific research into self-awareness has suggested that Bottlenose Dolphins possess self-awareness.”

As fascinating as this may be, I think it would be a stretch for someone to make the argument that because dolphins are “self-aware,” it is perfectly normal, sane and ethical for a human to date and then marry one. You’d like to think that wouldn’t you?

On New Year’s Day a story out of Israel reports that, “Sharon Tendler met Cindy 15 years ago. She said it was love at first sight. This week she finally took the plunge and proposed. The lucky "guy" plunged right back.

In a modest ceremony at Dolphin Reef in the southern Israeli port of Eilat, Tendler, a 41-year-old British citizen, apparently became the world's first person to "marry" a dolphin.

Dressed in a white dress, a veil and pink flowers in her hair, Tendler got down on one knee on the dock and gave Cindy a kiss. And a piece of herring.”

Wait, this gets better…

“"He's the love of my life," she said yesterday.

Tendler, who said she imports clothes and promotes rock bands in England, has visited Israel several times a year since first meeting the dolphin.

While she acknowledged the "wedding" had no legal bearing, she said it reflected her feelings for the bottlenosed, 35-year-old object of her affection.

"It's not a bad thing. It's just something that we did because I love him, but not in the way that you love a man. It's just a pure love that I have for this animal," she said.

While she keeps open the option of "marrying human," she said she is a "one-dolphin woman."”

Now I suppose I could have written about how according to one paper, we’re preparing to attack Iran but this actually bothers me more than the possibility of war.

Everyday I deal with one hard luck story after another about men, women and especially children whom are involved in just absolutely heinous and depraved ordeals. Commonly what many of the kids I work with will tell me is, “Whatever I do is OK so long as I don’t get caught.”

I’ll usually follow that up with this question, “So it doesn’t matter what the act is, it only matters if you suffer a consequence or not?

The typical response I get is, “Yeah!”

To me, this is what separates liberals from conservatives. There is a general split in philosophy. Liberals are more often than not your moral relativists. These are the people who will argue that there are no absolutes in the world. All behavior is relative to ones own personal philosophy, needs and wants. Inherent in this belief system is a near total lack of responsibility or adherence to any kind of “higher authority.”

When you have a number of people or cultures throughout the world who can readily validate any action, heinous or otherwise, by stating that it’s, “all relative,” I believe you’ve cashed in objective morality for what I like to call, “Spoiled Brat Syndrome.”

Essentially when one places their wants ahead of all else, to the exclusion of common sense, and then continually throws tantrums when said person does not get their way, that’s SBS. Men think of your wives here and their ability to spend well out of the budget on things that are absolutely unnecessary and you’ll begin to see what I’m saying here.

The other part of being a moral relativist that works for people is the garnering of acceptance by others, despite ones depraved behavior. In short, if I can’t pass judgments on you, because it’s all relative, then you can’t pass judgments on me either. This allows all folks whom practice under this philosophical umbrella to have a moral field day. It is also the very same philosophy that allows for a child rape organization like the North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) to go on existing in a vacuum of judgments made from common sense.

So this millionaire Brit, as the papers are calling her, can have, say and do whatever she pleases because her wealth provides her with enough latitude to challenge social norms. On top of that, it is rather common for people to form tribes that is that they surround themselves with like-minded people with whom will support their point-of-view and has great commonality with. Wealthy and powerful people particularly tend to surround themselves with sycophants that enable what eventually becomes morally relative and often depraved behavior. Hence you see a crowd of people cheering this tart on as she goes and defies nature.

Now don’t get me wrong, this is nothing new. For some great examples of corruption begetting depraved behavior, one only needs to read about the Roman Empire. My favorite story (though historians are now saying this is myth) is the one where Emperor Caligula appointed his favorite horse to the Roman Senate. These days that might actually improve the American senate but that’s a rant for another day.

Again, depravity in human culture and society is not new, it’s not going away and this story is probably only one out of millions going on right this minute. There’s a better way though and it begins with people being less selfish, more selfless and willing to sacrifice for the greater good or at the very least, it might help if we as a species left the friggin animals out of our ritualistic institutions like marriage. That’s not a lot to ask.