Orca Ethics

hello my name is Gabe Rajah and I'm delighted to have this opportunity to discuss and talk about this magnificent species with the express purpose of deepening our understanding and respect for these ancient cultures and increasing our ability to protect and support the self-determination of orcas a few years ago a group of eminent neuroscientists gathered at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom and made an announcement it's since been called the Cambridge declaration of consciousness it's a several page document but the gist of it is in this sentence here that humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness and that's illustrated here in these photos in other words all animals and they include invertebrates such as the octopus share the same brain with us and hence also the same capacities of consciousness cognition and emotions so as you're looking here you can see all these different brains and they have different kinds of sizes and morphologies but basically the fundamental structures and processes are the same so essentially neurosciences has leveled species differences to cultural differences and we can look at brain differences as more like one theme one unitary model of the brain with a bunch of different variations this implies that birds reptiles fish mammals including orcas have the same cogs and wheels brain structures and processes that we do which govern thinking emotions consciousness and the diverse subjective experiences that we enjoy it also means that there is bi-directional inference what we know about our own brain our own experience our own minds and emotions can be applied to other species such as a chimpanzee or an orca and vice versa now that has been a tradition and it's a routine practice science to take to study the brain the mind of non-human animals chimpanzees dogs cats rats horseshoe crabs etc as a surrogate to understand our own minds and our own brains now those are called animal models however the other direction taking what we understand about ourselves and applying it to other animals is considered was called anthropomorphism attributing human qualities to nonhumans and that was considered a no-no but in fact it's consistent with what the science says so in other words the neurosciences say that what we know about ourselves can be applied to other animals and this was actually really poignant Lee Illustrated and quantitatively with the diagnosis of a wild elephant post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD where a formal diagnosis was made of PTSD of elephants who had been subjected to a series of violent assaults by humans and developed a condition of post-traumatic stress and that was possible and that diagnosis was valid because elephants and humans orcas all other animals share the same kind of brain and the psychological capacities to be vulnerable to post-traumatic stress so again by directional inference is the fact that we can make these inferences from ourselves to other animals and vice versa with equal robustness so that means we have a very strong foundation scientific foundation that can predict certain things so for example we would say that a bear would enjoy themselves may enjoy the sensual pleasure of lying on their back after eating and enjoying the sunshine and if we have that observation and we see that then it is valid it's not just an antidote anymore because it has a solid scientific framing and if it's consistent if our observation is consistent with the scientific foundation the scientific theory then it is a valid datum another case here that neuropsychology predicts that sharks fish will have potential to feel maternal feelings toward their young again if as marine scientists have observed sharks do show that kind of emotion and that kind of behavior then it does it is validating it's consistent with what is predicted by neuropsychology language has always been used as something which is exclusively human but when you take a step back again through that narrow science lens all animals have language ours happens to be with words and that we write things down but all animals have sophisticated languages and practice probably even more sophisticated than ours because they're totally embodied with their environment and are using and very have not let atrophy like we have as modern humans these other channels of perception and communication bears and other animals also have what psychologist Daniel Goleman calls emotional intelligence the capacity for empathy the capacity for self-regulation etc and also grief now reptiles are considered to be you know have a reptilian brain meaning it's it's a lower order it's more simplistic it's more quote/unquote primitive than the human brain and mammalian brain but that's not true they have the same brain that we do in terms of the basic structures and processes and capacities this you know the mental capacities and emotional capacities so then when we see this is a male rattlesnake who is and embracing a female rattlesnake who was his companion it has been killed by a mountain bike then again what we would look at this given the neuropsychological prediction would be that there is a capacity for grieving in mourning and so this observation seems consistent with what is predicted so again neurosciences and psychology have created this trance PC psychology a unitary model of brain mind behavior and consciousness that is a foundation that crosses across goes across species but there are differences and a large part of those differences have to do with the fact that different animals have developed and evolved in different ecological niches so we have an orca that who has evolved in a marine environment we have a lion who has evolved in a Savannah environment etc and so then you'll have a bat that has equal location or you have a rattlesnake that uses IR for detection to navigate his or her landscape so there are those ecologically you know co-evolutionary differences but there's other differences as well and that comes across of why for example haven't sperm whales rattlesnakes black bears the octopus orcas and tribal tribal peoples like the Quechua shown here why haven't they invented an airplane Computers guns and affected genocide and mass violence well in the past it was tacit that Native people were not as smart they were primitive and it still is a belief that the animals are less than but again we now know that science has shown in arguably that all the animals and tribal people of course have the capacity to create and do these things that quote unquote modern humanity has done but they have chosen not to so the question is why why is it that we do what we do or don't do what we do why do orcas why haven't workers created airplanes why haven't they created guns and why has our particular modern humanity which is a deviation from the most of our genus of the Homo genus why have we chosen to go down this path so there's another example in Orca culture now there is no record and this covers thousands of years because tribal peoples have lived with orcas for thousands of years there is no record of an orca harming or killing a human the exception to this are orcas who are in captivity so in order to get down and to say what how do we become who we are we have to look at the evolution the development of the self so how we are determines what we do and how we do things over the last two or three decades neuroscientists and psychologists have really discovered that the our brain our minds our sense of self does not evolve in a vacuum we're not like a bunch of billiard balls knocking around interacting with each other rather we develop in this relational milieu in other words our brains and our minds are shaped by these relational experiences from inception onward so this calls for an orca where you have a very the primary bond is a is the attachment figure which is typically the mother but it can be the father or any other caregiver or a constellation of caregivers so the idea is that the interactions which are neurobiological which are social the touching the kissing the tasting all of those kinds of communicate the adult or adults to the infant to the baby the chick the calf really Tunes the the infant's brain so you're really getting the neuro endocrine all the neural and the hormonal pathways in the brain if we're looking at this through the model of neurosciences is happening in relationship so this is this microcosm in which an individual is born into a microcosm and this tuning then is really helping that individual anticipate what they will need what kind of behavior what kind of knowledge they will need in the environment they're evolved to to occupy as an adult so this notion of a sense of self then leads to the self development leads to an internalized ethic where we have an ethic defined as moral principles which guide and shape behavior so in the Oracle world you have a very strong attachment is the mother and the baby so you have a very very strong relationship and this is true in a number of different species particularly ones where there's nursing and things like that where this is very intimate for example a grizzly bear grizzly bears typically the babies are born in hibernation during hibernation and they they're with their mother for three years three hibernation we in the den and then wandering around with her so these are very intense times when you have this brain to brain dialogue and tuning which goes on but when we look a little bit deeper into the natural history of Orca society we see that there's not just that single attachment bond but rather a constellation of bond which goes across space and time with all the other members in the pod and then the scales up to greater spatial and temporal scales in the eco type and so on so we're really looking at this constellation or a network of relationships which are all contributing to the shaping of the mind and the brain and the emotions and the ethics the moral code that knowledge that's being inculcated in the infant now it's us modern humans we tend to see our species and our lives is separate from the rest of nature but when you're looking at wildlife they're totally embodied totally integrated with the ecological as well as the social environment so we can think about not just individual relationships but rather that the baby Orca is born into a field a social and an ecological field and that the relationships which influence his or her brain and moral principles come from interactions with the water with the plankton with the other plants and with the other animals in the ocean so when we take zoom back even farther in space and time we can think of an individual Orca like Lolita like to look them as a fractal of this very complex fractal which has been existing for thousands of years and so we get this we get this knowledge and we get this moral code which is transmitted generation after generation after generation and it's this that's passed on which really comprises the core you can call it through the backbone of Orca cultures and societies their moral their cultural mores etc so again what you're looking at when you see someone like tilikum is you see the embodiment of thousands of years of Orca history and interactions and experience now when we look to sort of in general ways we make a comparison between the natural history what we understand about Orca psychology Orca Essex Orca culture etc and some tribal peoples for example like the Quechua we find that there's a lot of similarity between their values and the way in which they raise their children and live their lives this is a quote from justo ah who is a teacher Quechua teacher who lives in the Andes and he talks about his the community in which he lives the AI lü which we can think of in the Orca world is the pod which is nested within these other layers of the environment social and ecological environment so this is what he describes the community the AI lü is not only a territory where a group of people lives it is more than that it is a dynamic space where the whole community of beings that exist in the world lives this includes humans plants animals the mountains the rivers the rain etc all are related like family he goes on to conclude it is important to remember that this place the community is not where we are from it is we are for example I am not from Honduras I am contour anthropologist enable and talks about the chilla quaniee children they're related to the Quechua and she says this Kilohana children are loved and appreciated within the immediate and extended family and the community they are never left alone but are always with the caregiver the children are polite responsible compassionate curious adventurous and courageous even at a very young age I have never seen a child being beaten or treated roughly so we can see this is from from a tribal human but we can see kind of get a parallel reflection a little bit of an insight in terms of how the orcas are functioning because when when you look at their a very conservative ancient culture and they are very nurturing they're very caring they have these bonds which are not just two beings together these are bonds that extend deep into space and time they're down to the core into every single cell so we can think about Orca culture then is something that is not just this assemblage that passes through time we're talking about dimensions at the at the genetic level that are profound that are almost fathomless in space and time and again it's like an individual is a fractal of this great history so then we might ask the question then why is it that orcas bears etc the Quechua have not created flames and guns and computers and and engaged in mass extinctions and genocide it's not because of lack of any rain or mental shortfall it's because their ethics has precluded them going down the path that our particular humanity has gone now I don't know the reason for that but we can say that essentially it was at some point these are ethical decisions that the way they live their lives the values of their life how they are with each other precluded going down a path that was parallel or the same that our species has done so then we might revisit Tilikum Lolita and others and say particularly Tilikum who killed three who killed three humans why did that happen that isn't not killing humans is like a taboo in or in Orca culture it is something that is not done so what was it that made him basically break this aesthetic vow something that is so deeply ingrained that essentially in this kind of notion that we might think that if you do do that then in human cultures that talk about taboos when you break a taboo when you break a core moral principle then you are no longer part of that society you have violated the core beliefs and values of the society so what was it that made Orca that made that Orca Tilikum and other orcas who are in captivity do what they did well it's an obvious answer all of it all of the orcas who are in captivity or have been in captivity have suffered a series of traumas there was the capture this is Penn Cove picture there was the trauma being taken away from the family the physical and psychological trauma of being meted and translocated the kind of demeaning training quote/unquote enslavement in captivity the kind of physical and psychological deprivation which lead to symptoms of complex PTSD stereotyping bobbing back and forth hitting their head committing a kind of a suicide all of these kinds of poor health and mental quote-unquote disorders are really the symptoms of caring that so tearing that individual away from the fabric of this incredibly dynamic and ancient tapestry that's called Orca culture and then again this is a very poignant picture you know being held behind glass I mean cut away from their world and cut away from any kind of nurturance that they would normally enjoy so all of these are traumatic assaults on the on the soul on the orca soul and the orca psyche and so we can think of why did Tilikum break that moral principle of not killing or harming humans why did he and why have others in captivity done that well we can say maybe it was madness maybe it was you didn't know where he was but I think Emily Dickinson says it most beautifully when she writes in her poem and a plank of reason broke so we can speculate and I do in the book of carnivore mines where I talk about tilikum and Orca authors I do talk about that I do speculate to certain extent and we will never know but the point is is that it's less what's most important is understanding how he broke this Orca Val and what drove him to it that's the most important of what has been done to him and other orcas that have made him violate this profound ancient core moral principle so then what can be done the fabric of Orca society has been rent in and it continues in terms of the things that we do annoys boats explosions exploitation capture killing all of those kinds of things basically tear apart the fabric so what can we do to help knit that back well one this is Lolita here is one we can release I'm just saying things that everyone is talking about but we have a scientific foundation and a moral obligation to to bring back to release these individuals into their homeland into their families again into a way of beginning to heal refrain from all the things that actually do cause harm to the Orca culture and other animal wildlife cultures no hunting you know no explosion no killing no capture refraining for us as a species we've taken over the planet we need to pull back so that others can actually live it means also we need to reduce our population we need to minimize we need to minimize our ecological footprint and all of that really is bringing us back into resonance bringing us back into the harmony of an orthotic and it's essentially embracing a North arrow an orca ethic which will really be a renewal for our own society so all of this is resonant with the wonderful work of the Orca Network and others who are striving to release Lolita - striving to release these captured individuals back into the water and also to be able to you know stop the dams break the dam so that the so that these individuals can live their life they stand their livelihood taken away so if we can just take back the things we've taken it or give back and reframe then we will be able to be supporting Orca self-determination and the revitalization of these ancient cultures this is what we're working toward is seeing all orcas be able to enjoy this kind of life again and the dignity that they once had so thank you very much and I'd like to thank the number of people who have contributed photographs to this presentation I talked more about this in my book carnivore minds about Orca ethics and the other wildlife other quote-unquote carnivores who are so vilified and have been exploited but the p8 gets into sort of a different perspective seeing seeing this way the wildlife from the inside out as best we can again thank you very much

Channel: The Kerulos Center

Views: 2,060

Rating: 4.7818184 out of 5

Keywords: Animal rights, trauma, ptsd, kerulos, bradshaw, carnivore minds, orca, shark, bear, coyote

Id: MDV2QBvn4Ys

Length: 24min 19sec (1459 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 09 2017