Interesting stuff.. thanks for sharing. I try not to eat meat anyway.. I mean Im not a strict vegetarian but I dont like to eat too much meat.

Well not a lie.... I should have said commercial whaling.

It was a mistake.

You are an idiot.

Its not because whales are cute.

Its because Japan is clearly commercially hunting whale when it is prohibited.

The REASON it is prohibited is because resuming full commercial whaling would result in many species of whale becoming extinct.

Also I have also presented my argument that whales are self-aware animals.

ok. whales go extinct..big whoop? every day on avarage 25 spiecies go extinct. and ..do you see stock market crashing, sky burning? no. because spiecies going extinct is normal - its us who are making fuss because we dont like that things change and we can't control them. thats all it is.
more than 95% of speacies that has ever lived on this planet are gone. we are only to blame for a small % of everything..rest is nature at its work - faild mutations are bound to go extinct. so will we :cool:


P.S lol.. Mr. i dont like to eat much meat of self-aware animals. its like saying i only have a small bite of that childs leg, because we who are self-aware are all equal, but i am still hungry.

Unfortunately for you... I dont share your definition of "culture"

For me culture is not a static thing... it is a fluid thing. It changes and reimagines itself constantly. Japanese culture today is not the same as Japanese culture 100 years ago. Western culture today is not the same as Western culture 100 years ago etc.

In fact it was ACCEPTED in Western culture that whaling was acceptable up until the mid 20th century before Westerners realised that Whales were going to be extinct very shortly if they didnt stop. Also, New Zealand which had a huge whaling industry is now one of the biggest anti-whaling countries out there. So I dont know why the Japanese think the whole "Its our culture" argument is valid. Its bullshit and it shows a lack of progress and extreme Conservatism to present it as an argument.

Muslims in Africa also use the "culture" argument for circumcision of women for example. Is that the kind of argument you want to make?

And culture is NEVER an excuse and will NEVER beat rational and logical arguments.

Big whoop indeed. Whales are actually near the top of the food chain in the ocean. Getting rid of whales will have a HUGE effect on the eco-system.

Newsflash.... Species going extinct due to our overconsumption is a bad thing.

What are you talking about? You have clearly misunderstood something Ive said because that just made no sense.

you are like the worst candidate to defend nature.
a minute ago you said that it is soooo wrong to eat dolphins soly because they are self-aware. now that pigs are also comes the dilema "shit..i love hamburgers and bakon..but they are smart...maybe i could have bacon only on sundays and burgers only on wendsdays...yea that should be fine" - thats your logic...jesus, and i thought you were trolling with your profile picture but apperantly you are special...can rest of us eat you?

and you still havent based any single damn fact in this whole topic except for your opinion that we should not eat self aware animals. thats it. nothing else.
unlike we who give you damn statistics and actual insides and even japanese themselfs say you are full of it!!!

Please don't read my mind but my words. Please present MY sentence that made you think this way. I have never talked about Western governments.

Again, please present MY sentence that made you think this way.

It is YOUR responsibility to present that ONE position. You keep accusing me of failing to understand this and that, when you haven't presented anything yourself.

Oh, NOW it's about Japanese eh?

OK. My view is different from yours so I'm paranoid. Very well.

I posted the link below just 4 posts before your first post here. I'd be nice if you can pay a little more attention to what other people are saying before starting to preach what you believe is morally superior.

"OK. This seems to be more of the case than anything else. Mercury concentration varies depending largely on the species.
http://www.mhlw.go.jp/topics/bukyoku...50812-1-05.pdf"

Your argument is based on a movie and some website articles. OK. I understand.


Again. Please Please pay a little more attention to what people are saying, and stop reading people's mind. Nobody was talking about commercial whaling.

You are the one who said Japan should obey the INTERNATIONAL community. And you are now supporting Sea Shepherd which is banned from the INTERNATIONAL whaling community, and employing methods that are clearly against the INTERNATIONAL law. Your logic is very expedient. You say one thing, but don't stick to your own logic and start saying something totally irrelevant or something that contradicts with your previous logic. I feel that you are arguing just because you don't wanna lose.

Thanks for a very intelligent remark.

Well, again, YOU are the one who said the LOGICAL reasoning is that "The fact is that Dolphins are intelligent animals that have self-awareness. This makes killing them cruel". and AGAIN, you started saying "well that's not the only thing" when your logic is refuted. So what is your LOGICAL reasoning after all? And will you keep inventing a new "logical reasoning" every time it is refuted? If so, please let me know now. I'll give up.

Thanks,

As I said, I am not trying to convert you to a whale eater or make you support whaling. What I am dealing with here is a bit deeper, and it will help you be understood by Japanese people if you get the gist of what I'm saying. You might not have paid attention, but as I said, it is a fundamental Japanese cultural value that all life forms are equal in principle. You are trying to establish an arbitrary ranking among different life forms. Whale is better than pig, pig is better than fish. Only God can establish such a ranking. And you are obviously not God.

That's not to say we shouldn't be more attached to one species than another. We all like smart mammals than fish and that's a natural, probably a good, emotion. But just because you are more attached to whales than pigs, it doesn't make you a superior being. That attitude is based on the feeling of superiority and it will easily lead to racism. See just how many people started saying "fucking Japs!" regarding the dolphin hunt. It reminds me that Hitler was a vegetarian.

I never said you did! I used the "Western governments" as an example of the various positions that are held on the issue! Stop pulling at straws here dude. It was a response on your assuming of all sorts of things about the "anti whaling position" when there are MANY anti whaling positions out there.

Page 5
You say

- The fact you don't support factory farming doesn't have anything to do with this argument. The US consumes 10 times more meat than Japan do. Why do the activists go all the way to the end of the world to protest against whaling that produce only 0.03% of meat, i.e. kill less than 0.03% of lives, the US do? Why don't they sabotage their local slaughterhouse? Why don't Discovery channel air "Cow War" or "Chicken War" or "Pig War", and attack their local farmers? Come on, we are talking about more than 30,000 times the lives here. That's only logical right? The reason is that it is "culturally" more acceptable to kill cows or chickens or pigs than whales in the West, well, more specifically, in the English speaking countries. It IS about whalers versus anti-whalers, and it IS about some western culture versus Japanese culture. It's a crusade against whaling. And crusade is a synonym for racism and massacre in some parts of the world.

There are many other examples but this is the first in which you treat the anti-whaling argument as one big argument where in fact it is hundreds of smaller ones with different agendas and different ideologies.

I stated my position in my very first entry into this thread and numerous times since then.

Fuck off... Dont pull the race card. If you do then youve lost.

No... Its based on an International study CITED by these articles and websites.

Oh really?

Page 5

Greenpeace only has 5500 members in Japan which is very few considering it has 260 million members worldwide. Many Japanese people, including myself, take a stance "I don't eat whale, but I don't hold with the activists. Who do they think they are to think their moral standard is higher than Japanese's?". It's interesting you assumed it was "liberal" to be anti-whaling because a lot of people are taking it as racism in Japan. You, Ronin, are talking to a scuba diver who has never had whale before, and grew up in an area where whaling is not a tradition or a part of the local culture. I have no reason to support whaling except that anti-whaling activists are often egoistic and their activities are inciting racism on both sides.


Learn to read idiot. I said specifically

Page 8
I am not defending the activists completely. But I am on their side as I dont want to see legalization of commercial whaling.

You are the one being tripped up by your own argument so dont try and tell me that Im the one trying to "win"

You are welcome

Its like saying that there is only one reason for everything. That because babies are less self aware that it is OK to eat them. Babies are not eaten for OTHER REASONS that have nothing to do with being self aware. The main one being that mothers probably wouldnt be too happy with you eating their babies.

Think dammit!

What a mistake！

Mistake
The INTERNATIONAL community has decided that whaling is illegal.

Right answer
IWC　decided that they imposed a moratorium on commercial whaling.

What is The INTERNATIONAL community?
At least,you are NOT INTERNATIONAL community.

Arbitrary? I dont think that self awareness is arbitrary. I think its a pretty big deal. As a human I thought you would agree with me.

I WOULD agree with this if I didnt have a perfectly GOOD reason to differentiate self aware species with non-aware species.

Fine.. point taken.

My argument still stands though.

The majority of nations concerned do not want a resumption of commercial whaling.

International water belongs to nobody so consensus about International waters should be respected.

You're welcome. It was really more of a help than a correction :)

You've JUUUUSTT said self awareness isn't the only thing. So is it about self-awareness or is there something else? if there IS something else, what is it? Yet again, your logic is extremely expedient.

No we're making a fuss as you put it because we can attempt to control the things we do that affect our environment. We can choose to stop hunting species of animals that are endangered. We can stop destroying the last remaining old growth forests of the world. We can makes laws to reduce how much pollution enters the atmosphere, our rivers and oceans.There's many things we can do to mitigate and minimise the damage we are capable of doing to the environment. As probably the only species of animal on the planet that can truly grasp the consequences of our own actions you could certainly argue we have a moral obligation to be responsible in how we affect it.

Unfortunately though greed and wealth creation through much of our history, and continuing unabated today, has been more important to us than any responsibility we may feel towards maintaining the environment we live in. And the excuses we will use to continue being greedy, at almost any expense, are endless. The Taiji dolphin hunt has little if anything to do with culture. It's about making money. Whether or not you think it's ok depends on whether you believe the benefit economically for the town is or isn't worth the damage done to that dolphin population.

crank..he himself isnt "aware" of the points we are making. many of these selfridges people have a blind spot for a lot of questions.
like some 10 of mine.

Look.. I think Im getting a bit worked up about this. So Im just going to state my final thoughts on this and leave it at that.

I usually respect what you say on here cranks so I apologise for the remarks...

Anyway... I care about this issue a lot.

I love Japan but its not perfect. And I cant stand the governments position on whaling and the treatment of animals.

Regarding Dolphins

-They are self aware animals as shown by scientific research.
-This presents a moral dilemma concerning the killing of dolphins.
-Im not saying that the lives of non-aware animals are worthless. Im against factory farming and think that there is an ethical obligation to raise farm animals in conditions which are not stressful. I dont find the eating of these animals inhumane though as long as they are raised in non-stressful conditions.

Regarding whales

-Commercial whaling should be illegal because it will likely lead to the extinction of many whales.
-Japan says it can implement quotas to hunt whales but if you let Japan whale, then you have to let Korea, Denmark, Iceland, Norway etc whale. How long before competition between the industries leads to exceeding quotas? Unfortunately, big business doesnt have a good reputation in complying with regulations.
-The same argument with self awareness can be made with the whales.
-The culture argument is not valid for 3 reasons. Culture is never an excuse in the face of reasoned and logical points. Culture is not static. It is fluid. It is always changing depending on the times. Whaling is also a part of WESTERN history.

Im done. There is my position.

Again.. apologies for losing my cool. I just care passionately about this.

How are you confused about my statement.

I said it wasnt the only thing in which we decided whether or not we eat something which was in reply to your assertion that eating babies is OK under that logic.

Its not an arbitrary thing though.

Im ignoring you for 2 reasons. Replying to cranks is tiring as I have to take apart his posts piece by piece and he is saying a lot of stuff.

The other reason is that you arent really saying anything that profound.

I respect you for having the guts to apologize and regain the cool, Ronin.

I just needed to know if there is something else involved in your GOOD reason or there isn't. Self-awareness itself can not hold water, as I depicted with the baby's example. Then what is you "other" reasonings? Have you ever thought about it?

Again, I'm not trying to win the argument or trying to prove that supporting anti-whaling is wrong. But I feel it is important to present Japanese side of view. I said this before, but not many Japanese people actually eat whale. But still, anti-whaling movement is extremely unpopular. This is because the activists' "reasoning" directly collides with a basic Japanese cultural principle.

or when it comes to your sweet nature you are a hipocrate.
basic things you have said are: we should not eat anyone who is self aware.
dolphins - self aware and you dont want to eat them.
pigs - selfaware - shit, now what you do? you do like bacon, so you are going to keep eating them - simple as that, you said it.
retarted, veg-state people - me and cranks (just play along ;) ) want to eat them. and it should be ok because a lot of them are not aware of anything. but again - you have a problem...

so make your damn mind up!!! either you admit that you are damn hipocrate and youll eat the things you jugde to be lesser than you or choose- do not eat anything alive (chances are every living thing is aware) or eat and let eat others what the hell they want!!!!

My position is that dolphins are self aware therefore we shouldnt eat them.

Regarding babies, I can think of numerous reasons why babies shouldnt be eaten despite them not being self aware.

For a start, their mothers wont be very happy about it. Secondly, I dont think that the normalisation of baby eating would make for a very healthy society as I hate to think what the implications of a society which accepts this practice would be. Third.. I think the baby is a human and has the potential for self awareness. It would be just as horrible to eat a baby dolphin as it would be to eat an adult dolphin. The same goes for humans.

Not simple as that.

Columbine said that they did well in one particular test but did not show signs that they mourned or felt remorse so whether they are self aware is not a sure thing.

I replied to Columbine thanking him for enlightening me on the issue. I added that I dont eat meat all that often anyway to illustrate my general attitude towards eating meat.

Of course I do sometimes eat meat if Im in a position where it would be too much of a hassle for me to refuse meat. But the type of meat I usually eat most is chicken or fish and they are very probably not self aware.

See above as to why I wouldnt want you to eat babies.

ou then its settled...lots of retarted people wont be able to pass your test..lots and lots - so, what you say? McDonalds new burger..how do we call it?

Im thinking Mcevanny

name is fine.
then again we could also wrap it up in your profile picture and call it McHipocrite.
well that depends on mcdonald. im sure theyll make the right choice.

I'm not up to a long involved post right this second, but would like you to make note of a few key things;

1) Watch your language. It would be stupid to get this thread shut for disintegrating into a juvenile slanging match and personal insults. If you need to resort to such measures, then you should leave the conversation and cool off.

2) Understand a debate will always have two sides. So far this debate has been mostly been about understanding the deeper reasoning behind hunting cetaceans. Please appreciate that the slant will have to make a return on this and also investigate the deeper reasoning behind the great aversion to hunting cetaceans.

3) I'm female.

OK. So there are numerous reasons for you shouldn't eat babies. And when it comes to babies, it is not about self-awareness. But when it comes to dolphins, it is self-awareness.

Why the difference?

Also, eating dolphins wouldn't make an unhealthy society, at least Japanese people think so. And if a baby dolphin has a potential for self-awareness, why don't pigs have the "potential" for it? Is it OK to eat a baby if the mother has died and nobody's around?

I can come up with just as many examples too.

The thing is, in the western philosophy, "self" has been reserved for human and for human only. Dogs don't have self. Pigs don't have self. Cows don't have self. And Whales don't have self. This is the view that has been held for more than 2000 years since the Greek invented "philosophy".

Now you are trying to expand the idea of "self" to dogs and whales, which, of and by itself, I agree with. I think it is absurd to think that only humans have selves. But how can you "know" which species at what development stage acquire selves? You can't. Science can't even answer a simple question, "What is self?". It is a feeling we think we all share, and we know it's there. But every time we try to define its boundary, it evades us. The Greek solution was that they "defined" it was something that humans have. You can't go wrong with this one. It's in the definition.

The eastern solution though, was that they thought we all had a bit of self. The amount of which, we don't know. The good old eastern gray area tactic. We feel a human has more self than a dog, and insects probably have teeny tiny selves too. Have you heard of the saying "一寸の虫にも五分の魂"?

So, you, and a lot of westerners, justify eating animals by saying they don't have "self". Japanese people don't justify it. They simply take other "selves" because they need to, not because they are permitted to by some logic. And you are supposed to thank other "selves" you take to sustain your own. Hence "いただきます".

Saying "Pigs don't have selves" is a sacrilege to pigs' selves which Japanese believe they have. It is important to show respect to the taken "selves" and not waste the bodies they left in this material world. Now that contradicts with the amount of food Japanese are wasting but that's a different discussion.

Anyway, a history lessen. Japan abounded her seclusion policy 150 years ago. Why? An American guy called Matthew Perry came all the way from the states with a squadron and pointed cannons at Edo castle, scared the shit out of the Shogun. Perry wanted Japanese ports open to… American whaling ships. Americans didn't eat whale meat (what a sacrilege! :P). They just took oil from them and discarded the carcasses. They hunted and hunted and hunted until the whales almost became extinct. You might say it was long time ago, but Japan is a country with a very long history. People in Kyoto still talk about The War, 応仁の乱, which happened in 1467.

Now, I can't stop you from thinking you are morally superior to people in Taichi, but to their view, and this is merely one way of seeing things, you are one of the people who came from the west, bullied Japanese because they wanted to hunt whales, profaned whales' "selves", and made them almost extinct. You also don't have the moral value of respecting other animal selves sans whales and dogs. You actually look morally lower to their eyes. I'm not judging you, and it is not my "opinion", I'm just trying to present their side of view.

I don't know how you will take this soap box speech of mine, but one thing for sure is your "logic" of "whales have selves, and pigs don't" is not just something that doesn't wash in Japan, but it actually sounds morally low and hippocratic. Again, I'm not judging, and it is not my opinion, I'm just saying it looks so in the light of the Japanese moral and cultural values.

I wrote this using more western logic and ideas, purposely used some rhetorics to better illustrate Japanese values, and so it is more like a westernized version of a Japanese way of thinking. Your Japanese friends will never express things the way I just did, the ones who don't think in English won't anyway. But I think this is a good approximation. Ask your friends why they say "いただきます" and what their feelings are when they say it. Ask how they feel about wasting food and playing with food. And ask what they really feel about the idea that whales have selves and pigs don't. They might give you a good answer, they might not. But there would be something definitely different from the western culture there.
[/RANT]

Idiot? What type of language is that? Don't like what I have to say so out comes the insults.


It's all about cute, The west has no problem being inhuman to thousands of animals as long as its the meat they want to eat. This is about one culture thinking they have the right to tell another culture whats right and wrong. If you didn't know that, you don't understand the situation.

IWC membership is voluntary. No one can force Japan to be a member. Japan has never broken an IWC rule. The opposition say Japan has found a loop hole in the rules and are taking advantage of them. Tough!!! rules are rules. Japan is following them. If you don't like whats going on. Change the IWC rules. The reason they don't is because Japan would then Quit the IWC and then you got NOTHING.

Self-aware? Whales? Like ' I think, therefore I am'? And you called me an idiot.... LOL!
Go bother Norway with your touchy-feely non-sense.

I like heated discussions, not a flaming war.
What should I do... :confused:

OK. I'll muddle things up.
I can't believe you called me the slant, Columbine!!! :eek:

I think that it is just the cruelty of the slaughter that bothers me most. If they just humanely killed these animals then it would be different.

Just like someone else said, some cultures eat dog and that is ok. Eating these animals is no different than a cow, sheep, chicken, or pig. We've just grown to have emotional attachments and we think that they now have human traits.

I think that the killing is also a little strange because where I live people go hunting. But you don't see them rounding up deer into a valley and then shooting the crap out of them.

It shouldnt be difficult to grasp.

The difference is because self awareness matters in the case of animals.

In the case of babies who arent self aware, there are other factors as why you would not want to eat it.

With regard to pigs, Columbine suggested that they passed a certain test. She didnt say that they were self aware. In fact she pointed out that Pigs dont mourn or feel remorse for their own dead.

If more tests are done to show that Pigs ARE self aware then I will change my position to include pigs too.

Dont you see what is happening though?

Your rant does not go against MY position.

I am not the West. I was not born when Perry entered Japan and forced it to open up at gunpoint.

Furthermore I am against factory farming and the unethical treatment of animals in the west as I have stated before.

I can agree with you on many points. America is a world bully. As an International relations major I can completely agree with you on that. Many Americans themselves agree with that and so do many in the West. In fact, some of the most anti-American people can be found within Western countries. But that is a completely different issue.

I feel your rant is better directed at the issue of Western hypocrisy or Western history perhaps. I dont think it has a place in the whaling argument.

I just spent 30 minutes looking around for proof that whales are self aware and I found nothing that proves dolphins are self aware. In fact, it is still disputed among the scientific community on the relevance to intelligence this self-aware tests are. Even the method of using a mirror and observing behavior is a highly questionable method of experimentation. The experiments are inconclusive, yet the people who did the experiments feel the results imply that dolphins have self-awareness. This goes to show you that the very people doing the experiments are bios. Scientist should never interpret results but accept the results as proven or not proven - that's what they taught us was the scientific method in Bio101. It's amazing how some scientist can be bios towards a cause and get away with it.

As clockwork, what does appear a lot on the internet is people using this implied result as an argument against whaling. Some tactfully argue that even if the results only imply self-awareness we should error on the side of caution just in case a future test does confirm awareness in whales. If that is so, then we must all starve since we don't know for sure if any plant or animal is self-aware. Evolution is a continues branching tree. There are no signs saying "This side for self-aware that side for brainless animals".

Next, the only tests I've seen were on dolphins and Beluga whales in captivity. So in the near future, if someone conducts the same mirror test on wild dolphins out at sea and gets different results, this would unarguably destroy the dolphin self-aware theory. More importantly, until such experiment show the same results for captive as well as wild dolphins, this mirror awareness argument carries ZERO weight. A trained lion and a wild lion act differently. I expect the whales will too.

Furthermore, no other whale species other than the two named has been tested as far as I know, so all other whales could be stupid cows of the ocean that don't deserve protection. In other words, as stupid as the aware argument is, it doesn't even apply to all other whales.

well for me it is difficult to grasp. why should it matter? just why?
who are you to say to these people that it matters? its just like a religion - you say it matters and i say no it doesnt and stop minding everyones elses business. if you want to belive in god (in this case that selfawarnes matters) then do it, but dont push your god or in this case ideas of selfawarnes on other people because just like with religion you cant prove selfawarnes importance in animals.

well for someone who admires Hitler-- who wants to hear YOUR opinion.

yea. i belive a lot more people than you and your hippie ideals. so..put on your second pair of pink glasses and go see only the beautiful things and be blind to the rest of the world.
also, in my opinion, hitler jokes are just like the N ford for black people. only blacks can say it and only countries who have been occupied by hitler can say hitler jokes freeley even if they are racist. and mine was (not just by hitler...700 year of german rule) and i feel better when i can joke about it. :cool:

I think the arguments for whales and dolphin self awareness is pretty solid.

The main experiment concerns a dolphin being able to recognise itself in the mirror. Most animals when they look in the mirror they think they are seeing another animal or some dont even recognise what they see. Dolphins are able to look into a mirror and see that they are seeing themselves. This pretty much proves that dolphins are aware of themselves.

Other evidence concerns the fact that Whales and dolphins communicate with each other via "song". Scientists have recognised this as a sort of language and have shown that some even "name" each other.

I gave two links before which referenced scientific studies which suggest this.

It only has zero weight if you think that the only way to prove self awareness is to start talking English (or Japanese).

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/we.../27angier.html

My opinion is this:

- I don't agree with the killing of Dophins in Taiji. The fact that they are dolphins is irrelevent. I don't like it, first and foremost, because of the methods they use to kill the dolphins. This is even worse for dolphins though because they are arguably aware of the fact that they are dying.

- I agree with the opinions of environmentalists, but again, I don't approve of their methods. Sometimes they are very brash and intrusive, which just makes the Japanese people angry and causes more problems.

- I don't believe this is about culture. Culture can change. If culture stayed the same in England, we would still be hanging people in the streets. Culture is a stupid justification for doing awful things, which in the modern world we have come to realise are cruel and pointless.

- I do believe this is mainly to do with money. I doubt the farmers would be so passionate about their 'culture' if another job was offered to them with similar pay.

- I don't agree with whaling at all. This is because whales are not a sustainable source of food, because they are not bred specifically to be eaten. They are wild animals. This is not because whales are 'magicalspecialwonderful.' It's because if we allowed whales to be killed for this reason, they would be extinct in a short amount of time. How do we know this? From past events. The reason why it's bad that whales are extinct is not because they are 'magicalspecialwonderful.' It's because they play an important part in the food chain which could adversely affect a LOT of other species. Not just whales.

- Also, it is extremely difficult to kill a whale humainly because of it's size. The current methods are painful, distressing and inhumane, and we should not allow this on ANY species.This is another reason why whaling should not be permitted.

there were millions killed-- it is extremely poor taste to do hitler jokes.

It certainly offends me. I don't know what goes on in your head but?!!

A hippie? I lived through WW2 here in UK. bit late for me to be a hippy

You said that you admired Hitler? what does that say about You as a person?