Angels of the Oceans - Towards a More Connected World

By Fu Ceyi

On 8th May 2006 BBC News reported that “St. Andrews University researches studying in Florida discovered bottlenose dolphins used names rather than sound to identify each other.” According to Dr. Vincent Janik of St. Andrews University the research on wild dolphins was conducted over a period of three years. He was delighted with the discovery and believe “…it is a very exciting discovery because it means that these animals have evolved the same abilities as humans.” The study was funded by the Royal Society of London and its findings published in the US journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The research was conducted in Sarasota Bay off Florida's west coast. Dolphins are considered "human friendly" and have been studied extensively in terms of their life cycle, communication abilities, and intelligence.

Wild Bottlenose Dolphin.

In an earlier study conducted by a team from the University of Leicester, they found that swimming with dolphins appears to alleviate mild to moderate depression. Researches tested the effect of regular swimming sessions with dolphins on 15 depressed people found that their symptoms improved more than a similar group of 15 people who swam in the same area but did not interact with the dolphins. The study was published in the British Medical Journal. Though both groups showed improvement in their mental health, the group that interacted with dolphins clearly enjoyed greater improvements. All volunteers who participated in the two week daily swimming sessions trial stopped taking their antidepressant drugs and or psychotherapy sessions at least four weeks before the trial. Dolphin therapy is now being used to help children undergoing rehabilitation for a range of mental conditions.

The researchers believe that the dolphins’ obvious aesthetic value and the mutual emotions raised by the interaction may have brought about the soothing healing effect. Others have speculated that the ultrasound emitted by dolphins may have contributed to the beneficial effect as well. The Leicester team believes that using animals in this way is a useful adjunct in the treatment of depression and other psychiatric illnesses. Researcher Professor Michael Revelev said: “Dolphins are highly intelligent animals who are capable of complex interactions, and regard humans positively” and reminded us that “We need to remember that we are part of the natural world, and interacting with it can have a beneficial effect on us.” [1]

Dolphins are increasingly being used in therapeutic treatments. “Dolphins are highly intelligent animals who are capable of complex interactions, and regard humans positively”

While dolphin research is still in its infancy, the wealth of information that we may learn from these magnificent mammals is incredible as well as meaningful. Dolphins are social animals, living in groups called pods and providing loving care for their babies and young ones. My son refers to them as “angels of the oceans.” In ancient Greek and old sea stories there are dozens of claims of dolphins helping drowning sailors, rescuing people from sharks, and making themselves useful as guides through treacherous waters. Dolphins have been observed helping injured members of their family groups and newborn babies to the surface by swimming under them and nudging them upward for air, just as some reports described them helping humans in difficulties in like manner.

In our times reports of Dolphins helping and saving humans in distress are common enough. In 2004 it was reported that a group of swimmers off the northern coast of New Zealand threatened by a great white shark was saved by a pod of dolphins. The dolphins had herded them together, circling them until the great white swam away. Such more or less similar cases were also reported in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Akaba a few years ago. Interestingly, there are some reports of dolphins helping other cetaceans. In 1983 at Tokerau Beach, North-land, New Zealand, a pod of pilot whales ran aground during ebb-tide. The New Zealanders who lived there came out and did their best to keep the whales alive by sponging their skin and calming them until the tide came back in. The whales however due to their extended stress of being beached on the shore over a long period of time were disoriented. A pod of dolphins that were nearby sensed what was happening and putting themselves at risk swam into the shallows and herded the pilot whales out to sea, thus saving 76 of the 80 whales.

Are these indicators or confirmation that dolphins like humans are capable of altruistic behavior? My own observation of dolphins even in captivity is that they are consistently chatty, friendly, happy and spontaneous. They appear to be living in the here and now and easily arouse in us the joy and wonder of just being alive in contrast to the many different emotional moods humans have acquired; most humans are subjected to mood swings according to their worries for the future and inability to let go of past anger and grudges. Though Dolphins are “human friendly”, some humans consider them delicacies and dolphin bellies are served as a “special sushi” dish in “exquisite” Japanese restaurants.

The greatest threat to Dolphins and other species on land and in water are humans. Are Dolphins trying to convey some messages to humankind? Some of the lessons that we can deduce from their behavior are - how to live amongst ourselves in peace and harmony, social responsibilities and the preservation of our environment. Both human adults and children have always been fascinated with Dolphin stories. They communicate happiness easily without effort. In today's world, unbridled global capitalism threatens to destroy our global ecology and the possibility that we may self destruct with nuclear weapons is very real. Bobbie Sandoz, author of Listening to Wild Dolphins believe that they are capable of telepathic communication and that they embody the characteristics of the higher self – “kindness, joy, harmony, wisdom, clarity and mystery.”

As with everything else, there are arguments against pure altruism. Edward O. Wilson, founding father of sociobiology (the study of the biological basis of social behavior of humans and other animals) denied the possibility of pure altruism and when confronted with the example of Mother Teresa’s lifelong dedication to the sick and dying street people of Calcutta retorted that as she was a Christian, it was reasonable to assume that she was motivated by her religious belief and had acted accordingly believing that she would receive her reward in heaven.[2] Socio-biologist, Pierre van den Berghe after citing many examples concluded: “We are programmed to care only about ourselves and our relatives”.[3] American professor Garrett Hardin with a background in biological sciences even went to the extent of suggesting that social institutions and public policies should be base on “an unwavering adherence to the Cardinal Rule: Never ask a person to act against his own self-interest”.[4] This position appears to be an extreme one opposite to the other extreme of Jesus’ “Love your enemies” teaching which would appear impractical and unrealistic.

It is apparent there is no pure altruism just as there is no pure selfishness, every thing is relative, the eternal struggle between individual self-centered interest and the collective interest will always exist to a lesser or greater degree, it exists within the individual, the family and on a larger extent in societies in general. A thing or an idea is never absolute per se; it exists and could only be understood and explained in relation to other things and ideas. Confucius taught that family units are the foundation of societies. If family units break down, society’s breakdown would inevitably follows. It is unrealistic to demand that individuals and families totally ignore their interests; the important thing is to balance individuals and families interests with that of society at large. Individuals and families can and should realize that the best way to protect their interests is by equally respecting and protecting the rights and interest of other individuals and families. Only by adhering to this simple rule can we establish a stable society and enable individuals and families to pursue their happiness within mutually acceptable rules established amongst ourselves by consensus.

Legendary founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus.

Besides dolphins, altruistic behaviors are also common amongst other social animals in varying degrees in accordance with their intelligence and evolutionary experiences. Wolves and wild dogs would bring back meat to members of their pack who were not in on the kill. Legend has it that the founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus were brought up by a she wolf. Chimpanzees likewise share their food with each other; when a group of chimpanzees discovers good trees with ripe fruits, they make loud booming noises that could attract other chimpanzees as far as a kilometer away. In dangerous situations, social animals warn each other of the danger as when hawks fly overhead, blackbirds and thrushes give warning calls, helping other members of the flock to escape at some risk of exposing themselves as targets to the predators. Among social animals, it is easy to find examples of animal behavior demonstrating that co-operation brings greater benefits and increase their collective survival chances than self centered selfish behavior.

White Artic Wolf

Animals do fight with each other and often over territorial claims and as leaders of their packs, however, when they do fight with each other, they often appear to obey some unwritten rules much like the ethical rules of combat adopted by noble medieval knights. As an example, when one wolf gets the better of another, the beaten wolf would make a submissive gesture like exposing the soft underside of its neck to the fangs of the victor and that would be sufficient for the victorious wolf to trot off, being satisfied with a symbolic victory.[5] There was no need to rip out the jugular veins of his or her foe. In contrast some humans have inflicted the most horrendous torture with malicious anger and hatred on their own kind and have no qualms at all at the same time claiming the most pious reasons for doing so, often in the name of duty to their so call god or country. Some will even take the heads of their “enemies” and parade them around as a mark of their “glorious” victory.

Another example of distorted or rather unusual deviation of human behavior is the massive enslavement of African Negroes by Christians between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries; a total of nearly fifteen million Negroes were captured in Africa and sold as slaves and shipped to the Americas. There was nothing new about slavery, it is as old as the bible but the scale of the slave trade and the fact that it was carried out by Christians professing the doctrine of love and salvation for humankind makes it bizarre – as we are all supposed to be created by the same almighty god and to enjoy his sunshine and rain equally. To be able to do such a thing requires a special kind of irrational aberration in attitude cruelly cultivated by more than 1000 years since childhood of the “superiority” of the Christian in group culture which enables them to treat members of other out groups with extreme cruelty. In-groups and out-groups conflicts amongst Homo sapiens have existed since the beginning of human history but they have never been involved on such a large scale and over such an extended period of time as that created by the Christian in-group and its sub in groups.

For Negroes to be enslaved on such a massive scale by Christians, it could only be done because the then mainstream American Christians assisted by the approval of slavery in the bible, deemed them virtually as a new form of domestic animal. An American priest in the mid nineteenth century put it across very clearly:

The Negro is a striking variety, and at present permanent, as the numerous varieties of domestic animals. The Negro will remain what he is, unless his form is altered by intermixture, the simple idea of which is revolting; his intelligence is greatly inferior to that of the Caucasians, and he is consequently, from all we know of him, incapable of governing himself. He has been placed under our protection. The vindication of slavery is contained in the scriptures … It determines the duties of masters and slaves … we can effectively defend our institutions from the word of God.

With these words early Christian reformers were easily tamed. Would Christians then subjected to almost 2000 years of indoctrination since childhood dare go against the words of god as written in the bible? This is just one example of how often irrational Christians would unashamedly borrow the “authority” of god to enslave and mistreat others for their own earthly material comfort, practically living of the labor of their slaves and their off springs for generations.

Abraham Lincoln 16th President of the United States. Born: 12th February 1809 Died: 15th April 1865

Thanks to President Abraham Lincoln, the Negroes were officially set free on 1st January 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation. In the evening of Friday 14th 1865, while watching “Our American Cousin” Lincoln was shot in the back of his head at near point-blank range for standing up to his humanistic principle. Old habits die hard and discrimination against American Negroes continues in one form or another even until today. Iron chains were replaced with psychological ones, segregations, discriminations, and social degradations were heaped upon them until in their extreme frustration they started to revolt more vigorously in the mid 20th century and became a force to be reckoned with. Negro extremism developed and was not only talking about simple equality but black domination and a second Civil War appeared imminent. It was then that Martin Luther Jr. appeared on the scene as a moderating force which brought about the easing of tension with his now famous quote: “Unless we learn to live together as brothers or we will die together as fools.” It was only in the 1960s, 100 years after Negroes were officially set free that they were permitted to dine in public places without the stigma of being looked upon as members of an inferior sub species.

In ancient in-group and out-group conflicts, their co-operative urges usually prevailed and some form of mutually beneficial arrangements would be implemented. In the absence of a “super powerful in-group” which claims to possess exclusive eternal absolute truth, power and superiority, such solutions were the norm as it would quickly become obvious that it is senseless to continue to kill each other. Confucius 2500 years ago observed that “Men’s natures are alike; it is their acquired habits that carry them far apart.” Beneath the surface, humans are basically the same, we all have a natural sympathy towards each other; if you strip away all our religious and different ideologies, we are all faced with the same needs, problems and we more or less need the same solutions.

Confucius: "Men's natures are alike; it is their acquired habits that carry them apart."

Habits being mere cultural traditions can be changed – we have changed, we can and should continue to evolve to a higher level of co-operative efforts integrating our common needs for mutual survival and the survival of our species and other species on earth. We need an inclusive system of morality based on mutual respect and acceptance regardless of our cultural, religious or racial backgrounds. Our species has a wide range of common basic behavior patterns; the fundamental similarities between any one man and any other man are enormous. The sooner this is appreciated, the more tolerant we will become in our inter group transactions.

We do not wear our skin color by choice as badges just to show that we belong to a special “superior” or “hostile” in-group or to denote our mental differences. In my circle of friends and business associates both within and outside the Masonic fraternity, I have found often enough that I share more mental similarities with some Caucasian and Indian friends than some of my own Chinese friends in Singapore, Taiwan as well as China. I am sure such similar experiences are shared by members of other races. Until the various human sub species stop treating other human sub species with hostility, prejudice and suspicion, there will always be pointless and wasteful bloodshed. If Yawehism in its aggressive warlike form prevails, humankind will always be in perpetual wars.

I am not suggesting that there can be a world-wide brotherhood of man, at this point in time it is still a naïve utopian dream and I have been dreaming this dream since I completed high school. However, because of the imminent danger to our species and other living things on earth, hopefully, many more humans, especially national and world religious and political leaders would realize the danger and take urgent steps to prevent the further erosion of our ecology and stop the senseless wars and put in place checks and balances to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction.

There will always be competition within the human sub species and amongst the various sub species or rather as Samuel Huntington referred to as the nine civilization blocks. No one single civilization block can ever dominate all the other civilization blocks. In well organized societies these struggles will take the form of healthy, stimulating and fair competition and the vigorous rituals of commercial trading and sports to satisfy the human need for continuous creativity and improvements and to prevent stagnation and retrogression. There will always be worthwhile challenges for humankind; the infinity and mystery of the universe is wide open before us.

We can learn from dolphins and other social animals and we have, however, it is useful to bear in mind that our problems are much more complex. Unlike dolphins, many humans live in over-crowded environments because of over-population; many other species have paid the price with their extinction because of the destruction of their natural habitats. Millions of species have extinct at our hands and many more are on their way to extinction. Humans are capable of eating almost everything or most things that grow on trees, in the ground, fly, swim, walk or crawl including snakes and ants. It would be bizarre and useless to prepare a menu of what humans have eaten. Until and unless we prevent this rapidly extinction process or reverse it, we would sooner or later run out of food and other vital natural resources.

Over population is the direct and indirect cause of the erosion of our environment and also many territorial conflicts and wars over control of the diminishing resources available on earth. Living in over crowded environments also created many psychotic human conditions resulting in aberration in human conduct. Over population and human technologies have created super structures and high density high rise apartments in mega cities world wide which we sometimes refer to as concrete jungles populated by only one human species; other animal species that live in such cities are either pets or living as captives in Zoos. Biologists tell us that wild animals in their natural environment do not habitually slaughter their own kind; however when kept in over crowded cages, they manifest a more excessive violent behavior and massacre their own kind. Chimpanzees and other primates kept in Zoos also acquire the human habit of masturbation to relieve themselves of their boredom.

We are adding about 150,000 to our population every day. Population control, efficient management and a more equitable sharing of our resources are essential if we are to live in peace together. Despite this very obvious and urgent problem facing humankind, the Roman Catholic Church is incredibly against contraception and legalized abortion and most unfortunately, their influence is the greatest in regions where population growths are the most explosive. Is it not better to prevent life than to cure it? We need to for our collective well being and survival of our species and other interdependent species living on earth determine an optimal population level and find workable ways to maintain it at that level. If something has to die, would it not be better that it be human eggs and sperm rather than thinking, cared for and caring human beings who have become an integral and interdependent part of society?

The human female is capable of producing about four hundred eggs during her lifetime and the adult male literally produces millions of sperm every day. Since our population soars and we started living in mega cities strange new sexual practices emerged that had the effect of reducing group productiveness; neuroses and psychoses proliferated, homosexuality, fetishism and bestiality, contraception, masturbation, oral and anal intercourse provide sexual consummation without the chances of fertilization. Other than the famous sperm stains left on Lewinsky’s dress and Anwar’s mattress; billions of sperms are flushed down basins and toilets every day. Are these increasingly visible practices desperate signs of the need to rein in our population growth?

Population control should be spread evenly around the world instead of only in the more enlightened regions. Uneven population growths would create massive illegal immigration and refugees problems that will lead to further de-stabilizing of existing strained inter-regional relations. The problems facing us are daunting and specialists on this subject are divided into the optimists and pessimists camps. I am by nature and nurture mostly optimistic, perhaps it is because optimists tend to live more happily even when they are wrong, whereas pessimists tend to be unhappy even when they are proven right. We need to think and act differently if we are to make changes to our world; we need to massively think more of quality than in sheer quantity.

Endnotes


[1] BBC News: Dolphins Therapy Fights Depression, Friday, 25 November 2005, 00:18 GMT
[2] E.O Wilson, On Human Nature, Havard University Press, Cambridge Mass., (1978), 165.

[3] P.L. van den Berghe, “Bridging the paradigms: biology and the social science”, in Sociobiology
and Human Nature, M.S. Gregory, A. Silvers and D. Sutch, eds, Jossey-Bass, Inc., Publishers,
San Francisco, 1978, pp. 32-52.

[4] G. Hardin, The Limits of Altruism: An Ecologist’s View of Survival, Indiana University Press,
Bloomington, Ind., (1977).

[5] Konrad Lorenz, King Solomon’s Ring, Methuen, London, 1964, 186-9.