My 'mental problem' with 'tradition'

Grieving mother calling

So. The world, or a relatively large collectivity of its population, has just experienced an elevated focus and an interactive communicative expression around the recent phenomenon of what we might call "the Cove Experience". Actually, only about a dozen of "us" were really there 'on site', but undoubtedly millions were 'there' in some way. 

There were, interestingly, some articles in major media which quoted various pundits of the Wetiko death culture saying that those who 'connected' to the event (especially those on-site) are individuals who are suffering from certain kinds of "mental and emotional problems" and/or "problems in their personal lives". That's always predictable. And interestingly enough, this came up this morning in a post by R.J. Burrowes - Open letter to soldiers with 'mental issues' - very appropriately:
"Human beings have a brilliantly diverse and complex array of emotions and hence potential emotional responses as a result of the evolutionary pressures that shaped the emergence of hominids over millions of years. An extraordinary emotional capacity is one of the defining features of our humanity and, I would argue, far more important than any other feature such as our intellectual capacity..."

We have not all experienced war-zones in our lives, myself included, but we all live on a war-planet and a slaughterhouse-planet (and pretty near police-state-planet), and that reality effects every cell of every being. 
Ok, see here's my 'mental problem': 
I used to sit on the banks of the Ganges doing my practice, playing my drum, for days, for years - for the dolphins - who were my dancing, chirping, and attentive audience; who also accompanied my daily baths in the river (it was cleaner then), chirping at me, playfully swimming between my legs, circling me while I swam, and generally making my time there ecstatic.
It has grieved me intensely to see how they have almost completely disappeared from Varanasi during the last 4 decades - after being present for millions of years - due to pollution, where you still see the posters hanging in chai-shops of MaGanga-goddess-riding-on-her-dolphin calendar art. 
In later years, I experimented with playing on the cliffs of Point Reyes (Calif.) for the migrating whales. Similarly, they would pause and hang out, tuning in to the rhythms as I attempted to tune into them with prayers for their health and safe journeys.
Around 1979 we heard about the slaughter going on at Iki Island, Japan - similar to the present situation in Taiji - and there were strong protests. That's fucking 35 years ago! My thing was to spend all one night painting dead dolphins on the sidewalk the entire way around the Japan Embassy in San Francisco. 
Hello! Good morning!

Here's the deal: Whales and dolphins are running the Song Lines, in the same way various aboriginal cultures have done for tens of thousands of years. Whales and dolphins have been considered holy animals, very close to human beings in spirit and body, forever in most traditional cultures, and some whales only killed by those whose lives depend upon it, and with interspecies communication and arrangement. I don't know of any culture that consumed dolphin meat. [A few years back, in Taiji, that horrid little demonic town, a dolphin was caught who had vestigal "leg" flippers - thought by some indicative of their ancient 'land-form' from whence they returned to the sea.]

Well, I'm not even going to get into the "emotional capacity" of the cetaceans, since a mountain of evidence is readily available, but it's as huge, if not exponentially huger, than human levels. But what happened this week is, in part, a result of the massive exposure of the film Blackfish in screenings, on the web, and repeated broadcasts on TV. The crucial and defining scene in Blackfish depicts the mother Orca wailing for her child. This is what took place - livestreamed, and replayed, and described in extensive media (CBS, CNN, NBC, BBC, etc) and through SeaShepherd.org sites - a mother dolphin, captured in the Taiji net-pens, bobbing out of the water, calling and calling for her baby who was taken FIRST, on account of his/her being a rare spirit white animal destined for lifetime slavery/imprisonment for entertainment somewhere in dumfukistan, and then just submerging and never resurfacing, as witnessed by the Cove Guardian crew on-site. [Rick O'Barry, of 'Flipper' and 'The Cove' film fame, had 'Flipper' commit suicide right in his arms, so they're fully capable of it.] The now-captive baby has been named "Shoujo" by Capt. Watson, and "Angel" by others.

Shoujo/Angel -SeaShepherd.org

See, these demons are very fucking SCIENTIFIC, so they know that dolphin calves stay next to the mother FOR YEARS. These a-holes and their mafia politician mouthpieces are very fucking TRADITIONAL too, don't ya know. Well....
Sakae Hemmi of the Elsa Nature Conservancy in Japan said the claim of tradition is false.
"In fact, the history of dolphin hunting in Taiji is short. According to The History of Taiji, edited and published by Taiji town in 1979, the first recorded dolphin drive was in 1933, with subsequent hunts occurring in 1936 and 1944. It was not until 1969 that dolphin drives have been conducted on a large scale. The history of the dolphin drives spans not so-called 400 years, but a mere 45. Furthermore, in 1969, the main goal of the dolphin drive was to capture pilot whales as prized showpieces for the Taiji Whale Museum. In other words, the dolphin drive was purely for profit, having nothing to do with cultural history."
So, it's purely another instance of psychopathic lying bullshit, like everything that comes out of the mouths of death-culture defenders. Btw, captives are sold for $quarter-to-half-million a pop to SeaWorld-type parks around the world, but I'm sure that's not a factor...

Anyhow, "the whole world is watching" is not just an old 60s phrase. Viewers on all major media were given, repeatedly, a detailed description of just how 'humanely' the dolphin beings are 'put down' (up to 30 minutes to die), they were shown image after image of the color RED, a deep vibrant red, of the water of the bay in which two hundred [50 others previously captured for sale over 4 days] exhausted, traumatized, starving beings swam for hours in the blood of their relatives, they were shown the 'fishermen' driving over and over with their outboard motors through the tightly-packed, thrashing, bleeding, panicked pod, they saw the metal hooks grabbing the beings from the blowholes, ramming them against the skiffs....
Thousands around the world spread messages, called embassies, voiced their disgust and HATRED for the entire Japanese nation and culture for several days. Big hollywood and music 'stars' weighed in (incl. Japan-born Yoko Ono, etc). Caroline Kennedy (US Japan ambassador) was 'disturbed at the inhumaneness', but, I hear, later swallowed the false "tradition" kool-aid (or was it the mafia Dallas-style sniper-rifle hint?). 
And the group "Anonymous" hacked and shut down the provincial government's web-site, and warned of further, larger attacks if the "drive hunt" isn't stopped in next few weeks.

I should mention, for those not familiar with the scene 'over there', but perhaps now a lot more exposed: In Taiji, the mercury-embedded dolphin flesh is sold as "whale meat" and served in school lunches; the government is fully aware of this. Not only that, but (this is for real, you can't make this shit up) in Taiji they have a "whale museum"-and-dolphinarium where they keep some of the surviving from the slaughters, make them do tricks for the same "trainers" who just killed their relatives, so the idiot morons of the lesser human species can watch the 'family entertainment', then lunch on dolphin burgers. No, really.

The Cove film has been out since 2009 - 5 years. This week's Taiji round-up of 250 dolphins was maybe the biggest score for the soul-less butchers since that time. The combination of the numbers and the albino white calf probably just pushed the issue over into mass awareness. It has now finally spilled over into mainstream Japanese media too, bigtime. People there are becoming aware of the anger directed at their culture. But they're also a complete nation of sheep/robotic-and-programmed-slaves, like the vast majority of humanity. I have no expectations of "change" regarding anything to do with the infinite wrongness and insanity of everything the human species does to life and the Earth. I can only stand in awe of the people of SeaShepherd 'Operation Infinite Patience' witnessing and documenting this shit.

Been basically in an existential funk for days now, triggered by the 'event', but connected to very broad trends of events over my 67 years in this here Yuga...as I look at the Ganges dolphins I included in my 1980s tantric art piece on the wall.....
The question of why the dolphins don't warn other pods to stay away keeps coming up more recently, and the same in the matter of Faroe Islands "grind" of pilot whales. I've been trying to meditate on it. This is definitely different than 'beaching' due to various toxicities affecting health. Communicators say the cetaceans are supremely aware of our fucked-up-ness, and at the same time they are under enormous stresses, some of which we (and they) aren't even aware of the source (they're piling up wasted on Florida beaches and practically everywhere). Pods off Taiji, even in recent days, have out-run the 'banger boats', so they surely aren't trying to self-sacrifice. Maybe they just want a peaceful death somewhere, because THEY ARE LEAVING this stupid, human-destroyed realm/density FOR GOOD. Some 'channelers' have said as much recently.

Anyway, btw, I'm not a believer in the "avatar" meme - any of them, Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, and all the rest, especially the "ones to come" - about 'fixing' shit for the stupid, failed human species, fixing human madness. The stories all seem like social control mechanisms concocted by religions, based on a-holes who heard second-hand stories about mystic individuals' entheogenic journeys, and got the idea of a business model plan. Sure, I've had direct experience of non-physical energy beings, including our Mother planet Herself, and various powerful entities that assist shamanic travelers and cultural creatives. But, nothing even close to convince me that anyone or anything is going to show up, knock everyone to their knees, and display just exactly how we are gonna have to get our shit together, step by step. I think anyone promoting this type of scenario is self-deluded, and/or just running another age-old scam to stroke their narcissistic ego and keep from working at contributing something of beauty for the larger world of living beings.

What I see is that most everyone has forgotten what "culture" actually is. "Tradition" has become just another form of cover-up too. 'Why are we here?', Where did we come from?', Where are we going?' - these can only be answered in the deep silence within, never spoken. What people have known in their indigenous wisdom for millenia is that we humans have our instructions, like all sentient beings - to embody what "culture" actually is: creating beauty to feed the mystery/the holy by our actions, creations, expressions, and our very being-ness every day of our lives. 
Is there more? Perhaps if we followed our original instructions everything else would perfectly follow/fall into place, and be revealed, and no absurd desperate 'search for meaning' and 'way out of suffering' would be necessary or even exist. 

The final word on our madness of destruction of all life, running toward some imaginary 'finish line', and about what matters and what we should care and feel for, how we regard other sentient beings is: DO THEY SUFFER? 
If the answer is 'yes', then we are response-able. Can we respond with beauty? Can we apply our energy and resources to ending the pointless, stupid, and unnecessary madness of total destruction? Perhaps, even by any means necessary? These all become personal questions; there is no 'general' answer. 

I am making an amendment to what I previously wrote regarding the book Dispelling Wetiko. I still think it is an extraordinary and important book and subject. 
However, I have begun reading Martin Prechtel's latest - The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic. What I will say is that in the very first chapter, there is more wisdom on the subject of humanity's root disease than in anything I've ever heard or read in my life. Then, the most extraordinary tale follows, which will blow the reader away completely. 
Martin's previous book, Stealing Benefacio's Roses, was a life-changer for me, and I anticipate the same for this volume, which I've only begun. I can't recommend this enough.

Coming back around to where I began here - an example of the ones with "mental problems" who are so feared, standing in witness, in silence:

We Will Remember from Animal Rights on Vimeo.

"We're not going to change Sexism until we address how we live with the Mother Entity, the Earth, and that's the reality of it. And we're not going to change and deal effectively with Racism until we change how we live with the Living Plants and Animals and World that is the Earth. And if we ignore these two things, then no matter what the people do and create for themselves, there will always be Madness and Chaos, because they're only Pretending to be connected." - John Trudell