Blackfish<\/a>, to open our eyes to the ugly, shameful fact that this, and all things like this, are wrong, horribly, unforgivably, wrong?<\/p>\nThat we provide the mindless market for such heartless abuse, in order to make our children laugh, is as much a condemnation of the sociopathic spectatorship as of the merciless, mercenary management of sadistic sea circuses — and all their land counterparts. <\/p>\n
Perhaps the most chilling anomaly is how the “trainers” — of whom some, clearly, “turned,” eventually, after years of having been willing accomplices to the abuse of these helpless animals — were themselves “trained” (by the management along with self-deception) to overlook the obvious, in exchange for the fees and the celebrity (“just following orders”? “being professional”?). It seems to have been various blends of venality and sensation-seeking, though some got into it naively, and then got attached to their prisoners and stayed so as to use what little leverage they had to make their fates less worse, rather than abandon them altogether. — Or maybe that was just what they said for the camera? (I hope not.)<\/p>\n
But most macabre of all was that some professed to have become Seaworld trainers to fulfill a dream that Seaworld itself had instilled in them as a child.<\/p>\n
\nTilikum’s punishment for having been savagely kidnapped and relentlessly abused for decades:<\/b> <\/p>\n
Solitary confinement
\nto provide sperm
\nfor breeding more orcas
\nto be wrenched from their mothers
\nand put into entertainment servitude
\nfor the rest of their miserable lives
\nto inspire more children
\nabout the wonders of the sea<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How multitudes of people can gather to gawk daily at these magnificent, miserable creatures, all brutally wrenched from their devastated families and forced to perform round after round of cheap Skinnerian circus tricks, pitilessly imprisoned for the rest of their wretched, ruined lives in holding containers, tormented day and night by the bouncing echoes from … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “World at Sea”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3074,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=702"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":703,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/702\/revisions\/703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}