Whale Culture - Is a Thing
It's a rich topic for speculative fiction about the future
Behaviour is similar across a species. How you behave varies across a species. That is culture.
James Cameron has recently produced a series of documentaries that focus on this concept of how we are learning some principles of how whales interact with each other. These magnificent creatures travel thousands of miles through the oceans in pursuit of food and birthing places. Their underwater voices travel great distances through the water.
Whale communities, pods, and clans preserve ways of knowing and doing. It varies from one species to the next.
The environment and ecosystem where the clan lives deeply affects the way it behaves. There are certain methods for hunting and cooperating to capture or entrap food. The older, more experienced members of the clan preserve the knowledge and teach it to the younger ones.
Think of a woman who does daily rounds to the market, and takes her young child along with her. Because she sees the importance of finding good food she makes sure that the child is involved. She talks to him about the food on their list, she shows and teaches him what a ripe melon looks like, she explains what a good cut of meat looks like. All the senses of the child are instructed: sight, hearing, touch, smell, perhaps even taste. And at the end of it all, the child's mind is being built by being given the information and experience it needs to complete the task on its own.
There are several clans of humpback whales in the southern seas. Each clan creates a new song each year, and it gets shared across long distances through the oceans and unifies the entire population.
Other whales develop a different culture where they exist in smaller, more isolated groups.
I recall a series of children’s fiction called Silverwing by Kenneth Opal in which he takes you into the world of bats. This is a fascinating way to learn about how culture can be, and gives new insights into the nuanced connections that animals and plants develop with the earthly ecosystems where they live.
I think that humans need to re-learn ALL of this. We have spent so much technological effort to overcome or to separate ourselves from the natural world (much of it rightly so and with good results ie. not freezing to death). But this process is going too far!
Our isolation from our natural environment, and our oversimplification of our understanding of the importance of FOOD and PHYSICAL health creates distortions. The distortions push us further into this notion that we can control everything about ourselves.
NO. I don’t believe that.
You can pull as hard as you want on your bootstraps, but you won’t get off the ground.
The animal and plant kingdoms remind us of the importance of intimate connection and existence WITHIN the natural environment, not IN SPITE of it.
What are you thoughts?
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