The end justifies the means - but not only for whales

Much of the community is captivated by the David and Goliath battle taking place in the Southern Ocean. Most of us are barracking for the head of the Sea Shepherd Conversation Society Paul Watson, as he tries to prevent the Japanese from fulfilling their brutal self-awarded licence quota of killing 935 minke and 10 fin whales by sinking the “can opener” device attached to his ship, the Farley Mowat, into the hull of the whaling boats.

The calls by the Japanese whaling authority for the Sea Shepherd group to “stop at once their dangerous and criminal actions” have for the most part fallen on deaf ears.

And rightly so. Watson and Greenpeace activists (who recently have come close to being on the pointy end of a Japanese harpoon) should be commended for their actions. Their passion, commitment and bravery are an inspiration to all people who want to make the world a better place.

While much of the world stands shamed for its cruelty towards animals, the killing of whales is particularly distressing. Whales scream in terror as they are being massacred and unlike humans, they aren’t equipped with a consciousness shut off valve that kicks in during the unthinkable levels of pain they experience as their flesh is harpooned and explosives rip through their organs.

The most interesting part of this battle, however, comes in the form of the subtext to the community response to Watson’s actions. Scratch a little bit below the icy waters of the Southern Ocean and you’ll see that it’s not only the whales that should be grateful to Watson. His activities and our response to them have the capacity to teach us profound lessons about the moral fog within which we live and the rationality free zone that occupies much of mainstream moral discourse.

A curious aspect of our response to Watson’s boat-ramming shenanigans is that we are still cheering for him despite the fact his actions constitute an egregious breach of international law and imperil the lives of dozens of people aboard the respective ships.

What is even more illuminating is the lack of criticism by Greens and other civil libertarian groups at Watson’s law-breaking, life-endangering escapades. Greens Senator Bob Brown has proclaimed that the whale protestors are doing the government’s job on whale-killers and has called the Japanese whalers “D-grade butchers masquerading as scientists”.

Civil libertarians are invariably hot off the blocks to denounce any interference with rights, especially those that imperil fundamental interests such as the right to life and liberty. Thus, they loudly condemned the new counter-terrorism laws which provide for control orders and 14 days detention without trial for terrorist suspects and they were appalled at the occasional confession inducing arm-behind-the-back-twisting manoeuvres performed during the sporadic rendition trip by United States forces keen to prevent the next suicide bomb being detonated.

The “end doesn’t justify the means” is the catch-cry that they trumpet most loudly in opposition to incursions of fundamental freedoms that are carried out for the common good. Well, if the end justifies the means for the whales, why doesn’t it justify the means for humans?

The truth is that it does. Failure to realise this is symptomatic of an unremitting deluded self-righteousness that freezes one’s moral compass into an inward position, foreclosing consideration of the thing that matters most - the common good.

The reason that civil libertarians are cheering for the whales has zero to do with the application of universal moral principles and everything to do with emotion - particularly their emotions. The fact their emotional response coincides with the morally correct stance in this case is purely accidental.

The bloodied waters of the Southern Ocean have swelled the compassion gland of civil libertarians to a point where they’ve lost their balance and fallen off their self-erected moral high horse. Hopefully that’s where they will stay and join the rest of us in coming to understand that the end does justify the means. Always has. Always will. Nothing else matters.

No action is intrinsically bad or good. No principle is absolute. Matters are always context sensitive. Plundering the organs (in the form of kidneys and bone marrow) is permissible if it is done with the consent of the patient and in order to save lives; engaging in conflict that will result in the certain deaths of many innocent people is permissible to save many others (as is the case currently in Iraq) and detaining suspects without trial is morally sound where it is likely to prevent innocent lives being lost.

The best way to deal with evil is to pulverise it. As we did (although far too late) with Adolf Hitler and should have in relation to the likes of Pol Pot, Idi Amin and Saddam Hussein. The good news is that evil is not transmittable. Ostensibly harmful acts are permissible if they are for the greater good.

The moral and political debate in relation to important societal issues must move on from not whether the end justifies the means, to what end we as a species should be attempting to secure. In this regard, there can only be one answer. The ultimate end is to maximise net flourishing, where each agent’s interests counts equally - even those who do not excite our emotions.

Each person must count equally in this equation because there is no logical or normative basis for ranking the interests of one person higher than another. An argument along the lines that “I am more important than you” is inherently discriminatory and morally vacuous.

Animals get a look-in into this equation because they posses the most important attribute that qualifies an entity for moral standing: the capacity to feel pain and hence suffer. Suffering is suffering, whether experienced by animals or humans.

The insurmountable conundrum that civil libertarians need to address is if the end (measured in terms of net global flourishing) does not justify the means, then what does? Surely, they must have some end in mind as well, beyond the repetition of “fine” words - which are of no comfort in the grave. Until their elusive end is revealed there is no basis for believing that their retorts are anything more than pre-reflective visceral responses. But that shouldn’t sway anyone. Their emotions are no more important than those of anybody else.

Hopefully the icy waters of the Southern Ocean will encourage misguided libertarian groups to come up for air and take a few steps up the moral mountain beyond the rights fog in which they are currently enveloped. The world would be a better place if we all applied our energies towards securing the right end, for whales, humans and even less sympathy inducing creatures.