We are not dolphins and they are not us

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, cetaceans, dolphins, toothed whales, conservation, mythology

The direction of Susan Casey's life changed one day during a swim in Honolua Bay. She found herself amidst a pod of spinner dolphins, and their interactions with her over the next ten minutes convinced her that they were much more than "smart sea creatures". She felt a kinship. For many people, similar feelings of kinship motivate much of the "swim with dolphins" industry, although a great many folks do it mainly because it is "in". Perhaps this, too, shall pass (One can only hope!).

For Ms Casey, she found herself embarking on a series of projects, in a more-or-less picaresque way, to learn more about these small, toothed whales and even to get involved in their conservation and preservation. The result is Voices in the Sea: A Journey into the Wild and Haunting World of Dolphins.

Taking the events of the book out of order, we find that the earliest representations of dolphins, in Minoan frescoes and on pottery, has a worshipful air. From that day until this, various numbers of people have considered dolphins to be gods, or wise aliens, our hidden ancestors. The New Age movement abounds in "dolphin theology". But this is a rare, bright thread through the morass of human-dolphin interaction.

Dolphins and porpoises (the latter comprise seven or eight species of smaller toothed whales with shorter beaks or even rounded snouts; not nearly as "smiley" as the familiar Bottlenose Dolphin) are depicted as admirably peaceable, and perhaps they are. The largest dolphins, Orcas, or Killer Whales, have never been known to harm a human in the wild. The handful of cases in which an orca hurt or killed a person all occurred in "sea parks" such as Sea World, and the perpetrators are generally considered by experts to be insane from chronic mistreatment. Historical and modern stories abound of dolphins helping humans, sometimes even defending them from sharks. It appears that these creatures in general recognize their kinship with humans.

From the human side, darkness abounds. Those who consider us as descended from dolphins must consider most of us their evil twins. Tens of thousands, perhaps millions, of dolphins of all kinds are killed by humans every year. Certain places Ms Casey visited, such as Taiji Cove in Japan and a couple of villages in the Solomon Islands, specialize in capturing and killing dolphins for meat and other products. Sometimes they also capture the "prettiest" ones alive and sell them to "dolphin parks". Such parks continue to proliferate; these days all the new ones are outside the US in areas of new luxury such as the UAE. The trade needs to go on steadily to meet the demand, mostly because the average time a captive dolphin lives is about three years, and most expire in the first year. A few hardy ones may live much longer, but none approaches the 50-to-100-year life span of a wild dolphin.

I have thought a great deal about the intelligence of dolphins. They have huge brains, with Encephalization Quotients of about 4, compared to 7 or so for humans. But I calculated elsewhere that if you discount the layer of blubber, which can account for a quarter of a dolphin's weight, the EQ of a Bottlenose Dolphin is at least 6. However, sheer brain volume, even on an allometric scale such as EQ, is but part of the story.

About 6% of the human brain's cortex is devoted to decoding vision. Vision is a very efficient sense. The primary receptor is a pair of thin cellular films, our retinas, each of which would flatten out to cover about 2/3 of a business card. The rest of the non-brain ocular apparatus is a pair of "cameras", AKA our eyes, and the attached muscles and nerves. Another percent goes to hearing, and smaller proportions to our other senses. So we have about 90% of our cerebral cortex available for other functions. Dolphin brains have much larger auditory areas, presumably because of their echolocation skill. The areas of the brain devoted to their sonic senses are about 20 - 40 times as large as the entire human auditory cortex and related areas. That means about one-third of a dolphin brain is used for sonic decoding. It seems logical, then, that the "effective EQ" of a dolphin is much less than the simple calculation would imply, perhaps closer to 3. That puts a dolphin just above the top of the range for chimpanzees.

The above is but one illustration that a dolphin's world is radically different from ours. It also gives me a more satisfactory feeling about the seeming naiveté of dolphins. Just think, if they really were as smart as we are, and could communicate as effectively as we can, or as effectively as many people think they do, and further if they thought more like we think, could the slaughter continue? Maybe at some one time, a pod could be driven into Taiji Cove, taken captive and slaughtered there. There would be no second time. They would station lookouts and avoid entering the cove, or even counterattack and drag a bunch of the people to the depths to expire there. Instead, they behave in ways no human group would behave, and are thus "tricked" and caught and slaughtered year after year.

I don't have much stomach for going on. There are 36 or 37 species of dolphins and 7 or 8 of porpoises. Given the size of the oceans, that corresponds well to the 4 species of great apes and 17 species of lesser apes (Gibbons). Dolphins are not the "people of the sea", they are more analogous to oceanic Chimps and Orangutans. Think of Chimps with sonar…or radar.

But this doesn't make it moral to exploit them, or to wantonly cast them aside. Morality is not measured by whether you kill your enemies, but by how you treat the helpless. Every scripture of every religion demonstrates that we usually choose immorality or amorality over morality in nearly everything, and at best just "paper over our image" with a garnishing of philanthropy. Sometimes. Most folks forego the philanthropy part, except to toss a quarter into a Salvation Army bucket sometime during Christmas Week, or a similar token gesture in other cultures.

It is no surprise then, that dolphins and their kin remain a part of the Sixth Extinction that the human race is carrying out.

Stripping the myths of meaning

kw: book reviews, mythology

I have come to realize I am at best an average writer. I am most comfortable with the essay format, so this blog is well suited to my slender skills. When I have had to write longer works, such as a thesis or dissertation, the greatest task was the narrative and transitions, because without them my writing resembles a strung-together list of bullet points.

As part of my early education, I read Edith Hamilton's Mythology. It remains the classic work on the primary myths, and her other nine books, for those interested, bring out many of the tales left out of that volume, plus they introduce certain of the early Hebrew and Christian stories.

In a new volume, scholar Philip Freeman brings together summaries of most of the Greek and Roman myths, rewritten for a modern audience: Oh My Gods: A Modern Retelling of Greek and Roman Myths. While he clearly loves the classic stories, I think he has misread the audience. While it is true that modern readers have little patience, they clearly appreciate well crafted narrative and characterization; witness the Harry Potter phenomenon or the marathon of reading required by the twelve volumes of the Left Behind series.

Oh My Gods would probably work better as a multi-volume work (five at least). What we have is writing pretty much as I would probably produce: a series of strung together bullet points, almost like reading a bunch of PowerPoint presentations. The emotional power is wrung out of the stories by the brisk point-by-point style. It's a pity. These ancient archetypes reveal a lot about how our insides work, if told well. While it is perhaps unfair to match Freeman with Hamilton, that's what he is up against. Many of Hamilton's books are still in print. Just get them.

The godmaker

kw: book reviews, fantasy, magic, mythology

What if all the old myths were real? If magic were being held in abeyance for a time, but is poised for a resurgence? What if, among the mages, a few could still become gods, and a god be born who could make other gods? (Even as I write it, I realize that this last question is answered in Mormon theology by their concept of Jesus. Orson Scott Card started out a Mormon, and I suppose he still is.)

Reading Orson Scott Card's latest, The Lost Gate, has been a great way to get right out of myself. While I usually read fiction looking for interesting ideas, I read Card for his characterizations. His books are all morality plays, and in the past some of his "good" characters were, as I think of it, pathologically good. With experience, he's gained some balance.

Danny North grows up thinking he's a non-mage among mages, but turns into a late bloomer, and (could you guess?), the greatest mage of all. It is the ultimate Ugly Duckling story. Because of some senseless taboo held by the magical Families secretly living in the modern world, a powerful mage like Danny is supposed to be killed as soon as his powers become evident. Danny escapes.

The crux of the matter is this. The greatest mages are the Gatemages, and the greatest Gatemages are Gatefathers, those who can create a Great Gate to the planet Westil where the mages originated (along with all other non-mage humans). Once a Great Gate is produced, those who travel through it, both ways, multiply their powers. All Gates heal, but a Great Gate makes a mage into a super-mage, and makes the strongest mages into nearly immortal gods. All the Gates were destroyed thirteen centuries ago, and the former gods are in hiding, just itching to be re-deified.

Much of the narrative describes Danny's coming of age, and the somewhat parallel life of a powerful Gatemage on Westil whom Danny will one day need to confront. Along the way, Danny gains a few allies, and comes to this realization: as he gains godlike power, who else will he allow to benefit from it? Who can be trusted to resist the corrupting influence of great power? Of course, Danny himself must do so.

The book's Afterword makes it clear that Card intends to continue the series; Stonefather was an earlier book in this mage world. It will be interesting to follow the tug-of-war within the author as he explores Danny as a maturing Mage. Follow Card and his publishing schedule at Hatrack River.

Pillars of existence

kw: book reviews, mythology, folklore, imaginative fiction

Having had a classical education, I am very familiar with the corpus of Greco-Roman mythology. I've had no prior exposure to Semitic mythology, knowing only what is written in the Old and New Testaments of the Holy Bible. Of course, I've heard of Kabbalah and its panoply of demons and its numerology, but paid little attention.

I picked up The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-Six, by Jonathon Keats, as a wild card, not even knowing what "the 36" means. If these twelve stories in any fair way reflect the Jewish myths on which they are based, then I must conclude that my education is quite lacking!

The basis of the stories is the idea that thirty-six (Lamedh-Vov in Hebrew) righteous souls maintain the integrity of the world, but their identity is unknown, even to themselves, being known only by the LORD God. For one of their names to become known means he or she will lose their special status, and God must choose a replacement. Were all to become known, some kind of disaster would result.

The opening chapter is a bit of myth-making in its own right, setting up a scenario for a scholar to learn the identities of one set of thirty-six from a prior century. The stories of twelve are then proffered. They seem an unlikely mix of "the righteous", including a fool, a gambler, a clown and a murderer, even a fallen angel-become-human and a golem. In each case, the key is their very deep simplicity.

Nearly everybody would like to be a god. But to grow from the human to the divine has three steps: redemption, transformation, and glorification. I have yet to read a convincing story of glorification; even the Biblical accounts are cloaked in mysterious language. Most good stories lead us through, or let us observe, a transformation. While there is transformation in these twelve stories, they are primarily stories of redemption, each and every one. Not all have happy endings, but they all have Better endings. The stories are too well crafted for me to detail any one without giving away too much. Seek out this book, and enjoy.

New myths from old

kw: book reviews, fantasy, mythology, essays, history, anthologies

When a writer has overleapt all the boundaries, I refrain from categorizing. Minsoo Kang, a historian of the West who is of Korean extraction, has published in of tales and enigmas a collection of new myths in old myths' clothing, and a couple of essays.

Three sections, five pieces each. The stories in the first section, Talse From a Lost History, seem entirely a product of the imagination. Yet their grounding reflects the author's Korean origin. The fourth piece, "The Beautiful and Useful Machine", seems a parable of the progression of Western theology from 1900 until now. The sentence "Mechano-rejectionism lost the war on the battlefield, but it triumphed as Mechano-finitism in the halls of universities" neatly sums up the liberalizing of Western campuses after 1970, if the Mechano- terms are replaced with Socialism and Social Liberalism.

The second section, Fables of the Dream World, reflects in five ways the dilemma of solipsism and the meaning of our dreams. The fourth of these, "The Dilemma of the King and the Beggar," takes a new tack on "The Prince and the Pauper", reaching an equally just, and less contrived, solution. The question remains, am I dreaming you, or are you dreaming me?

As I know exactly nothing about Korea's history, I have to take it for granted that the two historical essays in the third section are not more myth-making. The author seems to take scrupulous care, including a radical change of voice, to indicate where he is synthesizing sources. The other three items are ghost stories with a twist quite unlike any Western story.

Among the publisher's early blurbs, one states, "...Kang makes a bid here to become the Borges of the 21st Century." Just as Borges both exposed Hispanic culture to ignorant Anglos and simultaneously mythologized it, so Kang has begun to do for Korea with this collection. His craft is not yet up to Borges' level, but he's getting there.

Myth Mixers

kw: book reviews, fantasy, mythology

There is but one constant about John C. Wright's characters: nobody is quite who they seem. We're not talking about wolves in sheep's clothing, or philosophers masquerading as longshoremen. No, no; here we have the pupils, faculty, and staff of a very odd boarding school-cum-orphanage, who are all disguised demigods and monsters from an eclectic collection of archetypes and myths. Some of those encountered "outside" are weirder yet.

Take Jove and Hera, Grendel, Jehovah, and their attendant deities and demons, and mix well. On one level, Fugitives of Chaos, the second of a trilogy in progress, is a teenage rebellion saga. But these teens, in one place called "the kids who don't get older", are ageless (but not immortal) monsters from other dimensions. The focus of a supernatural war, they have been held for...who knows how long...in an odd school in a place that really isn't there, once you get off the grounds. Their keepers are gods themselves, with powers barely capable of restraining the youngsters.

Wrights's kind of fantasy pits four or five kinds of magical tradition against one another, with combinations that oughtn't coexist, but in fiction, hey, sure they can! The story is a romp, deeper meanings are where you find them (within oneself, in other words), and the more you know of Beowulf and Hamilton's Mythology, the better. Guess I'll have to track down Orphans of Chaos...