If you haven’t read Leon Feistinger’s sociological classic “When Prophecy Fails,” I highly recommend it. Feistinger was a psychologist who, in the 1950′s, wondered why religions proselytize. He and his students successfully infiltrated a nascent UFO cult, became “true believers” and chronicled the cult’s behavior when its prophecy of massive “Earth changes” and a alien rescue of the cult members… didn’t happen as predicted. Their behavior, Feistinger found, changed radically. Whereas before the failed prophecy, cult members had been withdrawn and insular, guarding the prophecy for themselves, afterward they began to actively, openly proselytize and seek new members. This is exactly the opposite of what one would expect to happen from common sense: if prophecy failed, you’d expect the cult members to feel like idiots and slink into the shadows. Instead, they began beating their own drum.
Feistinger saw similar results in cults throughout history, and coined the term “cognitive dissonance” to explain it. The theory of cognitive dissonance states – I hope I am getting this right – that cognitive dissonance is the unbearable result of the discrepancy between one’s beliefs and one’s inescapable perceptions of reality. When those two clash, it’s not the beliefs that suffer, one changes one’s interpretation of reality to match the pre-extant beliefs!
In the case of the UFO cultists, their leader, who claimed to be “channeling” the aliens, received a “message” saying that the apparent prophecy had simply been a “test of faith,” and because they had gathered at the appointed time in the appointed place and followed the aliens’ “instructions,” they had passed the “test of faith” and now it was OK to spread the message.
What they were actually doing, Feistinger said, was trying to compensate for the failed prophecy with numbers. We are inherently programmed to expect that the more people believe something, the more likely it is to be true.
This of course is false. Numbers do not make an incorrect view of reality true, no matter how many people believe it.
I bring this up because I am angry, sad, and black-and-blue from yet another abrasive encounter with a group of marine biologists who publish under the umbrella of “Southern Fried Scientist,” a guy named Andrew, a grad student in North Carolina. They also include “Why Sharks Matter,” a guy named David, a grad student from South Carolina, and more recently Chuck, a guy from Rhode Island studying spiny dogfish in south carolina.
I’d had a scrape with Andrew and David before on their old web site when Andrew wrote “Getting A Sense of Porpoise,” in which he investigates his own self-described “animosity” toward marine mammals and why other people seem to worship them. In his opening paragraphs, he states “Ask most people if the bottlenose dolphin is endangered, and they’ll probably say yes. It isn’t.”
Now, from my POV as a former investigative reporter, this is a scientist knowingly, and deliberately, writing badly to substantiate his emotional prejudice against dolphins. Why do I say that? Because it’s a slippery, greasy, equivocal statement. Who are “most people?” Andrew doesn’t say. He doesn’t offer any polling data or statistics. And he also uses “probably,” a notorious weasel word used to back up specious arguments. So in spite of trying to look and sound authoritative, this is from my POV a very biased and prejudiced statement, not an assertion of fact as the author wants us to believe. Andrew isn’t sure of himself here, but he wants us very very badly to think he is.
Why? Because he wants validation.
This is a shitty attitude for a scientist. Need I also say there is nothing remotely scientific about it? Please understand, Andrew is welcome to whatever opinions or beliefs he wants, but he should acknowledge them as his own, unsubstantiated beliefs. Apparently he can’t do this, however, so he tries to pass himself off as some kind of knowledgeable expert on what “most people” would “probably” say, if asked, which he hasn’t. It’s verbal sophistry and slipshod inquiry, and Andrew is smart enough, or at least has spent enough money on his scientific education, to know this.
He posted it anyway.
He also states, addressing the problem of dolphin bycatch in bluefin tuna fishing, “In fact, at this point it would probably make more sense to be eating tuna safe dolphin.” See his argument against dolphin safe tuna. Needless to say his conclusion, albeit distasteful to him, is that we should go on killing dolphins because (in spite of official estimates that 6,000,000 tropical dolphins have been killed in tuna fishing– up to 80 percent of some stocks) they’re not considered endangered. Whereas other marine species caught when not fishing on the dolphins are.
Andrew does not have a lot of sympathy, or empathy, for dolphins, it would seem.
This is only the beginning of an exchange that goes on to include 60 comments, the first of which was, unfortunately, mine. I raised the whole issue of belief, and then admitted that I’d had an emotional and sexual relationship with a dolphin.
Big mistake, like pouring a spoonful of water into a vat of concentrated sulfuric acid. Because, you see, scientists like Andrew KNOW that I CANNOT know what is going on in the mind of a non-human creature.
This is a domain of ethology known as “Skinnerian behaviorism,” after its founder, B.F. Skinner, who maintained, with some validity, that we should only describe other animals behavior and not try to interpret, or perhaps interpolate, the mental or emotional reasons behind this behavior. I don’t think Skinner ever said that there couldn’t be such reasons, although many scientists, following Descartes, interpret him this way, only that, under normal circumstances, we attribute a certain set of emotions to a non-human animal at our own risk; our interpretations of behavior may not jibe with the animal’s reality.
You know who was the latest, most famous victim of mis-interpreting an animal’s behavior? Poor Dawn Brancheau, the trainer who was killed at Sea World by Tilikum, the orca. The poor woman had worked with Tilikum for 10 years, was the most senior orca trainer in the facility, and she’d completely bought Sea World’s public image crap that orcas are cute, inspiring and harmless to humans. This is similar to what happens to a heroin dealer when he begins using his own product. (Not, I hasten to add, that I have actually known any heroin dealers. I don’t run in those circles.)
Now, if you want to carry Skinnerian behaviorism to the extreme, you can point out – correctly – that we can’t even know what another person is thinking. And it’s factually true. Yet, we behave every day as if we do know what other people are thinking, and we are justified in doing this due to our generalized knowledge of human behavior and its predictable qualities. If I have just met someone and he or she holds out a hand with the fingers together and the thumb up, this is a gesture that almost always means “Let’s shake hands,” a human way of showing that we are unarmed, harmless, and have no bad intentions.
So, given all that, how can I claim that I’ve had telepathic experiences with a dolphin? How can I claim that I know the dolphin “gave consent” to have sex with me?
Under “normal” circumstances, I couldn’t make that claim. I’m claiming “extraordinary” circumstances, but unfortunately I have to make that claim without knowing exactly what those circumstances were. However, I posit that the most important of those extraordinary circumstances was the existence of a dolphin who was a) telepathic and b) interested in acquiring information from humans. Other factors might be my open-mindedness about the dolphin, my frequent use of marijuana and possibly some innate disposition on my part which under certain conditions makes me more telepathic than the average human. It’s called “heredity.”
In regard to consent, it was the dolphin who had to obtain MY consent, not the other way ’round!
Now, in trying to respond to Andrew on his blog I screwed things up, because at one point I thought David had said something which Andrew had actually said, and Andrew grew contemptuous of me for dissing his friend when it was really his statement I meant to dis. How did that happen? Well, this is simple but it sounds stupid: I had never been on a blog with two moderators before! I felt like a solo wrestler in a tag-team match, and frankly, the two guys look so much alike in their thumbnails and sound so much alike in their discussions that I got them mixed up. Fatally, it would seem.
I tried to make logical and rational arguments on my behalf, on behalf of what was, admittedly, an illogical and irrational experience, the experience of communicating telepathically with a dolphin. Unfortunately, I can’t make those arguments logically in any way that would impress a scientist, and the scientists to whom I’ve sent copies of WET GODDESS, even at their request, have so far not deigned to hand down an opinion either of the book as a work of literature or of my experience, as to whether it yielded insights into dolphin behavior and/or psychology.
To wrap this up, a more recent tangle with Chuck, Andrew and David began with Chuck the new guy posting an article about me titled Ew, Just Ew. Now, that title alone should tell you he isn’t objective about my experience. In what he describes as “a rant,” he lumps me in with a whole ‘nother category of dolphin “true believers” who “channel” dolphins, offer “dolphin birthing experiences” and other nonsense. These people will make up and swallow anything about dolphins that validates their “New Age” beliefs that dolphins are somehow more “enlightened” than we are. I learned long ago – 1970, to be exact – how false a claim that is!
OK, on this new blog I was 1) described as inspiring disgust – the title; 2) badly misquoted as the author of a piece about “how to fuck dolphins” which I did not write; 3) given a “cease and desist” order on threat of libel by Andrew for a quote I insist he made, and later removed from his web site; 4) told that I was deliberately picking fights to promote my book.
Out of all those absurd and misbegotten allegations, that last has got to be the stupidest. LIKE THERE AREN’T EASIER SELLS OUT THERE, CHUCK?
On his old web site, Andrew wrote, in response to my contention that the dolphin gave consent, “The sexual exploitation of someone who is incapable of giving consent IS rape. This is why I said in the beginning that we have a fundamental philosophical difference that cannot be resolved.”
I maintain the statement originally said, “The sexual exploitation of someone who is incapable of giving consent IS rape. [What you did is the moral equivalent of rape.] This is why I said in the beginning that we have a fundamental philosophical difference that cannot be resolved.”
Of course, I needn’t have maintained this, because Andrew makes very clear what he thinks of me even without that phrase. But I remember it very, very clearly. I don’t take insults of that magnitude lightly, and that one is burned into my brain. I will never forget it, and unless Andrew apologizes publicly, I won’t forgive him either. I hope some woman accuses him of raping her, so he will know how it feels. Better yet, I hope he’s convicted on the basis of false testimony. He will have a valid opportunity to learn about the subjective nature of human reality, for a change. And he might develop some new sympathy for dolphins held in captivity. (Upon further reflection I hope it is Dave, as he has been the more aggressive and contemptuous of the two.)
Hey, pigs could fly.
I want to make clear here that I could have argued my case against these people if they 1) had actually been willing to listen to what I had to say and 2) had used fair argumentative tactics. But it went like this: if I asked a question they didn’t want to answer or raised a contention they couldn’t rebut, they just skipped it, as if I’d never said it. When I went back and read the old posts, I realized this happened over and over again. When ANOTHER poster raised the issue of Lou Herman’s research, Andrew dismissed it with a wave of his hand: “Sounds like training to me,” he wrote, in spite of the fact that Herman went to great lengths to show that what his dolphins were doing was NOT training but based upon an understanding of concepts such as syntax and grammar.
It was exactly like listening to a physicist “debunk” UFO reports. If you can’t dispute the facts, attack the character of the witness. If you don’t like the question, don’t attempt to answer it.
Now, how did I get involved in this mess? (I am coming to a point here.) Simple, I run Google alerts on words like “dolphin,” “whale,” “orca,” etc. and of course the Google alerts don’t warn me what I’m getting into. I found myself accused by “Miriam” (You notice how these people don’t use last names?) of having written what she described as the “horrifying” piece about “how to fuck dolphins” which was really written by a guy under the handle of Dragon-wolfe Dolphinn. (David accused me of being him. I’m not, as even a casual comparison of our published writing styles would reveal).
So I got very angry that Miriam hadn’t even done the most casual fact-checking and was instead trusting her 10-year-old memories, which, as it turned out, were false and wrong. Do I get an apology from Miriam or Chuck, who repeated her blatant error? FUCK NO. (It took me less than three minutes to find Dragonwolfe’s piece reprinted. Apparently Miriam and Chuck are both too busy, bless their pointed little heads, to check things like this out before committing themselves in print.)
So if I make an error in this ongoing argument, it’s the shitstorm of God upon me and threats of a libel suit; if one of these sanctimonious, conceited scientists makes a worse error, it’s not even worth their time or effort to make a casual apology.
WHAT I AM ASKING, READER, is a rhetorical question: What am I doing here? Am I looking for validation in the wrong places? Because I can’t prove my case, am I in publishing WET GODDESS looking for validation “by the numbers?” Am I no better than Feistinger’s misguided UFO cultists with their silly “end of the world” prophecy?
In fact, why am I publishing my story at all? Why am I putting up with this kind of contemptuous treatment, which is blatantly moralistic, not scientific, when it has a very real and inescapable effect of damaging my heart?
I don’t know. I just know that telling this story is the most important thing I have ever done in my life, so I guess I better get used to the criticism and not waste my precious time and resources arguing with people who, in spite of their professed objectivity and open-mindedness, cannot be convinced by my arguments.
Still, the idea that I might be seeking validation “by the numbers” bothers me. I don’t think it’s true, but I know that every time I sell a book, I feel a sense of happiness that seems to be greater than the small amount of money I make would warrant.
So I feel sad and angry and depressed and once again very badly used by scientists who are fundamentally hypocrites, who flagrantly use the very tactics they condemn me — falsely– for using. Read the blogs for yourself and tell me what you think. Or don’t. I’m trying very hard not to give a flying fuck, but it’s not working.