If you've seen the news today then you may have seen the story about a crowd of tourists passing around a Baby Dolphin so they could take selfies until the Baby Dolphin died of heat exhaustion.
When it finally died, it was still passed around for selfies for a while and then finally dumped on the sand. I have placed the news photo here for those of you that haven't seen it. There is no video link and I didn't watch the video myself as I didn't wish to see it.
If you read anything written by the Dalai Lama you'll be aware of how he often talks about peoples perception of "Self" and "I". The belief is that a great deal of what humans do or carry out that is negative and harmful to themselves or those around is done due to this notion of "Self" and "I". When we think and the processing of our thoughts is based around "Self" it can become more and more consuming.
We no longer take time to just enjoy a moment in nature we immediately have to own the moment. Reaching for our phones to take a photo so we can keep that moment. No longer satisfied with the memory and in this case, so driven by the Selfish thoughts of what each person wanted for themselves. The very nature of the word Selfie is based around Self and in this case the Selfishness of all these people resulted in the cruelty of a Baby Dolphin and then the death of it.
Now don't get me wrong I'm not saying the world shouldn't eat meat and that anyone that hunts or goes fishing is wrong. We've been Hunting and Gathering for thousands of years and if the world falls apart and supermarkets don't exist we'll all be doing it again. There is a big difference between hunting to obtain food that you intend to eat and making sure that anything you hunt is treated with respect just as many ancient tribes still do to this day. As opposed to passing around a baby wild animal for photos until it dies of exhaustion. One is part of the Natural World around us and shows empathy and respect and the other is based around selfishness and a complete lack of respect and empathy for another living being.
Selfies didn't kill this Baby Dolphin on a beach resort at Santa Teresita in Argentina. A crowd of people with each individual being driven by Selfish thoughts is what killed this Baby Dolphin.
I would hope that in time, the Selfies they took of themselves on their phones with this Baby Dolphin will slowly act as a mirror into their being. Serving the purpose of highlighting how ugly the behaviour was and this may in turn help each person reavaluate what is important in life. Turning something horrible into something good such as making a donation to a charity that helps save Dolphins.
Commentaires