Who Loves Baby-Seal Kabobs? - Mark Morford

Who Loves Baby-Seal Kabobs? / It's another shockingly brutal Canadian seal slaughter. How appalled should you be?:

"Yes, the seal slaughter is barbaric and stupid. Then again, we could all survive without chicken and veal and leather jackets and steaming delicious organic turkey hot dogs, too. If we are to measure the progress of the human species by how many things we remove from the master list of Things We Kill Because We Can, well, we have progressed nearly not at all.

Perhaps it all has to do with trying to have, at the very least, a modicum of conscience, a shred of reverence, a hint of respect for the creatures we consume for meat or oil or pelt. Respect the interconnectedness of all things, even as you consume them. Especially as you consume them. And there's a visceral level of barbarism and cruelty attached to baby-seal hunts that, like whaling, serve no justifiable purpose and obliterates any sort of consciousness, compassion or ritual. It is merely slaughter for money.

Is this our collective line? Is our abject disgust at the seal hunt a sign of enlightenment and progress? Or is it merely that the damnable creatures are so unbelievably cute that they release gobs of oxytocin in our brains and we want to love and protect them like tiny Dalmatian puppies even as we enjoy our Niman Ranch hamburgers?

Which is it, deep morality or visceral cuteness? Can you unpack it all? Do the seals even care?"