Evolution of a t-shirt slogan

In response to BirdLife Malta's latest anti-Spring Hunting campaign T-shirts with the inscription "Stop Illegal Spring Hunting", worn by 13 local media personalities and shown on billboards and posters, the hunters' federation (FKNK) has issued a press release which includes a spoof t-shirt design showing the inscription "Stop illegal hunting always, not just in Spring".

The FKNK "slogan" of course is intended to send a double message, the first being that the FKNK is opposed to illegal hunting, and the second being that spring hunting is not illegal. I shall be commenting both on this, and on the FKNK media release further down.

Now, every person who is knowledgeable on evolution knows that natural selection does not generally tolerate waste. This, in short, means that any species' biological attributes that are "wasteful" in the sense that they are "burdensome" and do not bring about any clear benefits, are usually "selected out" (discarded) by natural selection. Of course this usually takes some time (perhaps thousands or millions of years). I am purposedly trying not to be too technical so that the neanderthals still around will understand.

In the case of the BirdLife t-shirt, surprisingly, it took only a few days for its slogan "Stop illegal spring hunting" to mutate into "Stop illegal hunting always, not just in spring" (with a little eugenic help from the "conservationist" scientists at the FKNK). However, since natural selection does not tolerate waste, as predicted, the slogan has in turn dropped all the "wasteful" text from the t-shirt, thus dropping "illegal", "always", "not", "just", "in" and "spring". The slogan now simply reads "Stop hunting".

The new t-shirt slogan species "Stop hunting" (desisto venatio) turns out to be a much improved species that is more adapted to its biosphere. Natural selection has dropped the burdensome "illegal...always not just in spring" because, in its usual "bio-economical" fashion, it has "recognized" that (apart from the fact that hunting is always wrong because it always unnecessarily deprives sentient animals of their lives to which they have a right, irrespective of whether hunting is illegal or not) by dropping the "legalistic" part and evolving into simply "Stop hunting", the legal/illegal issues (and their linked controversies) become irrelevant. Stopping all hunting after all necessarily stops all illegal hunting. Why go through the "evolutionarily wasteful" process of determining which hunting is legal, which is illegal, who is breaking the law, is the law being broken etc?

Moreover, natural selection has "recognized" that the ancestral (the FKNK-genetically modified form) slogan species' message that spring hunting is legal was attracting powerful predators in the form of the European Union Commission, a species which insists that spring hunting in Malta is illegal. Evolving into desisto venatio was the natural evolutionary stable solution both to the problem of attracting predators and to the problem of waste (of words). Moreover, by evolving into desisto venatio, it now sends the eco-friendly and correct message that all unnecessary killing is wrong.

But enough of joking around, and let's take a look at what the FKNK is saying in its press release of February 13.

The FKNK release says (among other things) that "In this manner BirdLife may be hoping to influence Political Parties that 'the overwhelming majority of the Maltese to be (sic) firmly against spring hunting".

Perhaps the FKNK has not seen all the opinion polls on the topic, all of them showing an opposition to spring hunting of over 80%.

The FKNK also says that "Spring Hunting has NEVER been illegal in Malta".

Well, dear FKNK, apparently this is neither what the European Commission thinks (and it is the European Union that makes the law), nor is it what over 80% of the Maltese population thinks.

Also, doesn't the FKNK statement that "Spring Hunting has NEVER been illegal in Malta" go contrary to the spirit of the same FKNK's letter in today's The Times, which includes "So it seems that Winston J. Zahra (February 10) has succumbed to the entreaties of bird fanatics and prefers to kowtow to them rather than have the European Court of Justice have its say"? Should we let the European Court of Justice have its say, or should we not, dear FKNK?

The FKNK finally challenges the media personalities taking part in the anti-spring hunting campaign to participate in the FKNK's weekly TV programme. I don't know about them, but I feel there is nothing left to discuss. The final verdict rests with the European Court of Justice, and all indicators point to an abolition of spring hunting, sooner rather than later.

Spring hunting is a closed topic. We can only hope (and work towards that end) that the end of spring hunting would in turn be followed by the end of all hunting, as well as the end of all speciesist practices that treat sentient non-human animals as if they were mere objects and/or human property. But of course, this requires speciesists to evolve.

Charles Darwin once wrote that "...animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal". The purpose of this blog is to try to hasten our positive evolution into a species that ends all slavery and sheds all prejudices and the injustices that naturally flow from a prejudiced mind. I can only hope to convince readers to play their part. The rest is up to all of us.