Apple Clubs Seal Hunt App

Image via Wikipedia

 Newfoundland game developer, Matt Smyth has had his seal clubbing app rejected by the careful screeners who brought you this app, until it was banned after public outcry. Wow, I'm sorry that I missed out on the opportunity to virually shake a baby to death on my iPhone.

Apple has apps that allow you to kill all sorts of animals, from deer to fish to bears to humans. The Grand Theft Auto app allows you to kill innocents, prostitutes (if you kill them after being a customer, you get your money back) and police officers. All for gain.

In terms of this discussion, our varying opinions on the seal hunt matter not one bit. This is not about the seal hunt, it is about the absurdity of glorifying one type of violence, while vilifying another and our conditioned acceptance of  the false hierarchy that we create around violence.

In Canada, murdering people is illegal, the seal hunt is not. In Apples view you may use its platform to kill humans, but not seals.

 Now, I like a good hunk of meat as much as any carnivore, and in terms of the cruelty to animals, I take the argument down to its Zen base. All things are living and the fact is that if you want to live, something has to die. I recognize that every bite I take is the result of violence, and that includes the carrots.

I don't mean to rag on  one company. Apple has the right to refuse any app on its platform that it may choose, but we need to ask ourselves a wider question.

Why is that we accept routine violence against any number of species (most notably, us), while repulsing over a practice that is a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of daily slaughter that surrounds us?

Are we really so seduced by the way things look, rather than the way they are?

Does perception really beat reality every time?

http://www.goyestoeverything.com

Matt Smyth, who developed the game, has a blog.