Half Term Tony. Is it a possibility?

[pjcrows]

Religions should just worry about saving souls, not making money & social control.

What else would they do?!

 

[Malifice]

Cultural relativism. Their culture is 'richer' but more violent, more drunk, less employed, lower life expectancy.

How the * are alcohol abuse, unemployment, low life expectency and exessive violence 'part of Aboriginal culture'?

What a ******* disgusting commment.

 

[kfc1]

How the **** are alcohol abuse, unemployment, low life expectency and exessive violence 'part of Aboriginal culture'?

What a ******* disgusting commment.

culture is defined as "the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society."
would think that alcohol abuse, unemployment and excessive violence fit into that definition of culture
is it part of pre-1788 culture? no. is it part of current culture? yes

 

[Pie eyed]

I'd argue there is a difference between part of their life and part of their culture.

 

[Malifice]

culture is defined as "the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society."
would think that alcohol abuse, unemployment and excessive violence fit into that definition of culture

Utter rubbish.

Its akin to saying female culture is 'more prone to being raped, and earning less money than male counterparts' as if they had a choice in the matter.

Far from being cultural things; they're symptoms of entrenched discrimination.

 

[Lester Burnham]

How the **** are alcohol abuse, unemployment, low life expectency and exessive violence 'part of Aboriginal culture'?

What a ******* disgusting commment.

You must be cherry picking some romantic savage view of Aboriginal culture. In reality there's the pre-European violent, hunter gatherer culture that had large scale infanticide, cannibalism, and continual tribal warfare. And now we have widespread alcohol and substance abuse, unemployment, low life expectancy, violence towards women and children.

My comments are not disgusting. The denial of what is really happening in Aboriginal communities is.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/culture-of-denial/story-e6frg8px-1111113048370

 

[kfc1]

Its akin to saying female culture is 'more prone to being raped, and earning less money than male counterparts' as if they had a choice in the matter.

Utter rubbish.

Far from being cultural things; they're symptoms of entrenched discrimination.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

 

[Malifice]

You must be cherry picking some romantic savage view of Aboriginal culture. In reality there's the pre-European violent, hunter gatherer culture that had large scale infanticide, cannibalism, and continual tribal warfare. .

Violence and warfare are unique to Aboriginal cultures? What Europe, Asia and the Americas were not violent or warlike?

Post evidence that pre-colonial Aboriginal society was more warlike than Europe, Africa or the Americas. Even post-colonial Aboriginal culture hasnt come close to the levels of violence via the warfare of Europe in the century just past. Not even by a fraction.

And now we have widespread alcohol and substance abuse, unemployment, low life expectancy, violence towards women and children

And these are the people that you want to remove assistance granted to break this cycle from?

Who brought the economic system that requires employment in the first place? Who brought the booze and substances that leads (all too often) to those very lower life expectencies you complain about? You impose a system on a people against their will, deprive them of the right to do anything about it via the political or lawmaking power of the State - and then call the entrenched results of doing this for a centrury or two just 'part of their culture'?

What a crock of s**t.

My comments are not disgusting. The denial of what is really happening in Aboriginal communities is.

Im not denying its happening. No-one is. Im saying that blaming it on 'Aboriginal culture' is ******* abhorent.

 

[Malifice]

The two are not mutually exclusive.

So European Jewish Culture of the 1930's and 40's featured a prediliction for hanging out in gas chambers, high rates of imprisonment, and being medically experimented upon?

Can you not perhaps see that rates of alcoholism, violence and unemplyement are not voluntary elements of Aboriginal 'culture', but are instead symptoms of a whole system imposed on a people against their will?

 

[kfc1]

So European Jewish Culture of the 1930's and 40's featured a prediliction for hanging out in gas chambers, high rates of imprisonment, and being medically experimented upon?

3 posts must be a record for Godwinning. Utter rubbish.

Can you not perhaps see that rates of alcoholism, violence and unemplyement are not voluntary elements of Aboriginal 'culture', but are instead symptoms of a whole system imposed on a people against their will?

The two are not mutually exclusive.

 

[Malifice]

3 posts must be a record for Godwinning. Utter rubbish.

Comparing genocide to genocide does not invoke Godwins law.

The two are not mutually exclusive.

Yes they are. Youre effectively blaming Aboriginal problems on Aboriginal culture, and not on the actual cause which is the imposition of alcohol, drugs, currency and personal property based economics and the deprivation of liberty, land, children, religion, laws and self governance from those very same people by another people.

Its an argument that I find utterly abhorent.

 

[kfc1]

Comparing genocide to genocide does not invoke Godwins law.



Yes they are. Youre effectively blaming Aboriginal problems on Aboriginal culture, and not on the actual cause which is the imposition of alcohol, drugs, currency and personal property based economics and the deprivation of liberty, land, children, religion, laws and self governance from those very same people by another people.

Its an argument that I find utterly abhorent.

Had a few beers Mal? Youre definitely pulling out the extremist posts tonight

I'll tackle your argument that aboriginal people are basically infant children in the morning.

 

[Malifice]

Had a few beers Mal? Youre definitely pulling out the extremist posts tonight

The assertion that many of the problems faced by Aboriginal people today is the fault of 'Aborignal culture' and not the consequence of a few centuries of an imposed foreign culture and the entrenched disadvantage of that imposition is not controversial or 'extremist'.

I'll tackle your argument that aboriginal people are basically infant children in the morning.

Infant children in the morning that have been sexually and physically abused for the preceeding few years of their lives by their adoptive white parents.

Makes a more accurate analogy.

What consequences would you expect to see? Should those adoptive children get special assistance to break that cycle? How can you make them trust their parents ever again?

What youre doing with your 'culture' argument is blaming those children for the problems that would naturally ensue from things that happened to them in thier infancy.

 

[pjcrows]

You two won't agree with each other but to suggest that alcoholism and substance abuse is embedded in Aboriginal "culture" - as in, over a span of 50,000 years - is moronic.

 

[pazza]

If we are worried about alcohol and substance abuse in Indigenous communities, how about having no facilities where those can be available to purchase?

 

[Ratts of Tobruk]

You must be cherry picking some romantic savage view of Aboriginal culture. In reality there's the pre-European violent, hunter gatherer culture that had large scale infanticide, cannibalism, and continual tribal warfare.

I noted you missed/ignored my last request for clarification, so I'll try again. Can you justify this claim, preferably by link?

 

[kfc1]

If we are worried about alcohol and substance abuse in Indigenous communities, how about having no facilities where those can be available to purchase?

There are plenty of dry aboriginal communities in QLD, NT and WA.

Plenty consider this to be racist policy.

 

[kfc1]

You two won't agree with each other but to suggest that alcoholism and substance abuse is embedded in Aboriginal "culture" - as in, over a span of 50,000 years - is moronic.

Its embedded in aboriginal culture over a period of 100-150 years or so, not 50,000. To say its embedded over 50,000 years would be moronic.

 

[Gough]

A lot of those dry communities are dry by choice, rather than having it imposed on them. How can that be racist?

 

[kfc1]

The assertion that many of the problems faced by Aboriginal people today is the fault of 'Aborignal culture' and not the consequence of a few centuries of an imposed foreign culture and the entrenched disadvantage of that imposition is not controversial or 'extremist'.

It is an extremist position because you refuse to admit that aboriginal people have any agency or responsibility for their choices.

Infant children in the morning that have been sexually and physically abused for the preceeding few years of their lives by their adoptive white parents.

Makes a more accurate analogy.

What consequences would you expect to see? Should those adoptive children get special assistance to break that cycle? How can you make them trust their parents ever again?

What youre doing with your 'culture' argument is blaming those children for the problems that would naturally ensue from things that happened to them in thier infancy.

Like I said in my previous two posts, the two are not mutually exclusive.

Behaviours can be the result of discrimination and disadvantage as well as being part of culture. Read the definition of culture again - "...the social behaviours..."

Bess Price seems to agree with me:
http://mobile.news.com.au/national/...iginal-town-camp/story-fncynjr2-1226911875908

“It’s not just me who has these stories,” she says. “Lots more Aboriginal families who don’t have the opportunity to speak encounter all sorts of problems with violence in our people’s culture.

 

[Lester Burnham]

Violence and warfare are unique to Aboriginal cultures? What Europe, Asia and the Americas were not violent or warlike?

Post evidence that pre-colonial Aboriginal society was more warlike than Europe, Africa or the Americas. Even post-colonial Aboriginal culture hasnt come close to the levels of violence via the warfare of Europe in the century just past. Not even by a fraction.

You could try basing your argument on what I actually said rather than misrepresenting me

I didn't say violence and warfare are unique to Aboriginal cultures. Or that Europe, Asia and the Americas were not violent. What I said was that Aboriginal society had large scale infanticide, cannibalism, and continual tribal warfare. There's no garden of Eden that Aborigine society can return to.

And these are the people that you want to remove assistance granted to break this cycle from?

There you go again. I didn't say we should remove assistance. I said we should base assistance on needs not culture. What we are doing is perpetuating a dependency culture with all the resulting problems that arise from people not taking responsibility for their own lives. The policies that have been put in place have exacerbated the social decline in remote Aboriginal communities - the substance abuse, the violence, domestic and child abuse. It is also pouring money down the drain. We break the cycle by treating Aborigines who are in need the same way we treat other people who might be in need. We need to stop implementing the same unsustainable solutions that deliver the same failed outcomes.

Im not denying its happening. No-one is. Im saying that blaming it on 'Aboriginal culture' is ******* abhorent.

Fine. Let's say the lack of school attendance, heavy drinking, poor diets, smoking and lack of exercise is behavioural not cultural. Then deal with the issues on that basis.

 

[Maggie5]

When I first saw alcohol and substance abuse in the posts, I thought that some of you must have met some of my previous 'Aussie' neighbours.
Fortunately now it is just an Aboriginal family on my left (who are really good neighbours) and Lebanese Muslims on my right (not so good). Fact!
I should be safe, right?
So easy to prejudge an entire race/people/culture/religion based on minorities.

 

[Father Jack]

That Aboriginal culture of 'large scale infanticide, cannibalism, and continual tribal warfare' worked pretty well for them for forty thousand years or so, which as it turns out is a much better record than the Garden of Eden.

 

[Malifice]

It is an extremist position because you refuse to admit that aboriginal people have any agency or responsibility for their choices.

What? Where have I said that Aboriginal people are all unthinking robots, who lack responsibility for their own actions? Where have I ever said Aboriginal people don't have agency?

What I am saying is the fact that people don't exercise agency in a vacuum; somehow shielded from the influence of the environment, background, and the effects of other people around them exercising the same agency.

If you're born into a religious family (statistically speaking) you much are more likely to be of that religion yourself (or at the very least have it color your views for the rest of your life even if you reject it). If you are born poor, statistically speaking you'll die poor. And so forth.

People don't have the same choices, opportunities or outcomes available to them.'Agency' is built on the concept of free will, and as we all know free will is mostly an illusion.

Cause and effect and all that.

Like I said in my previous two posts, the two are not mutually exclusive.

Behaviours can be the result of discrimination and disadvantage as well as being part of culture. Read the definition of culture again - "...the social behaviours..."

So we discriminate the * out of a people, destroy their land, lives, families, language, religions and laws, introduce alcohol and drugs, impose a new language, religion, economic model, concept of personal property, currency etc etc on them... and then call the negative outcomes of doing so: 'just a part of their culture today?"

I reject that argument in its entirety.

I didn't say violence and warfare are unique to Aboriginal cultures. Or that Europe, Asia and the Americas were not violent. What I said was that Aboriginal society had large scale infanticide, cannibalism, and continual tribal warfare. There's no garden of Eden that Aborigine society can return to.

Where did I suggest there was a Garden of Eden?

My issue was your suggestion that current high rates of violence encountered by and from Aboriginal people is 'due to their history of high rates of violence'. I put to you that Aboriginal people do not have a historically higher rate of violence than any other ethnic group I mentioned (unless you are seriously positing that Aboriginal people are more violent than Europeans, Africans etc etc).

There has been a recent spike in being the victims of (and perpetuating) violence by Aboriginal people; want to take a guess when that happened, and why?

There you go again. I didn't say we should remove assistance. I said we should base assistance on needs not culture.

What if culture is itself a need?

What we are doing is perpetuating a dependency culture with all the resulting problems that arise from people not taking responsibility for their own lives. The policies that have been put in place have exacerbated the social decline in remote Aboriginal communities - the substance abuse, the violence, domestic and child abuse. It is also pouring money down the drain. We break the cycle by treating Aborigines who are in need the same way we treat other people who might be in need. We need to stop implementing the same unsustainable solutions that deliver the same failed outcomes

I partly agree re the dependency culture point you make above. You see similar outcomes with welfare in the UK, which was implemented to protect the British working class (which it does) however it also also has the effect of creating a 'tar pit' of inter-generational welfare dependency. There are ways of breaking this welfare dependency that we should focus on though (such as incentives built into the welfare system to encourage education, and work, and penalties for those who dont work or do educaiton such as lower rates of welfare in those cases - think carrot and stick approach).

What I do reject in your argument above is that the problems we see in these communities is the result of 'welfare dependency'. I see such dependency as another of the problems that we can lump in with alcoholism, higher violence rates and so forth. Its another symptom of the same disease - not the cause of the disease itself.

Fine. Let's say the lack of school attendance, heavy drinking, poor diets, smoking and lack of exercise is behavioural not cultural. Then deal with the issues on that basis.

Agree.

 

[kfc1]

A lot of those dry communities are dry by choice, rather than having it imposed on them. How can that be racist?

I'm obviously referring to dry communities as enforced by the Govt.