Australian Aboriginals

[Lucern]

I didn't mean to imply that change was always deliberate, concerted effort to change. As I hoped to describe, society's rules are the product of the work of many individuals, and they change. Some are legal, some aren't. Some live legally, some do not. They are no less part of society unless they have absolutely no direct or indirect contact with others.
The idea that only deliberate, voluntary change takes place in the face of society is rife with conceptual flaws. Firstly, it creates a false dichotomy between societies and individuals. Secondly, it misses the weight of impact others have on each of us. Ever learn anything from reading a forum? If one element of one idea changes in the course of reading something, you have changed. Not all changes have to be huge to matter. Are we to sit around actively resisting the little changes brought about by our interactions with others? Thirdly, the idea of willingness is an interesting one when you consider the field of unequal social relationships we all reproduce. The willingness you seem to be referring to here is a top-down society-outsider(or prisoner) one. Submission seems to be a requisite, and like you said, some people just won't. Doesn't mean they can actually resist change (hell, they can change for the worse in prison).

I think that's a long winded way to say that without individuals, the abstract of society doesn't exist. Without effort by a large portion of said individuals, society cannot itself change, let alone change other individuals.

We seem to share the same basic assumption but different conclusions. The difference (as I see it) is that in my view, we take away the rules/followers precept and view all social interaction as possibly producing small changes. There's no point in talking about 'without effort by a large portion of individuals' because this always happens. How can it not? People have needs to be filled, be they nutritional, social, or sexual. People have to interact with each other to get those things (and some people have an easier time with one or more of those lol). We are born knowing NOTHING – we have idiosyncratic views, which makes these conversations interesting. Our ideas change and so do our actions. We choose differently based upon what is available and what we believe. Society always changes, no matter how conservative it thinks it is. This is because through social interaction people change in small and large ways. Those people make up the society if they have interaction with others. American society – itself an incredibly complex entity – is not the same right now as it was an hour ago. This is the danger of porting the microcosm to the macrocosm. You introduce orders of magnitude of complexity that the microcosmic idea isn't likely to stand up to.

This conversation reminds me of a class I took called "Theories of sociocultural change". The department has to go through a lot of trouble to change class titles, so that one stuck around since the late 60's. The idea was that cultures were inherently stable, and the class was set up to answer questions of what things actually changed them. This is archaic, but it seemed to be true with the kinds of studies that anthropologists were doing at the time and the intellectual tradition they inherited. This idea changed as we lost our fantasies of the unchanged culture far away from others that represented true human experience.

As for responsibility...my actions are not your responsibility any more than mine are yours, no matter what we each do. I haven't been talking about responsibility - I already explained on page one why I think the idea of societal responsibility for individual actions is inherently flawed.
The reason I asked why we might care about people living miserably - whether or not we feel responsible - it's because it affects us. Simple as that. It affects us.

I don't understand what the relevance is of x% of a population group being in prison is. Unless it's the position of the analyzer that this percentage is imprisoned unjustly? If x% of a population group is justly imprisoned, then this stat is meaningless.

The prison thing speaks to the uses and limits of numerical statistics. I just threw that out there because your example didn't conform to any stats I've ever seen, but there was some truth to your objection. You cannot draw conclusions about why stats are as they are without having some kind of other data. Any attempt to do so is either a hypothesis or assumption (the difference being that you simply accept one of them). In my research, I have a body of statistics that shows national and gender disparities in asylum applications. All this shows me is that there is a difference along the variables I've looked for. This doesn't become useful until I've seen the asylum court in action to see what kinds of things go into such a decision. With the prison stats, the bureau of justice produces those stats without any more than quantitative analysis of the stats. That most prisoners are black, and that most citizens are not indicates a difference that may be investigated, because the answer isn't obvious, and 8.4% males of an age group is pretty extreme. Anyone who says they know why is overconfident. Taking my model of society above, even if 100% of those prisoners may be imprisoned justly (improbable) - each being responsible for his actions - if we stop caring there we're fools. Race is biologically indefensible (yet socially salient) - all people being more or less biologically equivalent - so we have to look for other reasons than inherent criminality that people end up in prison. We can't have a real answer to that without some other kind of information to go along with it.

[Dave_the_quack]

It just so happens that my ex is an Aboriginal. Like many, I had formed my own opinions about the Aboriginal people before I met he and his family. Fortunately for him, he came from an extremely ambitious and talented family who have thrived since citizen recognition. His parents are both hard working individuals (his father is actually an ex-president of the Aboriginal Education Consultancy Group, no small feat to achieve) and as a result he was brought up in a healthy and stable environment. Unfortunately I've also heard stories about their childhood friends and how they cope. You should HEAR some of the stories about the 'norms' within these local indigenous communities.

When you say that it is up to the individual to change his or her situation, I have to add this; the simliarities between indigenous and white communities (even the worst of the white communities within Australia) are NOTHING alike. There are next to no indigenous public role models for Aboriginals to aspire to. Many societies are still justifiably bitter and twisted about the stolen generation that they discourage conformity to the white society that stole their future generation/s. It's a horrible situation - how are these said individuals supposed to succeed at breaking free from the toxic society that they've been brought up in (that was created and shaped by White Australia) when their parents and peers condemn them for doing so?

Many people also seem to forget that Aboriginals are the one of the oldest known peoples (documented evidence of Aboriginal activity puts them at well over 40,000 years ago), and yet have had such a short time to conform to a different culture. Compare that time to the 50 or so years they've been considered citizens within today's society. Of course it's going to take a while for the cultural and even genetic base needs of both societies to agree.

Just my two cents.

[robertthebard]

I do think we agree in principle about a lot of this, and my perspective is more likely from the "bottom of the gene pool", as it were. I currently "enjoy" a status of acceptability amongst the masses, since I no longer engage in criminal activity, and I do tend to go out of my way to help out people that need it. Especially if they come ask, or if I see the need. Big emphasis on the if there, since I rarely leave my home due to my health issues. However, when the call comes, I go, whether I feel like I'm up to it or not. I didn't have any role models for the changes I made, unless they be negative role models that I didn't want to emulate. I made a decision to improve my lot in life, and took steps to accomplish that goal. The opinions of the people around me meant, and mean, little to me in the changes I have deliberately made to the way I live.

Considering the way I chose to live the first half of my life, I have come a long way, and have had no real help doing so, until the migraines set in. However, that help was only forthcoming due to the changes I had previously made in my lifestyle, and the way I treated people around me. If I can pull myself from the dregs, which I did, I don't see why others can't. The desire has to be there, no matter what other things are involved, along with the drive to continue on that path, no matter what other people say or do.

The big thing is that a lot of these changes won't happen because the government will continue to give these groups "handouts", or special consideration/treatment. I've been fighting with the SRS, and Social Security for 2 years now, and I still don't have all the help I need. The list of stuff my medical card doesn't cover is longer than the list of things it does, and includes things like dental, and optometry, the last two possible causes of the constant head-aches I have. If I were anything but a white male, I'd have more programs running than I even know about at this time. With these programs out there for the asking, for any other minority, it's no wonder there's no desire to change. They can get paid to do nothing, and I'd wager a large percentage of them feels, as Dave alluded to, that the Majority "owes" them that. If the government made these programs available dependant upon need, and what a particular group was doing to improve themselves, there would be a substantially lower percentage of people actually qualified for the programs, instead of basing the qualification upon sex/race. Race should never be a factor to determining need for social services of any kind, except maybe grants for education, and I would still question that. However, I would be more understanding of something like that, because at least the stipulations are to maintain a certain GPA, and that's hard to do if you party your grant money away.

I think my point is, any person can change their lot in life, if they want to, or have to. But so long as everybody says, it's ok, you don't have to do anything, then people should just look at the results of a situation that they have created and say, gee, we should at least try to find a way to get them to want to get off these programs, and on with a real life. Until that time, things are always going to seem skewed like they do now, and maybe seem is a bad word. Public assistance programs in the States are skewed to minorities for no other reason than they are minorities. To me, this is the root problem with what's in the OP, and what has been discussed to this point. If society changes the way it deals with people that are considered minority due to their race, and started dealing with them as just another person, things would start to change, and for the better. Probably not at first, as the races that get cut due to the fact that the only qualification they had for a program was race raise Hell about having to work for a living, and the courts stop catering to them, then they will be forced to accept the fact that they are being treated exactly the same as anyone else.

Personal experience has shown me that race is the first consideration for a disability claim, especially in grey areas of the programs, such as my debilitating head aches. I find it pathetic that I can't get these programs w/out going through 10 times the hassles that a black male in my age group would have. I stand by the effort = results thing as well, since w/out applying one's self to changing something in one's life, nothing changes. Society turning a blind eye to the "reverse discrimination" doesn't help.

[Nightwing]

This kind of reminds me of the healing forest model as part of the "Red Road to Recovery" program for indiginous peoples. The theory is simple enough. You can take a sick tree and heal it and let it live healthy again, but if you don't heal the whole forest the tree will just get sick again. That is why the Red Road involves the whole tribe in peoples recovery.

I see Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, every day beat down on by our society in America. It's hard to blame them for some of the things they do when the society they are living in works so hard aginst them. Our government steps in with social programs but that does not solve the problem of the racial bigitry that is so rampent in American society today. If the general population does not see these people as contributing members of the society then they never will be. Every morning these groups wake up and by the time the day ends they have been so beat down that they don't have the energy to better themselve because they are too busy deflecting the racist blows of the society. As a white American I can get up and go to work and people treat me with respect. It makes it easier to be a "good member of society" when that is how you are greeted. It has nothing to do with what I do but simply an outward appearance of my attitude and skin color. It is easy to be happy when you are not an oppressed group.

If you are a minority in Nebraska you can get your kids taken away for a minor drug violation like having a small amount of weed for personal use. The same amount for a white person is just a warning and go about your day. We have such a problem with racism here it's a wonder we don't have riots all the time.

So it doesn't matter how much the person changes if society is not willing to change with them. So far Society in American has not been willing to do that. It may be the same for the Aboriginals. It's not the government programs that are at fault it is the racist people creating the sickness that prevents these people from getting well.

[wellard]

Intresting post Nightwing [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img] looks like natives in the America's have the same problems.