Courtney Brown, The Future of Scientific Remote Viewing |421|

Fair point Eric. But they did suggest owning part sins and not merely flicking them off as being in the past, so let's move on. Since you raise the Buddha, let's consider the idea of karma. If you want to post Buddha in defence of a position you can't fairly slice and dice the philosophy - as many Christians do to defend their uncharitable preference for OT idea, despite their faith being named for a much later prophet who repudiated many of the favoured notions.

The OT assertion that the sins of the fathers are visited upon succeeding generations is not too distant from the notion of karma - something now echoed in epigenetics (about which I have but a passing grasp).

While the 'moving finger' may have written and moved on, there is no sense that the consequences of what is written is just as footloose. If we take your seeming position at face value here is an argument against history - unless what we do is comb through what has happened to sift out the nice tings that make us feel good. The past does not matter unless it supports our POV.

I have just finished Henry Reynold's 'Why Weren't We Told'. Henry is a Tasmanian historian who not very popular because he started talking about frontier wars between whites and Aborigines. His research shows, conservatively, up to the 1930s, around 20,000 Aborigines were killed by whites, compared to maybe 2,500 whites killed by Aborigines. Aboriginal history says they were defending their country against an invader. We whites are told told about the conflict. Our myth is 'peaceful' occupation. That's not what our own historical records show.

We have a choice of acknowledging 20,000 deaths in an invasion or admitting to mass murder (or, to be frank, both). In denying either we perpetuate an existential trauma that is now embedded in Aboriginal culture. We owe an acknowledgement of what happened. And yet it is not forthcoming.

Let's consider your apparent position and relate it here. We whites invaded, and we won. Let's move on. But we do not confess to invading. Ee have 'moved on' by denying, by lying about, the truth. That is injurious to the memory of the victors and the defeated. We deny the defeated the opportunity of a dignified defeat Think the US and Vietnam. The US walked away with 'peace with dignity'.

This is my history, to be sure, not yours. But those 20,000 deaths are a 'scoop mark' in history for me. They happened. But how do we write then into our history now, after so long denying they happened. I invite you to read Reynold's book (you can get is an audiobook on Audible) - because it is an examination of how history is managed to conceal a guilt or a responsibility to truth that a culture should own. My family migrated to Australia in the mid 1950s. We are not guilty of the sins going back 150 years. But the sin of lying about it is something we are involved in. As beneficiaries of those alleged sins, we have a moral duty to cherish truth - no matter what the existential cost is to our sense of comfort.

I read in the US that a parent can have their car seized because it has a 'taint of crime' connected to their child being caught with cannabis in it. I see a nation with a very fine moral notion that is designed not on the grounds acceptable to a moral philosopher, but to a politician and a revenue raiser.

What is right - now or in history? What is the real 'statute of limitations' on crimes in a spiritual context? Human law may 'forgive' an alleged offender because 5 years has past. But divine law?

Michael,
I confess to not understanding you at all.

In Christianity sins are wiped clean when one asks Christ for forgiveness. In some schools of Buddhism, karma will get you for past sins. Even if we decide those particular Buddhist schools are correct, we don't need to go around hating ourselves and idealizing others that, being people, are just as bad.

Once again, your entire argument hinges on ancient tribal people as being someone superior - and I find that notion to be a romantic myth.

You and Alice and falling all over each other to justify human sacrifice, head hunting, cannibalism, stoning women, all manner of inter-tribal warfare, magical thinking perpetuating disease and starvation, caste systems, slavery, subsistence living and a host of other spiritual, personal and societal ills just so you can bash on your own culture - to what end I can't even begin to imagine. I suspect it's a psychological issue that I don't suffer from (I have my own issues, as do we all).

Also, as TES says, you don't get to own a continent into perpetuity just because you took over back when no one was around to record the event in a permanent file. On that note, how do you know it wasn't native people's Karma that caused them to be taken over? You are presuming a lot about cosmic justice in your role as a defense lawyer making a case for the primitives/prosecutor of the moderns.
 
This is a myth indeed, and serves to obfuscate a tragic abusive history here in the US as well.

But a second myth which we ignore inside this tragedy - is the idea that the first culture on a continent, owns that entire continent. There are only a few continents around (Australia being one) - and for one culture to claim ownership of an entire continent - is also an outrageous myth which serves to foment war.

We cannot claim this today - so why was it valid in the 1700/1800's?
Yes - I mean the real truth is that most people who fought in past wars had no choice in the matter. They were the ones that got maimed, they were the ones who were killed. A tiny few were guilty and responsible for what went on.

Even wars that were initially popular, were probably popular because misleading information had been passed around to encourage that viewpoint - think Iraq 2003.

Now on top of that, blaming future generations for what a tiny handful of people did to another country and also did to their own people is just absurd. Expose the truth as fully as possible, but leave it at that.

Questions as to ownership of land are always imprecise and contentious. Does the US own the moon because Americans first stood there? Do the Russians 'own' the whole of space because it was a Russian cosmonaut who first ventured up there?

David
 
But a second myth which we ignore inside this tragedy - is the idea that the first culture on a continent, owns that entire continent.
True, although not all invasions are genteel seeking of lands for home. And even then, if it's not a gracious appreciation and agreement to fairly share, but a brutal act of annihilation for exclusive ownership, does that make the invader's claims more valid?
for one culture to claim ownership of an entire continent - is also an outrageous myth which serves to foment war.
I cannot agree with you here. When one nation claims exclusive entitlement to a country it's not called a war as the original inhabitants are not credited with equal status or rights. They are usually called 'vermin' etc, which validates attempts at annihilation. I don't think the natives of America or Australia claimed exclusive rights to those continents, just a reasonable bid of sharing with the new white visitors. The fomenting of war is usually because one nation makes a bid for the land or wealth or political power of another's, which makes the original inhabitants obliged to defend.
There is also use of other lands for plundering, dumping and weapon-testing, aside from simple takeover.
Would you say, sure dump your old fridge in a canyon because others have and good on you if you can get away with it? Just because some have acted with selfish ignorance or greed doesn't make it an acceptable blueprint for the future.

Again, back to the motive. In the case of Australia, the invaders purpose, aside from somewhere to dump it's own excess of unwanted people, was to see it as so much empty, unexploited land. Not recognising, or seeking advice from, the original inhabitants and the necessary delicate balance they had maintained for 10s of 1,000s of years. Imposing a european farming-style on this continent has been a disaster, within only 200 years.
 
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You and Alice and falling all over each other to justify human sacrifice, head hunting, cannibalism, stoning women, all manner of inter-tribal warfare, magical thinking perpetuating disease and starvation, caste systems, slavery, subsistence living and a host of other spiritual, personal and societal ills just so you can bash on your own culture
No Eric, I am not. You are falling over yourself to claim that. Exaggerating my comments is a way of validating your counter-accusations. It's a desperate measure, indicating a fixation on wanting to 'win' again. Let that go, and let's discuss this like adults, towards a greater understanding and perhaps solution to free ourselves from habitual human behaviour.
 
Yes - I mean the real truth is that most people who fought in past wars had no choice in the matter. They were the ones that got maimed, they were the ones who were killed. A tiny few were guilty and responsible for what went on.
True David, we have been ruled by a selfish few for so long, who incidentally still hold the power and could still exhort us to fight each other for them. Please do let me recommend you watch 'Capital in the 21st Century' - unless you have time to read the book, which I do not! It really puts what you say into perspective.
 
This is a myth indeed, and serves to obfuscate a tragic abusive history here in the US as well.

But a second myth which we ignore inside this tragedy - is the idea that the first culture on a continent, owns that entire continent. There are only a few continents around (Australia being one) - and for one culture to claim ownership of an entire continent - is also an outrageous myth which serves to foment war.

We cannot claim this today - so why was it valid in the 1700/1800's?

TES, if tomorrow a bunch of ETs arrived in UFOs and said to us they had come to claim this planet as part of their empire, what do you think our objections would be?

Is war fomented by the claim ownership or by those who deny its validity?

Australia was settled under the claim of Terra Nullius - that it was an uninhabited landmass. It was an empty land. The presumption was that the indigenous people could not, and had not, developed any sense of ownership of land. But they had. They didn't write it down because they were not really expecting a bunch of ghosts to turn up an demand they prove it. Aboriginal people had their 'country'. It didn't need sharply defined boundaries because other folk had their 'country' and they were sensible enough not to make the demarcation down to a line drawn in the red dirt.

In Australia many 'cultures' or 'nations' had their country in the same way that Europe is divided into countries by accidents of history, and sometimes geography. But in Europe there is an unfortunate habit of deciding you want another's country and you can just go and take it. That may or may not have been the same here in Australia, but I have never come across the notion.

The fact is that historically Australia was invaded and taken over. Not unlike the Roman invasion of Britain. Fiat accompli? You'd think so. But now we pretend we didn't invade, and the 'settlement' was peaceful and the 'blacks' were either too indolent or incompetent to fight back. That is an insulting myth. In the US the reaction of the indigenous people has never been so characterised. But you still have the myth that you 'settled', rather than invaded.

The Romans and the Vikings don't claim they 'settled' Britain. Ireland wasn't 'settled' by the Brits or the Vikings. Our history is full invasions. If you haven't read Peter Franokan's The Silk Roads, please do. But for some gutless reason our forefathers decided that killing 20,000 men, women and children constituted 'peaceful' settlement. Of course there are destructive myths. We made them.
 
TES, if tomorrow a bunch of ETs arrived in UFOs and said to us they had come to claim this planet as part of their empire, what do you think our objections would be?

Is war fomented by the claim ownership or by those who deny its validity?

Australia was settled under the claim of Terra Nullius - that it was an uninhabited landmass. It was an empty land. The presumption was that the indigenous people could not, and had not, developed any sense of ownership of land. But they had. They didn't write it down because they were not really expecting a bunch of ghosts to turn up an demand they prove it. Aboriginal people had their 'country'. It didn't need sharply defined boundaries because other folk had their 'country' and they were sensible enough not to make the demarcation down to a line drawn in the red dirt.

In Australia many 'cultures' or 'nations' had their country in the same way that Europe is divided into countries by accidents of history, and sometimes geography. But in Europe there is an unfortunate habit of deciding you want another's country and you can just go and take it. That may or may not have been the same here in Australia, but I have never come across the notion.

The fact is that historically Australia was invaded and taken over. Not unlike the Roman invasion of Britain. Fiat accompli? You'd think so. But now we pretend we didn't invade, and the 'settlement' was peaceful and the 'blacks' were either too indolent or incompetent to fight back. That is an insulting myth. In the US the reaction of the indigenous people has never been so characterised. But you still have the myth that you 'settled', rather than invaded.

The Romans and the Vikings don't claim they 'settled' Britain. Ireland wasn't 'settled' by the Brits or the Vikings. Our history is full invasions. If you haven't read Peter Franokan's The Silk Roads, please do. But for some gutless reason our forefathers decided that killing 20,000 men, women and children constituted 'peaceful' settlement. Of course there are destructive myths. We made them.

Michael,
In America the natives fought each other and took over each other's territory incessantly. They raided, pillaged, took slaves, etc.

Holding a perspective that there was a native culture that was destroyed by Europeans is just plain wrong. There were many dozens of native cultures, some quite different than others, that clashed with each other. The Europeans were just bigger and better at the same business.

If the natives could have stopped fighting each other, they probably could have driven the Europeans off the beaches every time they tried to land. That could have gone on for a few hundred years. Though I think it is silly in the extreme to imagine that vast swaths of the globe would be maintained into perpetuity as nature preserves full of wild natives running about vast tracks of resource rich land.

I guess Europeans should have practiced eugenics to keep the population down (since birth control wasn't really available). Just bash tens of thousands of babies on the head every month to keep the population down so as to have no need to seek out colonies in the vast nature preserves.

Also, as Europeans progressed their science and technology (and continued to bash babies), all of those advancements should have been denied to the inhabitants of the nature preserves so as to not alter their cultures.

Also, as Europeans advanced ethically (e.g. ending slavery), they would ignore all of the slavery, etc in America and Africa.

I have to say that this vision of "social justice" (or whatever it's supposed to be) is really stupid and unrealistic, IMO.
 
n Christianity sins are wiped clean when one asks Christ for forgiveness.

Please, Eric, that is Church dogma and propaganda (a word invented by the Roman Catholic Church) designed to market the faith to people who were resistant. It has no spiritual foundation to it all. It has the same status of the selling of Indulgences that sent Martin Luther into a rage. Young cant buy your way into heaven and you can't bribe you way into forgiveness.

But let's be fair here. If you have a heightened sense of sin (as was induced for no good reason other than to create a dependency), then the act of 'forgiving' is therapeutic. There are some 'sins' that are 'forgivable' because they are so minor they are the kind we commit daily, just by being human. Easing an anxiety of guilt is a kindness - unless the creator of the guilt is the same agent - in which case it could also be torture.

I am sufficiently curious about the nature of sin as to acknowledge that the mechanism of forgiving sins might have a virtue as a means of managing the creating of a moral culture. But easing guilt for 'minor's ins as part of a regime of creating and maintaining a moral culture is not the same thing really absolving guilt (negating karma). Like any 'good idea's can be corrupted - and how better to keep rich patrons on side than by absolving them of terrible crimes by the deft flick of holy water?
 
Please, Eric, that is Church dogma and propaganda (a word invented by the Roman Catholic Church) designed to market the faith to people who were resistant. It has no spiritual foundation to it all. It has the same status of the selling of Indulgences that sent Martin Luther into a rage. Young cant buy your way into heaven and you can't bribe you way into forgiveness.

And yet you think that your idea of a contract with the cosmos is an objectively real thing? Come on. You're just making stuff up at this point. If it comes out of your head and you like it, it's real. If it's someone else's idea and you don't like it, it's just phony propaganda dogma.


But let's be fair here. If you have a heightened sense of sin (as was induced for no good reason other than to create a dependency), then the act of 'forgiving' is therapeutic. There are some 'sins' that are 'forgivable' because they are so minor they are the kind we commit daily, just by being human. Easing an anxiety of guilt is a kindness - unless the creator of the guilt is the same agent - in which case it could also be torture..

Well you're the one talking sin all of the time. Of course it's the Europeans that are the sinners and there is no forgiveness. It's a guilt that must follow the descendants for ever.
 
Hi Eric

You want to cite your sources for this claim? Happy to check them out. In any case, if true, how does that impact anything?

You're kidding, right?

I was fascinated with native americans since I was a little boy. I've read everything there is on the history, culture, etc. I actually spent a lot of time on one of the Apache and other reservations and had good friends that were natives. They still tell the stories of the old days.

Asking for sources on this is like me saying the sky is blue and you asking me for a source on that.

Now I am positive that on this topic you have no idea whatsoever what you're talking about and you really are making it up you as you go. Maybe you internet doesn't connect to the same stuff as Americans, but for chrissakes, just google something about Native American wars with each other. Google Apache raiding. Google Comanche, Crow, Sioux/Oglala and how they hated each other. That would be just for starts.
 
Holding a perspective that there was a native culture that was destroyed by Europeans is just plain wrong. There were many dozens of native cultures, some quite different than others, that clashed with each other. The Europeans were just bigger and better at the same business.

I am not about to dispute your assertion here because you are making my point for me. Let us process on the premise what you say is true. Why is that truth not openly acknowledged?

Let me use what happened here to make my point, because I know my history better than yours. We invaded here because we were doing what we did - find more land and take it over. I am always reminded that the Romans invade Britain on no pretext other than it wasn't yet their's. We can't know in fine detail was trauma was visited upon the Britains, but we know they didn't like being invaded and fought bitterly in opposition - to no avail. Ditto here.

In England you will see a magnificent statue to Boudica, the queen who rose in futile rebellion against the romans. Check out https://www.google.com/search?q=bou...ECAMQBg&biw=1280&bih=653#imgrc=V8AL1WxhbKJd1M:

Do we have an equivalent here? We do not. Over 20,000 indigenous people died. Some were victims of mass murder (women and children - I presume you do not condone that - the same happened in the US). Others died in conflict in defence of country. Not only does Australia not acknowledge the courage of the defenders, we do not acknowledge there was a 'war'. We do reluctantly acknowledge the Myall Creek Massacre (good that).

I think there is a defence of your seemingly brutal critique. But you can't have that without the acknowledgement of the legality of the act at the time, or the extremes of brutality. I gather that Europeans invented scalping because the original requirements of producing heads became problematic. The Australian historian. Henry Reynolds wrote Why Weren't We Told precisely to illustrate that truth is glossed over in favour of fantasy. I get that this is cultural propaganda.

But I want us to be better than this. There are moral complexities that attend our dark past. We cannot deny our past, but we cannot deny the harm we did. This is being grown up as a culture. What was done in the infancy of our national psyche to harm others in ways we would not now do, we have to own.

Yes we invaded, and no, we are not going away. Now how can we heal the wounds our actions caused? We want to do that because we are one nation now. It is our duty to care for our own. At least that's the value that some of us here push. Don't know how it is where you are. As an outsider, and assigning no blame, I think we are a little bit more compassionate - and its what I love about my culture.
 
I guess Europeans should have practiced eugenics to keep the population down (since birth control wasn't really available). Just bash tens of thousands of babies on the head every month to keep the population down so as to have no need to seek out colonies in the vast nature preserves.

Again Eric, evidence for this claim? Which part of the history of Europe are you talking? Right throughout Europe birth control was pratised by women using herbal preparations. They knew how to induced termination at various stages of pregnancy. This was the case into the 19th century, but, as urbanisation increased, those means and measures were maybe lost or unavailable.

Birth control has been around for millennia. In fact there is probably no traditional or archaic culture on the planet that does not have it down to an art. It has really been only European urban cultures where it has not been known.
 
I am not about to dispute your assertion here because you are making my point for me. Let us process on the premise what you say is true. Why is that truth not openly acknowledged?

Let me use what happened here to make my point, because I know my history better than yours. We invaded here because we were doing what we did - find more land and take it over. I am always reminded that the Romans invade Britain on no pretext other than it wasn't yet their's. We can't know in fine detail was trauma was visited upon the Britains, but we know they didn't like being invaded and fought bitterly in opposition - to no avail. Ditto here.

In England you will see a magnificent statue to Boudica, the queen who rose in futile rebellion against the romans. Check out https://www.google.com/search?q=boudica+statue+in+london&rlz=1C5CHFA_enAU503AU515&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=V8AL1WxhbKJd1M%3A%2CNI3Mn1uWpsEERM%2C_&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kRsTuUQattF9miilXyyHeoIb4GD-Q&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiF3uOc6f_jAhUBVysKHSLcDnEQ9QEwAXoECAMQBg&biw=1280&bih=653#imgrc=V8AL1WxhbKJd1M:

Do we have an equivalent here? We do not. Over 20,000 indigenous people died. Some were victims of mass murder (women and children - I presume you do not condone that - the same happened in the US). Others died in conflict in defence of country. Not only does Australia not acknowledge the courage of the defenders, we do not acknowledge there was a 'war'. We do reluctantly acknowledge the Myall Creek Massacre (good that).

I think there is a defence of your seemingly brutal critique. But you can't have that without the acknowledgement of the legality of the act at the time, or the extremes of brutality. I gather that Europeans invented scalping because the original requirements of producing heads became problematic. The Australian historian. Henry Reynolds wrote Why Weren't We Told precisely to illustrate that truth is glossed over in favour of fantasy. I get that this is cultural propaganda.

But I want us to be better than this. There are moral complexities that attend our dark past. We cannot deny our past, but we cannot deny the harm we did. This is being grown up as a culture. What was done in the infancy of our national psyche to harm others in ways we would not now do, we have to own.

Yes we invaded, and no, we are not going away. Now how can we heal the wounds our actions caused? We want to do that because we are one nation now. It is our duty to care for our own. At least that's the value that some of us here push. Don't know how it is where you are. As an outsider, and assigning no blame, I think we are a little bit more compassionate - and its what I love about my culture.

I'm 55 years old and as long as I can remember, I was made aware of the destruction of the native populations. No secret. No one has been hiding it. It's even been the subject of numerous Hollywood films.

My point is that what the Euros did here is no different than what the natives were doing to each other. It's the human condition. There are no saints on this planet. Pretending that some utopia existed or could exist is not helpful. Carrying multigenerational guilt about who did what to whom is not helpful.

What is to be learned from it all? Don't be weak. Stay unified. Don't fight amongst yourselves. Be on the lookout for enemies external and internal. Multi-culti and mass immigration is going to destroy your way of life. If you like your way life and/or you assess it's better than the alternatives, then you'd better protect it against invaders and invasive ideologies.

That is all there is to be gleaned from any of the history we have been discussing.
 
Again Eric, evidence for this claim? Which part of the history of Europe are you talking? Right throughout Europe birth control was pratised by women using herbal preparations. They knew how to induced termination at various stages of pregnancy. This was the case into the 19th century, but, as urbanisation increased, those means and measures were maybe lost or unavailable.

Birth control has been around for millennia. In fact there is probably no traditional or archaic culture on the planet that does not have it down to an art. It has really been only European urban cultures where it has not been known.

Blue Cohosh, etc? Not exactly effective. But whatever. Ok. Euros should just not have had babies so Africans and aboriginals could run about immense portions of the planet for ever.

I am beginning to see what life would be like under King Michael. Would you collect a tax or fee to decide who is allowed to have a baby? What criteria would you use? I mean all those people might make the wrong decision and have babies if left to their own devices. Can't have too many stinking Europeans with all of their inventions, reading, writing and arithmetic. meanwhile, the Asians would have kept on breeding and taken over your precious nature preserves - and then maybe Europe.
 
TES, if tomorrow a bunch of ETs arrived in UFOs and said to us they had come to claim this planet as part of their empire, what do you think our objections would be?

Is war fomented by the claim ownership or by those who deny its validity?

Australia was settled under the claim of Terra Nullius - that it was an uninhabited landmass. It was an empty land. The presumption was that the indigenous people could not, and had not, developed any sense of ownership of land. But they had. They didn't write it down because they were not really expecting a bunch of ghosts to turn up an demand they prove it. Aboriginal people had their 'country'. It didn't need sharply defined boundaries because other folk had their 'country' and they were sensible enough not to make the demarcation down to a line drawn in the red dirt.

In Australia many 'cultures' or 'nations' had their country in the same way that Europe is divided into countries by accidents of history, and sometimes geography. But in Europe there is an unfortunate habit of deciding you want another's country and you can just go and take it. That may or may not have been the same here in Australia, but I have never come across the notion.

The fact is that historically Australia was invaded and taken over. Not unlike the Roman invasion of Britain. Fiat accompli? You'd think so. But now we pretend we didn't invade, and the 'settlement' was peaceful and the 'blacks' were either too indolent or incompetent to fight back. That is an insulting myth. In the US the reaction of the indigenous people has never been so characterised. But you still have the myth that you 'settled', rather than invaded.

The Romans and the Vikings don't claim they 'settled' Britain. Ireland wasn't 'settled' by the Brits or the Vikings. Our history is full invasions. If you haven't read Peter Franokan's The Silk Roads, please do. But for some gutless reason our forefathers decided that killing 20,000 men, women and children constituted 'peaceful' settlement. Of course there are destructive myths. We made them.
Totally agree on this... make sure you understand what I am saying, and what I am not saying.
 
Be on the lookout for enemies external and internal. Multi-culti and mass immigration is going to destroy your way of life. If you like your way life and/or you assess it's better than the alternatives, then you'd better protect it against invaders and invasive ideologies.
Wow Eric, you sound paranoid, aggressive and rude.
Honestly Michael, I don't think you should bother anymore, it's not worth trying to educate this man.
Heaven help us if all Americans think like this.
 
I am beginning to see what life would be like under King Michael. Would you collect a tax or fee to decide who is allowed to have a baby? What criteria would you use? I mean all those people might make the wrong decision and have babies if left to their own devices. Can't have too many stinking Europeans with all of their inventions, reading, writing and arithmetic. meanwhile, the Asians would have kept on breeding and taken over your precious nature preserves - and then maybe Europe.

I think you are misrepresenting my argument and going off on a tangent. Birth control is practiced globally, and has been for a very long time. I was observing that killing babies is not the only, or preferred method.

Europeans have been great inventors - the printing press comes to mind - and subsequent machines. They really are 'machine age' inventors par excellence. But we didn't invent reading writing or arithmetic. We took the gifts of other great cultures and transformed them into the things that made European culture so powerful. Perhaps the most potent adaptation was the lens, with which we made the telescopes and microscopes that transformed how we saw the world.

I'm 55 years old and as long as I can remember, I was made aware of the destruction of the native populations. No secret. No one has been hiding it. It's even been the subject of numerous Hollywood films.

Well not quite. Try Loaded by Roxanne Dunbar. It has a slightly irritating 'progressive' tone to it, but that does not invalidate the content, just irritates. The real history is always hidden - the Brits do it, the Australians do it, so do the Canadians.

My point is that what the Euros did here is no different than what the natives were doing to each other. It's the human condition. There are no saints on this planet. Pretending that some utopia existed or could exist is not helpful. Carrying multigenerational guilt about who did what to whom is not helpful.

Actually it was very different, but to understand this you got to go deep into the field of inquiry into other cultures - especially the traditional and archaic ones. You are right in that conflict is part of the human condition, but the necessity of managing it has always been part of the human condition too.

I am not arguing that a utopia existed - but conditions of peace and cooperation between nations or tribes do break out from time to time. The big problem is that Europeans operate under a moral code which exempted them from treating native peoples as real people, because they were not Christian. In most other places there is evidence of some decent moral code applying, even where there was ongoing conflict.

You say "Carrying multigenerational guilt about who did what to whom is not helpful." To whom? Those who want to enjoy the benefits of their ancestor's acts which were, even at the time, violations of cultural norms and law? The surviving members of communities traumatised by brutality and then by exclusion and discrimination? What about multigenerational trauma? Do we live in the simply duality of 'winners are grinners' and losers can suck it up? Might try that line on the next Vietnam vet with PTSD I come across. Of course I won't, but you can see see the cruelty in doing such a thing.

There are Indigenous people in Australia who carry the shame, not only of being defeated and having their struggle disappeared from history, but from the campaign of terror waged against them, and then the exploitation, abuse and isolation, and then the denial, of their rights to their own culture and of entry to ours.

That's not right. I stand on this land a the beneficiary of acts I do not condone, and whose consequences endure as both good and bad. I have no guilt. I do not want to rewrite history. I want the truth told, not the fantasy of lies that make it possible for me and others to pretend there was no slaughter and brutality.

These days we buy meat in a supermarket and we know nothing of the butchering of lambs and cattle, pigs and chickens. I know people who do not want to know, and say they could not eat meat if they did. They are serious. When I was 4 I went on a rabbit hunt on a farm where we were living. Rabbits were in plague proportions and we took hundreds. I was close as their necks were broken and they were gutted and skinned. Farm hand smeared blood on my face. I remember the smell. I saw sheep killed and dressed, and chooks (chickens). I eat meat with a prayer of gratitude, and a gentle regret for the life taken to feed me.

I do not have respect for a culture that takes its history like a leg of lamb from a supermarket. This is the essence of my argument. Let us enjoy the fruits of victory, but let us also honour the vanquished and help bind their wounds. To do that we must listen when they tell us they are still hurting.

After WW2 we put the enemy criminals on trial, and then we rebuilt their economies. I think we understood that the degradation of Germany at the end of WW1 led to WW2. Sure, an indigenous people does not seem to represent the same threat. But last time I looked we were claiming to be Christian nations who should comprehend love. We have not loved our defeated indigenous fellow citizens, and in so not we have perpetuated an injury.

I am not okay with that.
 
Totally agree on this... make sure you understand what I am saying, and what I am not saying.

Okay TES, I have to say on rereading I am not totally clear. If w take the Australian example I do not think that indigenous people made a collective claim on the whole country. It was just that no part of the country was, it seems, was not part of some nation's (contemporary word I long objected to but now use so as not to cause confusion) country.

There may well be retrospective claims that a whole nation 'belonged' to indigenous people as if those people were a unified entity at the time. The effect is the same, even if the detail of the claim might be said to be spurious. So, yes, a myth - up to a point.

Now you can correct my misinterpretation.:)
 
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