Joe:

"So can we come to an agreement that we will never again - unless it's impossible otherwise - use the passive voice in relation to what Indigenous people are doing and how they may be thinking, and what may be their options ?

So, to every dreadful evil that may have been done, instead of weeping our Walrus-and-Carpenter (aka Pilger) tears about how powerless people are, [with the implication either than nothing can ever be done (how dreadful), or that they should wait patiently for the Anglo working class to liberate all of society, including them,] let's try to find out what people have done about their predicament as they saw it, how did they respond, how did they bounce back, if they did, how did they push back against the tight constraints imposed by policy and circumstances".

I do take your point here, but the passive voice is not always patronising, and aggressive rhetoric is not always positive. Aboriginal culture is prostrate rather than passive, and self-destructive rather than assertive. Meanwhile, bourgeois culture is complacently triumphant and judgemental. I'm criticising Westernism and not patronising subalterns.
You're not going to fix the problem by convincing aborigines to carry a chip on the shoulder. It's more complicated than that.

[contd.]

turns - into rapacious early capitalist cities and states, which in turn evolved over hundreds of years of brutal twists and turns, into rapacious mature capitalism.

This was the context against which much of the Enlightenment had to struggle, a struggle for ordinary people's rights for equality, for equal gender rights, for equal rights before the law, for equal rights to representation. That hasn't gone all that well, I'm the first to admit, but it sure is a hell of a lot better than any alternative dreamed up so far. Perhaps you have some better ideas than a vague reference to the way that Paleolithic societies did business ? So how did Paleolithic societies - that we all are descended from - differentiate 'church' and 'state ' ? How did they protect the rights of individuals, or is that too bourgeois a question ? How did they facilitate the development of ideas, or is that too an impermissible question ? Did they in any way recognise gender equality ?

In fairness, these are inappropriate questions. But so is the attempt to compare Paleolithic with post-Enlightenment societies, or closed with open societies and ways of seeing the world. We are all (or most of us) post-Enlightenment, open-society people now: that genie is out of the bottle and people in the MENA region are struggling for precisely these innovations, and tacitly against their own backward religious notions. You may disagree. Would you give away your gender equality to be someone's fourth wife, and to give over your children to your shared husband when they turn seven ? If you looked at another guy, would you be happy to risk stoning ? If you were raped, would you want to gather four witnesses in order to avoid being stoned for adultery ?

Equal rights opens up possibilities. It is no guarantee of happiness and success, only of the possibility and uncertainty of outcomes: that's partly why it is often seen as less satisfactory than religion which promises certainty. To be able to try, is to take risks, including

[TBC]

[contd.]

the risk of failure. The prison of pre-Enlightenment thinking, religious thinking, closed thinking, 'promises' that you never have to think for yourself, or to take risks, you just take whatever society (and god) dishes out. Don't think for yourself, because that way lies danger. But as Marx wrote, our task is to change society for the better - not just whinge about it - which entails enormous personal risks, not to mention constant mental struggle.

So, to paraphrase our dear friend Squeers, which side are we on ? Reaction, or change for the better, with all its risks of failure ? It's up to all of us :)

Hi again Squeers,

There are all sorts of gradations between weeping into your beer and carrying a chip on your shoulder, and people are 'doing' all of them. Currently, around eleven thousand young Indigenous people are studying at universities, mostly too busy to carry any chips on shoulders. Yes exactly, as you say: "It's more complicated than that."

And your observation that " ... Aboriginal culture is .... self-destructive rather than assertive." does not apply to the great majority of Indigenous people who are getting on with life and its predicaments - yes, it may apply very much to the people who are embedded in welfare-dependence, skill-less, people who have frankly put themselves (and their children) into some of these desperate situations. But the vast majority of people I know are as assertive as anybody else, not in aggressive ways but in terms of their obvious self-regard and self-confidence.

And what is quite striking about graduates is that their Aboriginality seems to be strengthened by their study experience: it is as if people weren't particularly conscious or focussed on identity beforehand, maybe they took it for granted, but ever-afterwards their passion and enthusiasm for actively building stronger, more positive, identities seems to increase, and increase the more study they do. Just an observation :)


Joe

Hi Whistler,

Have you begun to learn something ? Your comment,

"Australians have overwhelmingly decided by democratic process on many occasions with the progressive achievement of equality between women and men that it is themselves who need to change their behaviour, that taking personal responsibility for their own actions rather than blaming the victim, is the way forward."

is fine with me, as far as I can understand what you are saying.

But then you blow it:

"There remains reform of the instruments of governance which would have particular impact in contact with traditional communities."

In what conceivable way have traditional social relations been a positive influence on modern forms of gender participation ? This is not to pick on one particular form of society, but just to point out that traditional societies EVERYWHERE have - almost inevitably - discriminated against women. Whether societies were based on hunter-gathering, or pastoral/foraging activity, or peasant societies, or early capitalism, on whatever continent, the position of women has almost always been subordinate to that of men. If there is anything to learn from their multitude of situations, it is that (a) gender equality (to the extent that it has been achieved) is a feature of modern capitalist societies, and (b) that it is an incredibly valuable achievement from which there should never be any retreat. In that sense, to defer to traditional forms of social relations is a reactionary step away from gender equality.

Then you really blow it:

"Reform of the nation's federal and state constitutions to provide for governance by agreement between women's and men's legislatures, courts and corporate committees would promote genuine dialogue."

How the hell do you have dialogue if people are in separate chambers ? Why even try !? With differing outcomes submitted to whom, for final approval ? Two more bodies of 'elders' ?! God give us strength.

OF COURSE there has to be dialogue, but in the same chamber, in the one chamber, where ALL participants, regardless of gender, deliberate over the same issues equally, without preference.

One day, Whistler, you may listen and learn.

Joe

You might get a big thrill out of the nonsense men came up with about gender relations at a time when the The Lancet published the view a woman's uterus would explode if she attended university, Loudmouth, but there's hardly anyone else left in Australia who does, or the entire planet for that matter. Most Australians are also familiar with the concept of Cabinet government

I don't know, Whistler, I don't spend my time reading 100-year-old copies of The Lancet :)

As it happens, two thirds of Indigenous students and graduates at university are women and that's fine with me: it's up to the men to get off their freckles and do something for themselves too, and match them - unless of course, their knob-heads will explode if they do: you might know much more about that than me.

If there were as many Indigenous men participating at universities as women, the total numbers would be around fifteen thousand, and graduate numbers would be close to thirty five thousand. Uni works for Indigenous people, but you won't read that in anything Pilger writes: it doesn't fit in with either of his doomsday or the powerlessness scenarios.

Joe