Squeers:

“Your self-esteem is a social construct (all is vanity)—the social spin with which you anoint yourself—“

What is a social construct? Rhosty’s self-esteem is just an opinion he has about himself. Can’t we have opinions about ourselves? Isn’t your opinion about self-esteem just a social construct too?

It’s not vanity to have an opinion about yourself. People can have a very balanced opinion of their own strengths and weaknesses. I would say anyone who is not able to make an honest appraisal of themselves is lacking in self-knowledge and maturity. Everyone has such an opinion whether they express it or not. You can determine from the way they behave that they have a grasp of reality in regard to themselves that is realistic or not. Some people have a terrible opinion of themselves and others have an over-inflated opinion but most have a realistic sense of themselves.

A person can seem like a victim in the words of the author but actually be quite content with their lot because they have enough self-esteem to know what they can change and what they can’t. If they can change things they give what energy they have to set about doing so. If they cannot change it then they accept it without letting it impact on their self-esteem. If you cannot change certain aspects of society then you do not beat yourself up about it. If you have done what you can then you should be at peace with yourself and this does not mean you are a victim

imho,

I get my figures from the Commonwealth Education Department, whatever it's called this year. I don't know where the hell the ABS gets its figures from, but they are ludicrous.

In 2011, according to that Ed. Dept., 11,807 Indigenous people were enrolled at universities. In the 2011 Census, 46,455 Indigenous people were aged from 20 to 24, roughly the five-year span at which Indigenous people start university. The equivalent of one in every four.

Poirot,

Thanks for sticking close to topic. Yes, some easily preventable health conditions are rife in Aboriginal settlements. Diabetes, kidney failure, obesity rates are amongst the highest in the world, and are ailments that are unknown in the Third world. Deaths from alcohol and drugs are also at levels unknown in the Third World. And yes, rheumatic fever, another disease of neglect, usually of children, is higher than anything known in the Third World.

Aboriginal people do not suffer from Third World ailments, like starvation (although I know of one kid who officially died of starvation, in 1955). Aboriginal people die early from diseases related to sh!t diet (fast foods, Coke), total lack of exercise, and excessive use of tobacco, grog and drugs. Let's be honest. And whose responsibility for all that is, eventually ? Who is supposed to do something about it ? They are. The ball is in their court. Everything else is just marking time.

'Squalor maybe but not poverty'. What it says. Don't confuse the two. In a typical Bangla Deshi village, you won't see any rubbish, but plenty of poverty. Clean, but not flash. Aboriginal settlements ? All the detritus of plenty: fast food cartons,, pre-loved Kimbies, old TVs and fridges, car bodies. That's squalor, not poverty.

I hope this has been useful.

Joe

Loudmouth: “I get my figures from the Commonwealth Education Department, whatever it's called this year. I don't know where the hell the ABS gets its figures from, but they are ludicrous. In 2011, according to that Ed. Dept., 11,807 Indigenous people were enrolled at universities. In the 2011 Census, 46,455 Indigenous people were aged from 20 to 24, roughly the five-year span at which Indigenous people start university. The equivalent of one in every four.”

Loudmouth, the problem with your formulation is in your assuming such a narrow age range (20-24); many higher-education students are much younger than 20. To avoid publishing figures based on mistaken assumptions, I suggest it’s better to at least start with the census figures (see ref below) and work from there.

In addition, how does your guesstimated figure of one in four make any sense when compared with the actual figure for non-Indigenous Australians (one in five)?

To make fact-checking even more difficult, the pertinent documents on your website (which I tried downloading from two different computers) come up as ‘corrupted’.

REF: ABN 2011 census ‘In 2011, one in twenty Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander 15-24 year olds were studying at [higher education] level compared with one in five non-Indigenous students the same age.’
http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Lookup/4102.0Main+Features20July+2013#p1

imho,

If you thought about it for a bit, a five-year age-range, 20-24, is not at all narrow. The usual course at university runs for three or four years. Every year there is another cohort of new students.

We could partly solve this dilemma by just looking at commencements, and arbitrarily choosing, for comparison, let's say, the number of 20-year-olds. I.e., assuming that, for comparison purposes, all Indigenous commencing university under-grad students are 20 years old.

How does that work out ? In 2013, there were 4,242 Indigenous under-graduate commencements. In that year, according to the ABS, there were 11,344 (roughly) Indigenous people aged 20. As a rough equivalent, you can do the maths :)

My point is that if one looks around, Indigenous or not, there are plenty of opportunities. Nobody is holding Indigenous people back, except perhaps their own 'leaders'. Plenty of people are coping with adversity, and the worst thing anybody else can do is to 'persuade' them that there is nothing they can do, it's all so awful, the system, capitalism, whites, whatever, so why bother trying ?

You keep trying. You never, never believe that bullsh!t that anybody is just so powerless. That is the worst possible advice anybody could ever give, and you wonder sometimes if people who give it, often from a position of comfort, are just playing the filthiest game.

Joe

Joe, you are totally correct. Plenty of squalor but not much poverty. A few years ago, indigenous families on Groote Island had one of the highest household incomes in Australia. Over $100,000 per year but the people lived in squalor and kids were malnourished. How did that occur? Well, mining royalties were payed out in lump sums. For a couple of weeks people lived like millionaire, bought numerous toyotas, motorbikes for their kids, chartered planes to Darwin to spend time at the casino.
A few weeks later they were broke and back living on Centrelink income.
Even in communities that don't receive royalties, the issue of income needs to be put into perspective. Yes, food at local stores is expensive, but rents are cheap, water is free and electricity frequently subsidised. Medications and medical supplies are provided free from the local clinic. In addition people have access to sea food and bush tucker, which frequently provides a large proportion of their diet, especially if money has been spent on alcohol and gambling.
3rd world diseases are common, simply because of very poor hygiene. I spent 30 years as a paediatric nurse in the top end and Kimberley and have repeatedly stated that many of the chronic diseases that started in childhood could have been prevented by the simple practise of having a daily shower.
And as you say, fast foods, cigarettes, alcohol and little exercise just add to the problem.
They may consider themselves victims but they are victims of their own choices.

phanto,
my 'all is vanity' was an allusion to Ecclesiastes, which could be translated, 'all is construct'.

Self esteem is an important form of affirmation that seems vital to our well-being. It's more than just an opinion. But whence does it spring?
For those who believe in an immortal soul this seems like a cinch; there's some kind of discriminating essence.
But even if we grant such delightful hubris, we still can't dismiss the fact that our 'selves' are 'embedded' in 'forms of life,' and that we use the cultural/idealistic resources of these 'discourse communities' in a double edged way. These resources give us the words to give compelling 'form' to constructs like self/self-esteem, but at the same time they 'construct what we're conceiving'. The self-reflexive evidence indicates that there is no timeless, true or essential self abiding behind our complex ways of doing, acting and talking. Our selves are no more real than our personae here. Selves are contingent on their cultural resources and not universally prior. One can extrapolate from this what nonsense individualism is; it's a delicious irony that even this is a 'collectivist' construct (rofl).
Self-esteem is indeed vital, not because it's a construct, but because human's respond positively and are nurtured by its cultivation. The challenge is to qualitatively interrogate the source of self-esteem.

According to Maslow there is a fundamental form of self-esteem which merely demands respect, the respect of others so as to cultivate self-respect, and this, as I've argued before Joe, is in my opinion what ails aboriginal culture; centuries of being perceived as the lowest of the low.
What does the 'squalor' indicate if not a disabling want of self-respect? Failing that, how do you account for it? Are they just primitive? Slovenly by nature?
You think precisely as neoliberalism dictates, you blame individuals, with no concession given for just how debilitating a want of basic respect/self-respect can be. all aboriginals have to do is pick themselves up?
At least Rhosty presumably wasn't stigmatised from the outset. He only had to overcome adversity. His self-esteem at least had a healthy root.