I am a man of simplicity and brevity, consequently, a few sentences, on the most part, is about all you are going to get out of me...unless I get a bit fired up. In which case you may see four or five paragraphs explode from my keyboard.

At any rate, I see reverence as more spiritual than cultural.

Reverence is when we hold each other in the highest respect as unique children of a God and/or Nature.

I suspect there are those who have reached this level among us...many of us, however, appear to be struggling to reach tolerance, at least as I am, unfortunately, seeing it.

BOAZ_David, in your example of the two tribes, isn't this a "law" of the Murut tribe more so than cultural?

"to SLEEP with the girlfriend in that village, but NOT to have sexual relations. To do so meant severe and immediate social ostracization."

Given the fact that it is a binding custom of the tribe and punishable by tribal justice if violated, therefore the Dayak/Iban boy would be breaking the Murat tribe law by following his own cultural practices.

Culture is generally not something that can be as easily controlled and regulated as law. Culture is cultivated, it changes, grows, evolves. A culture may include a predominant religion, but does not preclude other religious practices. Only law can really do that. Culture can influence law but culture is not enforceable like law. In Australia we have laws and we have a mainstream culture, but citizens are only required to obey the laws and that is it. A citizen of this country has no obligation to adhere to or adopt any mainstream or other cultural belief, attitude, value, practice or whatever. They are only required to allow others the lawful freedom of expression, association, etc.

Hamlet; what a childish thing to say about Soccer, sorry make that football, many throughout Australia including the prevailing culture love the game, I have agreed with many of your posts in the past, so please don't weaken what can otherwise be great points of view by being ridiculous !, this is an important debate for the future of our counrty, and we owe it to our children to get it right, what's right ? to be honest I struggle to know what is right anymore because I find myself in a quandary, on the one hand I want the typical easy going Aussie that gives everybody a fair go, on the other hand the easy going nature is being tested by being continuedly being told that I'm racist, that my country is racist, that my culture is not worth a pinch of crap, and that I should be ashamed of being born a "white Australian", because we must have somehow been born with the racist gene !, well okay I think to myself lets be fair, how much ownership of these accusations do I take on board ?, but while I sit and try to be honest with my part in this, I find I can't even get out of the blocks in this thought process, because you cannot examine your own behaviour in a disagreement if you are the only side that's doing the examining, the way this is heading is more and more tolerant easy going Aussie's will treat this like a joke and will not even engage in debate because it is just too ridiculous for words, it's like listening to some fool like germaine greer lament how racist Australia is without doing some heavy hitting on some of the horrendous racsism,bigorty,child abuse and womans rights atrocities that go unchecked as "cultures" all around the world, go to town on these poeple and then I will start to listen otherwise you are just a fake and a coward !

VGC

A fourteen line post comprising one sentence. Marcel Proust would have been proud of that.

Re Soccer, which was the name given to it by its own administrators back in the 1880s, because Rugby Football was known as 'Rugger'. It was decided to call 'Association Football': "Soccer". The football codes being called football because they were ball games played on foot, rather than on horseback, ie polo. It has nothing to do with the use of the foot on the ball.

As far as I am concerned an Australian sporting team consists of playing who spend the vast majority of their activities competing IN Australia, and are not overseas mercenaries.

And I cannot like a game where the rules are so artificial as to prohibit the use of the hands in playing a ball or where half of a particular national team seems to be proud to not know who their fathers were. I am talking about Brazil, of course, where so many players only have one name (Renaldo, Fred, Ricardino etc). They seem to not know what their surnames are, so that tells me a little of their ancestry...

However, every person’s culture has a value to them, and people can borrow or take wholesale parts from other cultures if they wish. I am free to decide whether I want to accept someone else’s culture having an effect on mine or not. In the same way, if I was to move to another country, say the Netherlands, I would be churlish to object and protest against the way that Dutch culture deals with the use of drugs. If I move to the Netherlands, I would have to accept that. I would not be forced to use drugs myself of course.

So, why do people coming to Australia want to change the culture that previously existed here? They may maintain their own cultures, at their own expense if they wish, but why expect that Australians would subsidise and accept the alien culture as if it was their own?

A person coming here should accept what is here.

Well well Hamlet, you surprise me, you use the same tactics of the left to denigrate the great unwashed/uneducated to strengthen their point of view,so I'll say to you in one big long sentence never judge a persons intelligence or the lack thereof,on thier grammar and sentence structures or indeed spelling, you can critise till the cows come home but it still does not make you right, all it shows is that your a sarcastic educated elitist bully, rather like ivory tower academic lefties !

Oh look a paragraph, your pathetic take on football, is so farcical I really wouldn't know what theory to challenge first, prehaps I will limit to just one seeing as this is not supposed to be a post about football.

you say.......

"And I cannot like a game where the rules are so artificial as to prohibit the use of the hands in playing a ball"

"Artificial" ? what the ? so requiring more skills to play a game is "artificial" ? I have played all football codes in this country and I love them all, they all take a different set of skills to play, football just takes a bit more talent, maybe this is what is worrying you champ,

mate I don't know why you are so petty about a great game, that has been played in this counrty for years, but hey that's your choice.

How far to the right are you hamlet, are you about to fall over the edge ?, if we are to put forward some sensible debate about immigration,culture and our way of life I think it would be fair to say we could do without extreme views on either side, now hating football is not extreme views I know, but it comes across as hating anything ethinic based, and I'm sure that's not what you want, do you ?

VGC

Australians have been forced to tolerate the intolerable. And like the horse that you can force to the water but you can't make it drink.....you cannot make us like the intolerable.
Particularly when that intolerable bunch shows it's hatred, racism and thanklessness to us.
Forcing two different types of resentful societies to live in the same country is asking for civil war.
In what other western nation do Muslims live a crime free, peaceful existance?