Colonisation: why is it so hard for the obvious to be stated?

So Jacinta Price is being criticised for this part of her speech yesterday (and I'm going by the way The Guardian has extracted it):

The senator’s speech criticised Indigenous bodies which she claimed sought to “demonise colonial settlement in its entirety and nurture a national self-loathing about the foundations of modern Australian achievement”.

Guardian Australia asked Nampijinpa Price to clarify whether she thought any Indigenous people were suffering negative impacts of colonisation, Price responded: “No.”

“A positive impact, absolutely. I mean, now we have running water, readily available food,” she said.

“No, there is no ongoing negative impacts of colonisation.”

Well, I think that last line is clearly ridiculous - in fact, you would hard pressed to find any indigenous group from around the world who you could say is suffering no negative impacts of colonisation.  It's pretty remarkable when you look at their situation in very diverse countries how their communities typically share problems of alcohol and drug abuse, high suicide rates, and economic marginalisation.

On the other side, though, the first sentence quoted above is a pretty accurate critique of how the pro-indigenous advocacy has become intensely about never acknowledging any good to come out of joining modernity - medicine, reliable food sources, travel, more opportunity for different experiences, etc etc.

I may have written about this here before, but I still think it is very telling how an exchange in an episode of Northern Exposure way back in the 90's caught my attention for how, even then, it reflected something that I felt had already become politically incorrect to say in Australia.   The lead character (the New York Jew Dr Joel) asked his laconic, indigenous helper Marilyn what she thought of her ancestors' land being colonised.  And her answer was along the lines "It comes with some good things, and some bad." I'm sure medicine got mentioned in the "good" - but I can't remember what else.  And I think in the bad was the loss of some traditions, although again, I can't remember the detail.

But the thing was that the show, which obviously had a "liberal" bias in its stories and general attitude, did not attract controversy in American for having an indigenous character state the obvious - there are advantages to having entry into the modern world as a side effect of colonisation.   Which is not to deny that there have been better and worse ways in which colonisation has happened in history.   

As I complained in my last post about the Voice, "the vibe" in indigenous advocacy seems to have moved to a completely negative and grievance based approach over the last 30 years, and it's not hard to imagine that this is having a negative effect on the attitude of the young indigenous towards respect of laws and property.   And the higher rate of indigenous youth crime is, I  have no doubt at all, a reason why in many regional parts of Australia, the "Yes" vote would be seen as rewarding the "wrong" attitude.

To go back to the title of the post:   why is it so hard for the both the Yes side, and the No side, to move from the unrealistic extremes on a key question of the effect of colonisation.

The correct answer - it has had a mixed effect of positive and negatives - is obviously true, and it would give confidence that people can reach a common ground if both sides can stop pretending that it's not.

Update:   Well, I think I have found the conversation on a Northern Exposure fan site.  It's not exactly the same as my 30 year old memory, but the gist is close enough, I think!:

Marilyn: Death, like the white man, wasn't happy in his own land. He didn't think his kingdom was big enough. He wanted more. One night, when the good spirit was asleep, Death attacked the world. He killed a lot of people, and he took the Chief's prettiest daughter as his bride. She pretended to be a good wife, but one day she secretly fed him a pumpkin seed. The pumpkin grew and grew inside death. Finally, he exploded, and a million pumpkin seeds covered the earth.
Joel: I still don't get it.
Marilyn: A lot of people died, but a good thing came out of it, too.
Joel: What was that?
Marilyn:: It's the same with white people. They cleared the forest, they dug up the land, and they gave us the flu. But they also brought power tools and penicillin and Ben and Jerry's ice cream.

---

Revisiting, briefly, My Kitchen Rules

Back in the last decade, I used to post every now and then about the current season of My Kitchen Rules, before getting thoroughly sick of the formula and the clear decision of the producers to make it increasingly about contestant bitchiness and conflict than cooking.   And then the show got rested anyway, due to the shame felt by having given tanned nutjob Pete Evans a TV profile for a decade, presumably.

But I see that it's back, and I have to admit, I have dipped my toe into it again.   

Not much though - it was obvious from the first episode that the old, shameful formula is still there.

So I'm not going to bother with talking about it much, but I did want to note two of the "too obvious" drama tactics the show uses:

1.   This season features, once again, an apparently upper middle class couple who might dress well and live in a nice house (perhaps with a flash boat tied up to their canal jetty), but their taste in food is relatively unsophisticated and verges on bogan-ish.  (This year's couple, for example, made a jaw dropping claim - for contestants on a cooking show - that the duck they were being served was the first time they had ever eaten it.  This did make me laugh, actually, as I tried to imagine the number of other viewers around Australia gasping at their lack of culinary adventure.)

But what's worse (for me, as resident and defender of this fair city) is that these couples are from Brisbane, or further north in Queensland.   I am pretty sure, if I were an obsessive with time on my hands, that I could show that this is at least the third time that such a couple have - suspiciously - been Queenslanders.  I have little doubt that the producers are from the southern "foodie" cities, and actively look for contestant applicants from up North who seem to think they know about food, but really don't: all the better for the rest of the country to laugh at.   (Seriously, I would love to be a fly on the wall during production meetings, to hear drama tactics discussed.)

2.   I have mentioned this before, but it seems they just can't give it a rest:   the ridiculousness of the way at least half of the teams, on their first home restaurant night, cook something they've cooked a hundred times before as their speciality, only to stuff it up completely.   "Oh, I don't know what's gone wrong.  It just didn't set/freeze/cook like it usually does."

The fact that they are cooking for a larger number of people is no excuse.   If you have normally cooked for 6, and have to do it for double that number, you can still do a dry run for cooking for 12, surely??

It becomes particularly hard to believe when it's a case of the team who liked to talk up their abilities, and are too harsh on the others' efforts, only to get their comeuppance when they try to cook their No 1 dish.   My eyes can't roll back far enough for the number of times we have seen this scenario.

On a side note, re-reading my old posts on past seasons, reminded me that I used to enjoy the episode reviews of comedian/writer Ben Pobjie.  I haven't thought about him for some years:  in 2017, I noted  that he seemed to be trying to break into stand up comedy with little (or limited) success, and had also made it clear he has some serious mental health issues.  

So, I just looked on Twitter to see if he is still active there.  He is, although it seems with not much of a following.  And he's still a bit of a worry - his current post includes a bit of mocking of RU OK day, which seems a bit odd, given his past (current?) problems.      

Anyway, it's not like I don't wish him well - I thought his writing on MKR could be very amusing indeed.  Hope he finds another niche, eventually. 

 

Thanks, Elon

 Also:

 

Alien humour

Things not going completely well in Portugal?

DW news has a short story up about a bit of a backlash apparently developing over the openness of drug use in Porto, Portugal:

 

 Of course, it's only a 5 minute report, so I can't claim it's very "in depth". But it's interesting nonetheless, given the amount of international fanboying (much of it superficial and inaccurate, I've always said) that has gone on for years about their approach to drug use.

He has form, as a rich jerk

For the full context, in case you haven't seen the news or social media in the last 24 hours:

I see that he is also interested in living until at least 100, using biohacks: 

The 41-year-old Gurner, valued at $929 million in The Australian Financial Review’s 2022 Rich List – and who billionaire Harry Triguboff has described as “the future” – has $10 billion worth of apartments under way, including on several sites across Collingwood.

He has grand plans for his $150 million, high-end health, wellness and anti-ageing brand Saint Haven. Another site is planned around Melbourne’s South Yarra before the end of the year and a third in Melbourne’s CBD, before plans for others in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, north shore and Sydney CBD...

Gurner says his clubs will be social and for networking, but put health and wellness at their core. That’s when he says that he wants to live to 100. It turns out Gurner has become increasingly obsessed about staying young, especially after his dad died from cancer and he came close to financial ruin in 2016...

Gurner says he is one of the guinea pigs for the club’s $250,000 biohacking, anti-ageing packages that include an annual full-body MRI, brain scans and monthly blood testing,

“I get about 250 different tests of my bloods which will say, ‘this month you’re deficient in [vitamin] D, your testosterone is up or down’. Then the physios, dieticians, doctors on call set my regime,” he says. “I take about 50 or 60 tablets a day. It’s always very specific to my latest results.”

I'm sensing some intense Peter Thiel vibes...

 

Floods noted

If you are on (stupid) X, it is worth looking at this tweet thread, as it contains some remarkable and dramatic video clips of recent floods around the world:

 Yeah, climate change is not something you can deal with by installing more airconditioning. 

Four Corners on the Voice

While there's no doubt at all that the ABC takes a very sympathetic approach to all indigenous issues, last night's Four Corners, which involved discussions with both pro and anti Voice referendum voices, was pleasingly balanced.     

Most surprising was the time given to regional local aboriginal activists who indicated that they were either going to vote no, or were sceptical of the whole idea, out of concerns that the Canberra based Voice  was going to work against local communities getting what they wanted.  In other words, they were saying exactly what I've been muttering here - the entire concept seems to about creating a new attempt at a bureaucratic filter to advice to government, which the local community organisations will need to convince on needs and issues, rather than their current ability to directly deal with government.    

These "no" voters were not, it seemed, on the radical Left, who are against it for being insultingly inadequate.  (One such person did feature, but was not given much air time.)

If anything (and I suspect that many Lefty journalists might have been grinding their teeth about this), the program really seemed to legitimatise a "no" vote for those who don't like the conservative "no" campaign, but just have objections to whole proposal on pragmatic grounds.   Like me...

Something good

Over the last week, I've been marvelling at how much bad/somewhat depressing news there seems to be around at the moment.   

So I will go out of my way to note that there is something that is cheering me up at least once a week - the new episodes of Futurama.  The revival of the show has been a clear success, and I find it hard to imagine anyone being disappointed with it.  [Update:  OK, I have checked some online reviews, and there are some people who are underwhelmed.  I would agree, it does sometimes feel a bit "fan-service-y", but I think in a good way.]

Last week's episode - a satire of the Covid pandemic - handled it very well, I thought, with good and clever jokes that both sides (the antivax conservatives, and the sane) could enjoy.  That's quite a fine line they managed to walk...

Excuse my scepticism...

....but seriously, doesn't this sound like an extremely bureaucratic arrangement, and one which I can readily imagine primed for internal fights and dissent?   From the Guardian, explaining in summary form how the Langton idea for the Voice is supposed to work:

• It will provide independent advice to parliament and government.

• It will be chosen by First Nations people based on the wishes of local communities.

• It will be representative of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

• It will be empowering, community-led, inclusive, respectful, culturally informed and gender balanced. It will also include youth.

• It will be accountable and transparent.

The voice will work alongside existing organisations and traditional structures.

The Calma-Langton co-design report recommended the national voice have 24 members, with gender balance structurally guaranteed.

The base model proposes two members from each state, the Northern Territory, ACT and Torres Strait. A further five members would represent remote areas due to their unique needs – one member each from the Northern Territory, Western Australia, Queensland, South Australia and New South Wales. An additional member would represent the significant population of Torres Strait Islanders living on the mainland.

Members would serve four-year terms, with half the membership determined every two years. There would be a limit of two consecutive terms for each member.

Two co-chairs of a different gender to one another would be selected by the members of the voice every two years.

The Calma-Langton model proposed a national voice with two permanent advisory groups – one on youth and one on disability – and a small ethics council to advise on probity and governance.

How would local and regional voices feed in?

The co-design report proposed 35 regions, broken down by state and territory. Communities and governments in each state and territory would jointly determine these.

Local and regional voices would provide advice to all levels of government to influence policy and programs, and advise the non-government sector and business.

The report outlines their roles, how they would be constituted and the principles they would embody, like cultural leadership, community-led design and empowerment.

There would be “a clear, two-way flow of advice and communication” between them and the national voice, the report said.

 

 

 

The "love bomb" approach

As most of the comments following this Tweet indicate, this approach to arguing for "Yes" is very unlikely to be effective:

 

A neuroscientist on her cannabis research

Oh look:  another neuroscientist from America in Science magazine basically saying what I've been saying for a number of years:

Although Hurd opposes the criminalization of cannabis use and possession, she believes legalization has come with underappreciated downsides. She’s concerned it has fanned a permissive culture and a perception that the drug is generally safe. “I am worried about how cavalier we’re becoming and that there is a cannabis smoke shop now practically, in some places, on every other block,” she says...

...she favors regulations that limit potency and using tax revenues from the sale of cannabis to educate people about the risks, and for treatment and research to help those harmed by its use.

You can read what her research has been about - mainly the dangers to children and adolescents who are increasing exposed to THC. 

At the very end, though, there is a box talking about the "good" component of cannabis and it's possible use in reducing other drug addictions:

Yasmin Hurd has spent much of her career documenting the harms caused by the psychoactive compound in cannabis, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Ironically, she believes another cannabis ingredient, cannabidiol (CBD), could help break cannabis dependence. Her initial focus, though, is on testing it to help heroin users.

In a seminal study published in 2009, she showed CBD could reduce drug-seeking behavior in rats previously exposed to heroin, perhaps by reducing craving triggered by cues they had associated with the drug. “CBD could actually do the opposite of THC,” says Hurd, who heads an addiction research lab at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. In 2019, she and her clinical team reported that compared with a placebo, a CBD capsule taken once a day for 3 days reduced drug cravings and anxiety in 45 human heroin users.

Why's the Bible down on dogs?

As usual, an enlightening and entertaining video from Religion for Breakfast, looking at the reasons why dogs are not generally positively referenced in the Bible.   (Worth watching for the brief section on Hittite puppy magic, too):

Yet more "Consider the Ring"

It turns out that Brisbane is not the only place about to stage a Ring Cycle.  As I have explained before [just search "Ring Cycle" in the side bar - I like most of my past posts about this], I'll be there in December, to see if my "sink or swim in 15 hours of dense Germanic storytelling" introduction to the artform pays off.   

But in this lengthy article in The Guardian, I learn that the Royal Opera House in London is about to stage it as well, directed by Australian Barrie Kosky, whose style is most often described as "flamboyant".  That's not a descriptor in the arts world that has natural appeal to me, although I guess that some would say these particular operas are intrinsically flamboyant, so what am I on about?

Well, all I can say is that I consider it a good thing that the Brisbane production is being directed by a Chinese guy who, as this video indicates, has a pretty grounded approach: 

 

I am, by the way, a bit bothered by the lack of media attention being given to this forthcoming Brisbane production, which has been delayed years by Covid.   I hope it gets noticed soon.   

Anyhoo, back to The Guardian article that talks again about the Cycle generally:

Wagner has never felt more culturally marginal than today, even though, paradoxically, many leading cultural franchises, from Lord of the Rings to Star Wars to Game of Thrones, are unthinkable without his influence. On the face of it, 2023 needs nothing so little as bombastic white-male-supremacist art composed by an antisemitic megalomaniac whom even one-time superfan Nietzsche came to see as a kind of cultural Covid. “Is Wagner a human being at all?” Nietzsche asked. “Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches – he has made music sick.”

Of course, such a paragraph means that it will be followed by several explaining why it is, in fact, still culturally relevant, including its constant re-interpretations:

Wagner at least thought he was issuing a deep, unified statement of cultural truths that could change how we live. “He felt there had to be some kind of drastic step taken in order to revolutionise the way people lived and their demands on life,” Wagner scholar Michael Tanner said. “Otherwise they would just sink to a level where they didn’t mind the fact that they were living so much less fully than they could do.”

Playwright George Bernard Shaw interpreted the Ring cycle as an allegory of the collapse of capitalism. But it is endlessly interpretable. It can serve not just as Marxist tract but as a Third Reich allegory; a sado-masochistic indictment of the have-yachts in the posh seats, or a Buddhist-inflected music drama in which the high body count suggests the death of the ego that Wagner thought, in line with his beloved philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, was desirable.

Richard Jones, director of two-fourths of ENO’s current Ring, favours something like the last account: “Ultimately it’s about the idea of self-renunciation. It’s like great Greek drama. Since it was first performed in 1876, there has never been a period when it wasn’t germane to the contemporary world,” he told the Guardian when his cycle opened in 2021.

Certainly, Wagner supposed his music drama would offer quasi-religious experience in the ancient Greek manner. “His idea was that a sufficiently potent new art form, such as he was perhaps uniquely able to write, would, by being experienced, communally change people’s consciousness,” said Tanner. “You would emerge a different person.” Wagner even built a temple to this cult in the form of Bayreuth’s opera house.

Yes, the radio interview I heard when the Brisbane production was announced did note that many claim that  viewing a Cycle production is life changing.   One has one's doubts that this will be way I react, but I'm willing to go through the experiment.

 

Kayla calms down

There are more important stories in the world, but the bizarre one of the fake gigantic boob wearing Canadian teacher deserves an update.

According to the Daily Mail, he has turned up at his new school looking very conventionally male, which makes all of the warnings about it respecting his "gender expression", and taking a lot of security precautions, seem a bit odd.

It also further adds to the mystery as to whether he was on a massive troll at the other school.  But he did also go skydiving and walking down the street in his fake boobs, so who knows?

Or did a flurry of parental objections to the new school make them tell him that he just can't show up dressed like an idiot?

The tabloids also love to repeat that he had claimed his breasts were real - when does lying on something so obvious move from (what?) creative performance to a sign of clear instability you don't want in a profession like teaching?