Not honouring the dead
Bans on irc happen easily, yet sometimes a bit surprising. Reminding Australians that their fellows were abused in any war they were fighting for the Brits or the Americans causes heaps of objectivions to the typical predictive programming Australians went through. Amazing.
"Don't mention the war" has become a running gag among my mates who introduce me as "German", and I had lots of fun trying to keep up with the stereotypes thrown at me. While my mum made me a pacifist when recalling her childhood memories during the WWII, the perception of German people still clings more to bad American TV series than any historic or psychological account.
While I happily take any Nazi allusions with a contended, yet desperate smile, reminding Australians about the abuse their soldiers took under British and US command evokes jingoism instantly. I'm aware about the genocide my fellow countrymen did, white Australians still seem to consider themselves to live natively here. Reminding Ozzies that British and American officers and generals send Australian soldiers as cannon fodder around, is "dishonouring" the death.
I've seen the WWII frontline in the Northern Territory, but Australians (unless they were unfortunate soldiers fighting another countries war) were spared from the immediate experience of war (mainly because they never considered eradicating the native population of an invaded continent as war).
So the Ozzie experience of war is more like joining their masters in a stupid war abroad, and celebrating those who managed to survive this insanity. The genocide of the native population is not just ignored, but continues today and is noticeable with the statistics about life expectancy for black and white Australians.
I don't mind being reminded about the war - I didn't fight it, and was considered unsuitable for the German military. If I was proud about German military achievements, I would be called a Nazi. Reminding Australians how their soldiers were abused in the Boer war, WWII and Vietnam turns out different... means thinking stops and nationalism rises.
The power of memes amazes me more and more. It makes people identify with situations, which they have not the faintest clue about, and breeds more people willing to sacrifice themselves for phony promises.
I guess it's just life. It might be psychologically easier to identify with killed idols than with a genocidal bunch. I still don't believe that Australians have killed more people for "good causes" than they killed to take over the continent. I just realised it's unpopular to say so.
5 comments:
also, what the fuck about austr-aliens of irish ancestry being "PROUD" that their ancestors fought & died for the british in ww1+2?
last time i checked, it was the british who were responsible for the irish holocaust, yet irish-austr-aliens actually "VOLUNTEERED" to fight for the britsh.
kinda like if the jews were proud their ancestors fought for the nazis or something.
dear yahweh יהוה!
please don't allow me to be lynched for that last sentance.
like, someone had to say it.
thanking you in advance.
also!
dear yahweh יהוה!
please don't allow me to be lynched for suggesting that other peoples have also suffered holocausts.
just sayin' n shit.
thanking you in advance.
Dear Discordia, please ignore Rosa's comments about her false god. But then, I guess as Goddess you have better things to do than reading blogs. The same most likely applies for the Nine inch Nail guy יהוה, so let's skip religion for a second.
War seems to be part of the human inheritance. Although I thought for a while that war could be eliminated entirely, it can only be transformed into other forms of intergroup competetion, which provide an outlet for aggression less fatal than a war.
However, defining one's group membership by meaningless attributes like nationality remains a powerful mindfuck. It's funny that this happens in "individualistic" societies - the identity is enhanced by wearing colours, creating conformity.
well said winnie, i couldn't agree less.
war ain't innate.
say it.
also, if war is innate, how do you account for the fact that there is no [credible] evidence for war before the agricultural revolution?
war as human inheritance is just more bullshit social darwinist propaganda, no more true than the idea that capitalism, poverty, patriarchy or a million other things that serve the ruling elite's [sinister] agenda are innate.
i have better proof than this, but in the meantime check this shit out:
Culture Fundamentally Alters the Brain
By Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Staff Writer
18 January 2008 12:44 pm ET
It's no secret culture influences your food preferences and taste in music. But now scientists say it impacts the hard-wiring of your brain.
New research shows that people from different cultures use their brains differently to solve basic perceptual tasks.
Neuroscientists Trey Hedden and John Gabrieli of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research asked Americans and East Asians to solve basic shape puzzles while in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner. They found that both groups could successfully complete the tasks, but American brains had to work harder at relative judgments, while East Asian brains found absolute judgments more challenging.
Previous psychology research has shown that American culture focuses on the individual and values independence, while East Asian culture is more community-focused and emphasizes seeing people and objects in context. This study provides the first neurological evidence that these cultural differences extend to brain activity patterns.
"It's kind of obvious if you look at ads and movies," Gabrieli told LiveScience. "You can tell that East Asian cultures emphasize interdependence and the U.S. ads all say things like, 'Be yourself, you're number one, pursue your goals.' But how deep does this go? Does it really influence the way you perceive the world in the most basic way? It's very striking that what seems to be a social perspective within the culture drives all the way to perceptual judgment."
The results of the study were published in the January issue of the journal Psychological Science.
Hard work
The scientists asked 10 Americans and 10 East Asians who had recently arrived in the U.S. to look at pictures of lines within squares.
In some trials, subjects decided whether the lines were the same length, regardless of the surrounding squares, requiring them to judge individual objects independent of context. In others, participants judged whether different sets of lines and squares were in the same proportion, regardless of their absolute sizes, a task that requires comparing objects relative to each other.
The fMRI revealed that Americans' brains worked harder while making relative judgments, because brain regions that reflect mentally demanding tasks lit up. Conversely, East Asians activated the brain's system for difficult jobs while making absolute judgments. Both groups showed less activation in those brain areas while doing tasks that researchers believe are in their cultural comfort zones.
"For the kind of thinking that was thought to be culturally unpreferred, this system gets turned on," Gabrieli said. "The harder you have to think about something, the more it will be activated."
Individual flexibility
The researchers were surprised to see so strong an effect, Gabrieli said, and interested in the reasons for individual variations within a culture.
So they surveyed subjects to find out how strongly they identified with their culture by asking questions about social attitudes, such as whether a person is responsible for the failure of a family member.
In both groups, participants whose views were most aligned with their culture's values showed stronger brain effects.
Gabrieli said he is interested in testing whether brain patterns change if a person immigrates.
"There's a hint that six months in a culture already changes you," he said, referring to psychological, rather than neurological, research. "It suggests that there's a lot of flexibility."
The big divide
Scientists have long wondered about the biological root of cultural differences.
"One question was, when people see the line and box, do they look different all the way, starting at your retina?" Gabrieli said. "Or do you see the same thing to start with but then your mind focuses on one dimension or another. These data indicate that it's at that later stage. In parts of the brain that are involved in early vision, we didn’t see a difference. Rather we saw a difference in higher-processing brain areas. People from different cultures don’t see the world differently, but they think differently about what they see."
Gabireli said he does worry about unintended consequences of his research.
"The downside of these cultural studies is that one ends up stereotyping a culture," he said. "Are you creating big differences between people? I like to think the more you understand different cultures, the better you understand their perspectives."
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