Protecting people "like us" from people "like them"

Then change it to being both legal and socially sanctioned. Is there a point you wish to make? I am offering the treatment of the convict women of Australia as something that was regarded as both socially acceptable, in that no one saw anything wrong with treating these women as white slaves and legal as in, no one was arrested for doing so and it was in fact, done officially through administrative channels, with the full knowledge of the prison officials as well as the Governer and his administration.

 

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...Sigh. Hoped for so much more. And I'm even more pissed than I was a few hours ago.

Ok.

The Prison Governor, SAM. Not the Governor of the colony. Not legal sanction. The actions of a few isolated from society. This is commonplace.
See, when you want to read and believe something So Badly, .... its too easy to make the wrong assumption.

It was never legal to use women convicts in such a way. It was simply a case of those living far away from any officialdom taking matters into their own hands. That happens all overthe world.
See, what you've found here is an unsubstantiated website detailing the events of a couple of hundred years ago. To 5,000 women prisoners, give or take, in that institution. Over twenty years. Think about that. A few hundred a year, a few hundred years ago. And you? Your country? Right now? For the last few thousand years?

Here's the thing though. You've managed to dredge up events from a couple of hundred years ago I was taught in high school. Open. Admitted. Dealt with. If you'd like to more more about the earliest history of Australia, I'm one who could tell you. There's more. Much more. Yet none of it holds a candle to what you're doing right now.

India and Pakistan are still rated amongst the highest practitioners of honour killings in the world.
Right now.
Today.
In spite of the law. Thousands every year.
Now. Today. Understand? Not history, in your case. Current events. Use that as your "example".

So go crawl back under your rock. See if you can find a few little things which happened a few hundred years ago to cast a cloud over what your country, your culture, religion, is doing right now. See if you can distract a few more kids without a clue.

Use it as an example and tell us all it's because you "don't want to turn the thread into a slagfest", or something something.

Or stop hiding and become an honest person. Your call.

 

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Pretty sure it was the Governer of the colony

e.g.

Anyway, even if it was the Prison Governer, one would assume that if what they did was socially unacceptable or illegal, there would be some accountability.

If you don't like the example of the womens abuse in Australian colonies, we can use the Magdalene asylums instead [serendipitously watching "The Magdalene Sisters" on Lumiere].

I'm okay with using any example which fits the proposition.

Sure, but the proposition is not what is more widespread. Honor killing or domestic violence was never legally prescribed in India or Pakistan.

We're looking at the human science aspect of degradation, not killing or elimination. What makes degradation legally and socially acceptable to some societies? What changes in the society change these legally and socially acceptable behaviours to offensive ones which are then legally unacceptable? In a way, I guess we are not addressing superstition or the effects of poverty, lack of education and the like. This is oppression at the highest strata of society, the group which dictates social convention for all the society.

 

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With all the underwater cities, recently uncovered ones, like in Turkey, and other disregarded evidence, I would say that civilization may be much older than 10,000 years.

 

Calling for peace between nation states is one thing, but this "one-world-state" as you put it? YIKES!

Please be aware of the implications of that. And the nefarious people who are constantly using "one world government" and "new world order" and trying to sell us more unelected bureaucracy in the guise of simply being united.

If the individual states can't seem to get a handle either on their own sovereignty, or respecting the sovereignty of other nations, and get their foreign policies and financial systems in order, little good it's going to do to give the powers that be anymore authority over unions of nations (like the EU) where those people can accrue more power and less transparency and accountability than they already have.

In the same way I think the call for increased spending on NASA is wasteful at this time: we have so many problems on Earth, and if we can't get a handle on the here and now, what are we doing reaching for the stars?

 

I am going to go out on a limb here, and very far out -

There seems to be the trend that the more secular a society, the more (perceived) altruism, non-violence, sense of equality and democracy there is, for all, men and women, rich and poor, innocent and guilty, young and old.

Whereas in societies where tradition and religious norms (!!) are highly regarded, there tends to be a rigid caste system, gross inequality in many aspects, and also a lot of legal use of force.


However, I think that just because there seems to be less apparent legal use of force, that such a society is in any way more stable, safer or more advanced.

Just ask anyone from the "civilized world" who has lost their job, their home, who has been bullied at work. Consider the numbers of people who need to take various psychogenic or mood-altering prescription medications and illegal drugs just so that they can make it through yet another day.

Note that in modern societies, the sense of right and wrong is relativized, and many people are morally ambivalent and confused. In order to be sure you have actually been wronged, you first have to win your case in court. This is an enormous uncertainty to live with.

In the traditional societies, this kind of scope of moral relativism is generally absent, and people have much more peace of mind in this regard.

There are pros and cons for both the traditional as well as the modern society, obviously.
But we can hardly say that as a whole, the modern one is better than the traditional one.

 

No we didn't. I specifically pointed out that she was inextricably muddling her own issue, with such ill chosen examples as that and others, and recommended better choices. Others have likewise recommended that she make her extrapolations from more factual bases.

The mistreatment of convicts or women in the fashion you chose for example has never been legal, has never been confined as a crime to any group of the kind you restrict yourself to apparently, and has never been as inherent a part of the society you identify it with, as the honor killing terrorism and othering features of cultures far readier to your hand and mentioned here already.

Find a society you can accurately describe, legally and socially, and consider the familiar degradations practiced within it, for starters. Or deal with other prople's examples. Correcting your errors does not advance your ostensible agenda.

The more carefully I read, the less consistent your assertions and arguments become. Why are you including criminals of all kinds as a "group"? Why do you muddle your groups, and vacillate between legalistic and circumstantial criteria as crucial? Why are you choosing events and circumstances about which you know essentially nothing, and mistake in fundamental ways, and do not seem to fit your criteria for consideration, as your examples? What are you actually trying to talk about?

 

I believe if one sees everything as relative including all events one doesn't have this problem.

 

Bingo. Good post!

 

For this proposition, its unavoidable. If the other is degraded or dehumanised socially and legally, they can't NOT be "criminals" - hence my constant focus on the fact that this is group behaviour which legally condemns and dehumanises those others who are later, on further consideration, not only NOT considered as the others but no longer legally demonised for the very aspects that made them criminals. See all examples I have given - whether it is the demonisation of women for alleged adultery, abortion, being "fallen" etc, men or people for race, colour, backwardness etc etc

I did not locate any evidence of any of the above, if you have any, please provide it. Note that I am referring to changing notions, I am aware that later Governers, specifically Macquarie[after the second settlement] did not sanction these behaviours, but earlier ones certainly did.

 

I've cited my references. Do you have any citations for yours? Can I expect to see your assertions backed up with evidence anytime soon?

 

How much of this discussion actually has to do with the topic of othering and the debasement of others,
and how much is it simply a continuation of the old spat between Sam and iceaura & co.?

Because it sure looks like within this very thread, you are trying to bring about such othering and debasement of others, in the case some of the posters who participate.

So you might as well use the opportunity and introspect thyselves!
So whence the othering? Whence the debasement of others?
What has poster X done that poster Y finds them worthy of a very bad treatment? Why does Y think so?

 

I would say for the proposition originally indicated, or alluded to, it's terminally destructive - criminals are individuals who have performed defined acts, not people "othered" due to their a priori assigned membership in a group. You've run the discussion into a tar pit.

For example:

Exactly the kind of confusion predicted, from the muddle launched.

Another:

You have no examples of legal dehumanization due to a priori membership in a group. No "group behavior" is involved in your examples. Legality is not involved in your examples. And so forth.

The problems started when you ignored or mistook the examples given you by others, and focused on one that does not suit your original query in the first place and that you know little about in the second. The original query is now unavailable, until the chaff is cleared. Which is too bad, because it was of interest.

 

How much lower than dehumanising a people can one get? Lets go back to the OP since people keep losing sight of the objective:

note: these were all criminals, and most of them for who they were, rather than for "committing defined acts" [although, we might make an interesting foray into the othering and dehumanisation of small time criminals over criminal state apparatuses or Wall street thugs, whose acts do not garner accountability due to their spectacular and massive investment in the process by the people].

So you have women who are incarcerated for abortion or adultery, Jews who are sent to concentration camp for being Jews, blacks who are enslaved or displayed in a zoo due to their "backwardness" [which is one of the milder epithets applied to people from the colonies]. They are not merely looked down upon, they are dehumanised, it is or was socially acceptable to treat them lower than animals. The state approves of this behaviour enough that there is legislation against these "criminals"

And then we have an about face. We have laws permitting women to abort and incarcerating those who attack these women for adultery, we have laws protecting Jews from "antisemitism" in the same societies where they were pariahs, we have laws guaranteeing equal civil rights to those blacks who would have been incarcerated if they attempted to free their slaveholders.

In other words, what was legal for the state or authority at one point in support of social convention, is now a criminal act, with [one presumes] majority support for such opinion.

So what changed in the human psyche to make these transitions?