Post No. 2,964 - some unhappy insights into Australians

The following article was quite disturbing   -   in part because it shows the gullibility/lack of independence/lack of critical thinking of a concerning number (perhaps a majority, but in any case, a significant portion) of Australians,   in part because it shows more of the lingering (evil, in my opinion) influence of John Howard,   and   in part because there doesn’t appear to be an effective response ...  

“Taking tips from John Howard, Peter Dutton knows the barbecue stopper is key to shaping the national conversation”   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/15/taking-tips-from-john-howard-peter-dutton-knows-the-barbecue-stopper-is-key-to-shaping-the-national-conversation      

 

Working through those, the first thought which comes to mind is that the success of this strategy is evidence that Donald Horne’s contention six decades ago in “The Lucky Country” (goodreads, Penguin) (which I commented on here and here * ) was right:   Australia as a whole seems to be (or gives a strong impression of) a nation with mediocre leadership. 

But the thing about that is:   why are Australians overall (this does NOT apply to all Australians) so apathetic/amathiac/easily misled that they allow that sort of incompetent leadership to continue (at all levels of society - this applies to too many businesses and community organisations as well [and even some aspects of the justice system, perhaps? - see here and here])?

To put that another way, how are those faults of character and thinking being allowed to continue? As one of the earliest and most cost-effective places to address that is in schools, I have to ask:   are our teachers incompetent or blinded by having the same problems? Do we need international teachers who haven’t been sucked in to this?  

This also requires consideration of the social (and psychic) soup that we all live in. My experience is that forcing newspapers to stop misleading the public is probably the most promoted solution (others experience will no doubt be different - which does NOT invalidate the fact of my experience being my experience), but the best inoculation is to make people invulnerable to it - and that requires teaching critical thinking, beginning in schools.

On the second item, I have written about Howard previously on my political blog (e.g., see here, here, and here). He did good with the gun ban, but in every other way the damage he did to Australia was, in my opinion, massive - especially on racism and landlordism.

 

On the lack of a response, I note that there have been good responses against, for instance, transphobes (prompt, articulate, etc), but there seems to be an attitude that when problematic attitudes/behaviour are officially or semi-officially in another party, there is a risk of political insiders writing that behaviour - and the real life harm it is actively causing - off as “normal political business/skulduggery” ... but it most definitely is not, and dealing with some backwardness early and effectively is vital - as an example of what happens when that isn’t done, consider World War (part) Two and its legacy - including a former n_ z_ who had a leading role in setting up the mass torture systems in Syria under the al-Assad regime ... 

With regard to the responses themselves, they have to address the attitudes etc of voters - not the clique who are proposing any particular response, but they could and should validly include education. 

OK, so what can we do? 

Well first and foremost, be politically active to the extent that you can - especially around promoting both critical thought and emotional competence. 

Secondly, those who do the work of this blog should continue to BPM  support those who can respond, and also weaken the problems by clearing nonBPM units.

 

 * My original mention in that post was:   

“And a very noteworthy article this week is:   “Australia and much of the world is on the cusp of profound change. What happens next is up to us”   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/01/australia-and-much-of-the-world-is-on-the-cusp-of-profound-change-what-happens-next-is-up-to-us   This article compares Australia in 1964, when Donald Horne’s book “The Lucky Country” (goodreads, Penguin) was published (and the nation-state Australia’s failure to develop a native space industry then is comparable to the nation-state Australia’s failure to become a powerhouse exporter of renewable energy over the last couple of decades - not to mention the nation-state Australia’s failure to match the innovations of the First Peoples of this island-continent, IMO - and the nation-state Australia’s follow-the-leader adoption of neoliberalism is a further example of mediocre leadership/management), with Australia now - and argued that Australia and the world globally now are on the edge of major change, but   “... if it is the beginning of a period of autocracy, new methods of transformational advocacy, already modelled by the community independents, we will need to reassert the best of humanity; signing online petitions will not be enough.”   Definitely some good food for thought in that article - on several matters.” 

 

 

Possible flaws 

Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:

• there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”;  
• I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
  

 

If you appreciated this post, please consider promoting it - there are some links below, and there’s also Instagram. 

Note that I am cutting back on aspects of my posts - see here. 

(Gnwmythr is pronounced new-MYTH-ear)  

Remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, to mind our Mӕgan, and to acknowledge that all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering” (just as binary gendered [men’s and women’s] sporting teams are either both given the gender descriptor, or neither).

#PsychicABetterWorld   and   

Copyright © Kayleen White 2007-2024     NO AI   I do not consent to any machine learning aka Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise  replicate any part of this post or other posts on this blog via any means. Typo’s may be inserrted deliberately to demonstrate this is not an AI product.     Otherwise, fair and reasonable use is accepted under Creative Commons 4.0 on an Attribution-ShareAlike basis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/  

 

Post No. 2,907 - “Animals like good people”

“Animals like good people.” 

No. 

At least, not in the way that saying is often intended by people I will refer to now as the “Nominally Naïve” - NN for short. 

For a start, many animals that have not been domesticated, and too many that have, have experience of humans as predators and sources of harm. The human scent is enough to trigger a survival response of fleeing - and, occasionally, fighting - for most untamed animals. (Note that there are FIVE stress responses.)

The NN may argue that what the NN consider “good” people can calm an untamed animal, but they are too often envisaging forcibly restraining that untamed animal, and forcing it into a form of exposure therapy where the untamed animal learns that hiding its fight or flight response may actually lead to it being freed - which is NOT the same as being calm or unafraid. 

Even if there was what seemed to be a calming, the harm caused by the confinement against the animal’s wishes and will is inherently harmful - and is harm that the NN seem to be as oblivious to suffering as those appalling people who falsely claimed crabs being boiled alive are not screaming in pain. 

(I have come across descriptions of the ABA abuses [see here, here, here - note the reference to illegal action, here, here, and here, and also note the gravely disturbing connection to the appalling, discredited, and increasingly  banned anti-LGBTQ conversion practices - see here, here, and here] that involved a similar level of cluelessness on the part of those applying those abusive practices to forcibly restrained children to enforce a superficial appearance of compliance ... but I have also come across some opinions that not all ABA practices are harmful.)

I have read descriptions in Tibetan Buddhism of something that superficially seems similar, but is actually fundamentally different:   people who have such as strongly calming aura that, without forcible restraint of the animal concerned, animals may be calmed - for instance, a barking dog may cease to see the person with the calm aura as a threat, and in fact, may see the person as a friend. 

Note that I am referring to a calm aura. That is often interpreted as a spiritual person, but ... not necessarily. Apart from anything else, there can be occasions when spiritual people are manifesting a well-justified, righteous anger - for instance, at obstruction of action against the climate crisis, poverty, or dismissiveness of screaming as a sign of pain (although the emotion will not be expressed by the spiritual person in a way that is harmful ... but they may still be profoundly unsettling, uncomfortable, or otherwise unpleasant to the person who should have known better [or is evil] and is on the receiving end). 

So ... if the barking dog was to encounter a spiritual person who is justifiably angry, the dog may bark more intensely and be more aggressive. 

At this point, it is worth pointing out the unsaid undercurrent - the bit that the NN do not say out loud, and which they wrongly interpret as “the other side of the coin”: 

“if an animal is indicating dislike of a person, it means that person is “not “good”” ”

The problems with that include: 

• if a normal person who is mostly good, or even calm, is having a bad day (for instance, injury, illness, threats, or death of loved one(s)), their aura will not be calm, and they may be showing signs of distress - including anger ... but that does NOT mean they are a “bad” person, it means they are a good person having a bad day;

• the same caution applies to the animal concerned - they could be having a bad day as well. Animals can and often are traumatised by humans, for instance (especially those humans who use abusive, Newtonian, application-of-coercive-force practices that the humans mislabel as “training”), and that may manifest as a fight response that is based in a combination of fear and not having been able to escape (i.e., being forcibly confined/restrained); and
  

• this is the big one: the NN’s of of what are “good” and “bad” may actually be projection of the NN’s conscious and unconscious biases/bigotries, warped worldviews, other personal/character/logic flaws and even personal likes/dislikes/preferences - and may be being used to justify spiritual bypassing or the avoidance of personal  growth.
  

So ... if someone is categorically claiming that the behaviour of animals (by which the NN usually means their own pets, who have been subjected to the NN’s ... “influences”) is a definite indicator of something about the person on the receiving end of the pet’s/animal’s behaviour, the one thing you actually do have a good chance of knowing is that the NN has a too simplistic, unspiritual view of animal and human-animal behaviour and character. 

Such animal responses may be evidence of cause for concern, but the situation needs further consideration - especially of the character of the human-animals who own the non-human animals ...

PS - then there is also the situation of animals - not only dogs - trained in guard duties, etc. Their behaviour is unlikely to be an indication of anything other than their training ...

Possible flaws 

Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:

• there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”;  
• I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
  

 

If you appreciated this post, please consider promoting it - there are some links below, and there’s also Instagram. 

Note that I am cutting back on aspects of my posts - see here. 

(Gnwmythr is pronounced new-MYTH-ear)  

Remember: we generally need to be more human being rather than human doing, to mind our Mӕgan, and to acknowledge that all misgendering is an act of active transphobia/transmisia that puts trans+ lives at risk & accept that all insistence on the use of “trans” as a descriptor comes with commensurate use of “cis” as a descriptor to prevent “othering” (just as binary gendered [men’s and women’s] sporting teams are either both given the gender descriptor, or neither).

#PsychicABetterWorld

Copyright © Kayleen White 2007-2024     NO AI   I do not consent to any machine learning aka Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarise, or otherwise  replicate any part of this post or other posts on this blog via any means. Typo’s may be inserrted deliberately to demonstrate this is not an AI product.     Otherwise, fair and reasonable use is accepted under Creative Commons 4.0 on an Attribution-ShareAlike basis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/