icemann on 2/4/2014 at 15:37

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I don't even pretend to know the true answer to that one, as I only believe so much of what has been said in the media.

I suspect that the answer would be a very long one (as is the root cause and effect of many larger issues), and a combination of both the government + the people themselves. Perhaps the right approach hasn't been attempted yet, I dunno. I would say that not enough has been done to try and fix the issue, if it can even be fixed.

It's the type of thing that is a very complex issue without a simple solution.

Nicker on 2/4/2014 at 21:53

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Suggesting that it's just a matter of puling themselves up by their bootstraps is insulting.

The malaise of dependence dysfunction is the direct and sustained result of colonisation. We find precisely the same problems with native populations through the colonised world. Reservations, segregation, substandard housing, nutrition and education. In Canada we had Residential Schools, where three generations of First Nations people were systematically kidnapped from their homes. In these "schools" they were subjected to neglect and sexual abuse in a church and government sponsored campaign to wipe out native culture. We even made Indian ceremonial occasions illegal, FFS!

Australia used Canada's system as a blueprint for it's own campaign to "improve" the Aboriginal peoples there. Everywhere it is the same, deprive people of the real means for self improvement, erect deliberate barriers to personal success, create a culture of dependence and then tut tut about how the natives are a bunch of lazy drunkards and why don't they get a job, blah blah blah...

demagogue on 3/4/2014 at 05:29

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Seems we're shifting the topic, but whatever...

You guys are giving the post-colonial crits too much ammunition to work with. Cultures that are connected with communal village lifestyles are acculturated to an entire social network that integrates them and takes care of them. An obsession with "personal success" and "self improvement" at odds with that culture as the mark of "progress" is pretty Western and exceptional as far as most world cultures go. So if that's your benchmark--and anything that's not that, i.e., village life practically everywhere in the world *except* the West, gets labeled as dysfunctional and a "culture of dependent cretins"--then of course village cultures are going to be degenerate by definition. Who's to say personal success at the cost of village communalism is so important to a happy life anyway, much less try to push it onto a culture that doesn't want it?

I don't like a lot of post-colonial crit thinking, but I don't want to make it too easy for them either to roll their eyes at a cultural obliviousness that's been pointed out so many times it's beyond cliche.

If you want to critique it, I'd rather start with the ethics of societies speaking for their members, or what's economically and morally realistic to expect of social organization, things like that. I'd try to get away from culturally narrow ideas like self-advancement is the end-all be-all of the universe, that not every culture cares about much. (FWIW, though, personally speaking self-advancement is incredibly important for me, and every day I try to improve what I know or my skills or something. I'm rather happy being Western bent, and would recommend it to anyone that bothers asking.)

demagogue on 4/4/2014 at 03:06

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In the back of my mind I had the aboriginals I saw on a doc recently in NW Aus that apparently still don't care or live as if Westerners were even around, since that was the context of the original comment. The actual African (Zimbabwean) friends I have are indeed pretty focused on progress, online culture, and entrepreneurship.

Just goes to show it's dumb to over-simplify any culture anyway. That's something I never liked about casual pomo critics. Even "Western" and "non-Western" is an increasingly irrelevant distinction anymore except for a few basic things.

That said, most Asian cultures that surround me these days do seem to emphasize social identity a lot more than individual ambition. They're very progressive and futurist too, but those kinds of traditional values are still around.

bukary on 7/4/2014 at 17:28

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The second phase of Russian operation Let's Invade Or Destroy Ukraine Under The Pretense Of Helping Ukraininans has just started.