TheBanyanTree: Re:The biter bitter ...and bitterer

[MFV]

VERY well said, Janice!

Thank you. And thank you too, Julie!

                                                         Marty



----- Original Message -----
From: "JMoney" <PJMoney at bigpond.com>
To: "TheBanyanTree" <thebanyantree-remsset.com at lists.remsset.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2003 5:28 AM
Subject: Re: TheBanyanTree: Re:The biter bitter ...and bitterer


> Julie wrote:
>
> > I hesitate, only for second,
> > to voice a view that may be considered "political" in our story forum.
>
> I suppose most of us were told at one time or another that there are three
> subjects that ought not to be raised in polite conversation and they are
> politics, religion and sex.  The last time I looked the Tree guidelines
said
> all three are OK with the sole proviso that sex should not be treated
> pornographically.  Flaming, however, is not OK.
>
> Politics, religion and sex are the stuff of life.  To my mind everything
to
> do with human relationships is political and everything to do with belief
> systems about the meaning of life, or the lack of such meaning, is
> religious.  Sex has to do with both pleasure and pain and is far too
> important to all of us for the writing about it to be treated merely as an
> opportunity for some lewd titillation.  But writers must feel free to
write
> about all three or be so severely hampered by lack of material as to make
> writing a frivolous and sterile occupation.
>
> So it concerns me that Julie should hesitate, even for a second, to write
> something about a subject that some may consider "political".  Since the
> Tree guidelines don't forbid it I can only assume that the worry must be
> about the possibility of being "flamed".
>
> Flaming itself is a political act and a thuggish one at that.  It is an
> attempt to force one's opinion on others, or to silence them, through
> abusiveness and intimidation.  It is what bullies do.  As someone who
spent
> a great deal of her childhood in fear of being bashed by a bullying older
> sister I loathe bullies but I am also still susceptible to their tactics.
>
> Because of that susceptibility there were things that I wrote during the
> recent war in Iraq that I never posted for fear of being attacked for
> thinking my thoughts.  For instance there's "Baghdad Bob" aka "Comical
Ali"
> who seems to have resurfaced recently.  So many people seemed to think his
> lies were merely amusing but I can't see them as anything but a dreadful
> display of the man's complete lack of a moral conscience.  Was it Stalin
or
> someone else who spoke of the Big Lie and of how repeating it often enough
> would make believers of those who listened?  If Baghdad Bob and Joseph
> Stalin were to meet would they find themselves to be soulmates, at least
> where the business of lying is concerned?  If one is considered a monster
of
> sorts why not the other?
>
> Who owns the high moral ground?  None of us.  All of us are finite
creatures
> whose knowledge of events, even those events occurring within our own
> households, can only be partial at best.  And even if we are convinced
that
> what we now believe is "The Truth" didn't we all come to that point by a
> circuitous route during the travelling of most of which we believed that
> something else entirely was "The Truth"?  Shall we convince others that
they
> ought to believe what we believe by being rude to them?  I don't think so.
>
> So Julie, I thank you for your writing efforts and thank God for your
tender
> heart.  I agree with you on this:
>
> > It is a story of suffering, disease,
> > starvation, malaria, diarrea, malnutrition.  And dear god, some of it is
> > preventable.
>
> But I don't agree with you on this:
>
> > [I]t is not about politics.
>
> Infant mortality is highest in places where women have less access to
> education.  There are places in the world that are quite poor by our
> standards but where the infant mortality rate approaches that of Western
> countries.  These include places, such as Kerala in India and Cuba, where
> girls have about the same right to be educated as boys do.  On the other
> hand there are places where the people are much richer but where the
> education of female children is terminated early.  In these countries
infant
> mortality is higher.  Generally these tend to be what we regard as Muslim
> countries.  So you could consider that it is a form of religion, expressed
> politically, that is the ultimate cause of the high rates of infant
> mortality in those countries.
>
> In Australia Aboriginal women living in remote communities have a much
> higher rate of infant mortality than in the rest of Australia and partly
> that's due to a high rate of diarrhoeal disease.  Whether the rate is
higher
> than it was before Aboriginal people were gathered together into these
> communities is, as far as I know, an open question.  Girls in these
> communities have far better access to educational opportunities than do
> girls in, say, Rwanda or Nepal or Afghanistan and the infant mortality
rate
> among Aboriginal mothers from these communities is not as high as in many
> third world countries.  Indeed a great deal of money and effort has been
> spent here to improve the survival rates of infants born to these mothers
> and many small-for-dates babies have survived who once would have died
only
> (it seems) to suffer later on from what may be the consequences of poor
> intra-uterine growth.  Currently this seems to be expressing itself in a
> high rate of kidney disease secondary, at least partially, to having lower
> absolute numbers of  filtering units (the nephron) per kidney and a high
> rate of skin infections with Strep pyogenes (secondary to recurrent
scabies
> infestations) which tends to cause an immune response that destroys the
> nephrons and eventually leads to end-stage renal failure.
>
> As you might guess from the above the whole business is very complicated
and
> sorting out causality from association is difficult.  Nevertheless I feel
> fairly confident in saying that the politics of indigenous
> self-determination, combined with certain remnant cultural (read,
political)
> practices and the political and monetary difficulties of supplying
services
> such as abundant clean running water to every little settlement of 20 - 40
> people out in woop-woop, has created a situation in which babies (who keep
> getting skin infections) continue to be born to ill-nourished young
mothers
> who are not equipped, either socially or educationally, to deal adequately
> with the challenge of caring for their children in the way that we "white
> folks" think is best.
>
> I haven't even mentioned tyrannical war-lords and endemic government
> corruption but I think it's safe to say that politics has a lot to do with
> "suffering, disease, starvation, malaria, diarrea, malnutrition" and so
on.
>
> Janice
>
>
>
>
>