Sorry, that should not have been John Dawkins, it should have been Richard Dawkins. Apologies to John Dawkins who is an Australian politician respected by many, and treated as a God by some.
The problem is that superstition underpins all cultures at all times. Mostly, superstitions are referred to as ‘religions’, but superstitions suffuse even those cultures (eg communism), where it is said no religion exists. One could even argue that communism is a mere superstition with its own hierarchy of guardian spirits and demons.
It has been stated (rightly or wrongly), that 95% of the world population has a belief in ‘unseen’ beings of one form or another. Many of the versions of evolution (including the ones hawked around by the amazingly bigoted John Dawkins) are superstitions writ differently. I think I agree.
The world is full of people who ‘know better’. The world is full of folk who consider themselves ‘wiser and more enlightened’. The world is full of folk who tell other folk how to make their lives better, more fulfilling etc etc. I’m sure they do so from what they think are the best of motives but they are a minority of 5%.
All religions are superstitions by definition, and all rely for their popularity upon children being pre-disposed to believe whatever they are told by someone they trust or respect. The less educated and less intelligent the child and the later adult is, the more the superstitions are likely to stick Buddhism (the Thai variety is particularly superstitious), Christianity, Shinto, Judaism, Islam, you-name-it. They’re all superstitions.
What makes this article so horrible – apart from what I believe is its outrageous superficiality masked as academic analysis – is that it involves one superstitious person subtly mocking what another superstitious person believes. As most such articles do.
What makes most commentaries offensive (including I’m afraid, RN England’s in this case), is their calamitous smugness.
It’s a problem with Australian anthropology, that it regards all cultural practices as equally valuable, whether they bring benefit or misery to the people involved. The black-magic spiritualism described here can certainly be described as superstition.
I can think of two kinds of superstition. The first is an innocent mistake, such as when somebody utters an incantation over a sick person, and when that person recovers, believes that the incantation caused the recovery. An example of the second, less innocent kind is blood-letting that was practised by the medical profession in former centuries for profit.
In either case, effectively disabusing people of superstition helps them improve their lives by guiding them away from ineffective or harmful behaviour. Cultural practices are thus extinguished, and a culture becomes leaner as a result. But the lives of individuals are more important. Utility is about giving decent lives to individuals, not preserving every aspect of a culture.
This argument leads straight to the heavy responsibility that the Australian anthropological profession bares for the present-day misery of Aboriginal Australians. It insists that they be encouraged to wallow in ignorance because of its loyalty to the cultures rather than to the individuals that are afflicted by many aspects of those cultures.
What are the corporations involved. Who are their lobbyists? What are their positions on Genetically modified Organisms? What are the seed policies of these corporations? How much transnational influence is involved? What is the position of the Transpacific Partnership TPP of contract farming? What influenced you to write this piece Andrew?
The unprecedented demonstration, first time ever against the USA, one of the greatest benefactor to Bangladesh, over a purported insult against Islam must serve as a reminder of the extend of radicalization.
A country known for perpetual victim of repeated natural disasters, diseases, heart wrenching social ills, now poised on becoming a force similar to other areas, dominated by extremists.
Next door to Myanmar, the daily persecution of the Buddhist within is well underway yet only the the Rohingyas plight is mentioned here at New Mandala.
I presume most of us were much younger when those US-made napalms and other even deadlier bombs rained in Indochina. Could any of you recall your reaction(s) at that time . . . horror very definitely but there was that very palpable fear too, at least to a Thai like me. Fear too that the horrors of the Indochinese war could touch the Thai kingdom.
My next question is right now how do you all react to the horrors of the live daily HD telecast of the ongoing feral carnage at Damascus and Aleppo at Syria? Personally I rather not watch, I rather not read, and I rather not be told that the Syrian atrocities continue on and on . . . while we watch.
My final question specifically to one much outraged JFLee: How do you want the superpowers USA/EC/JPN/Russia/China to conduct themselves to stop the Syrian near genocidal civil war?
See, this sort of conflation is where I had a problem with you before John. The holoaust refers to a specific event in history. The attrocities that were committed by all sides in the Vietnam (and Laos) War were not a holocaust. They were not a genocide either. They were attrocities. Using the word attrocitiy and not genocide or holocaust does not diminish what occurred. Lots of people here know the second attack on the USS Maddox was manufactured, too. Perhaps they don’t have your self-hate complex, though.
This post started off being about ‘notoroious holocaust deniers’ … I note that the two posts of mine which refer to the the US-delivered holocaust in Indochina are about five to one red to green.
So we might say that 80% of Australian intellectuals with above average access to information on the US-delivered holocaust to Indochina … deny that holocaust ever happened?
The poverty and unemployment statistics baffle me. Asean reports relatively lower unemployment (4.9%), yet its poverty is highest in the table (17.8%). Why is that when common sense suggests that unemployment would be the primary reason for impoverishment?
The case of USA with unemployment and poverty at 17.6% and 15.1%, and that too of India with 9.8% (I suspect even higher unreported unemployment) and 25% (poverty) seem to bear out my logic, though.
Japan’s 16% poverty surprises me. With Europe’s unemployment at 9.5%, its poverty (unreported in the table) rate would I suspect to be really dire considering the ongoing financial/economic crises at many of the Euro zone countries.
There are some different measures for estimating unemployment.
In the USA, the so-called “U-6” unemployment rate (which includes “short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment”) was listed at around 22% in mid 2012.
Then there is the “seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate”, which estimates “long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994.” The SGS rate came in at around 15% in mid 2012.
Again absolute no mention of the West contribution to this quagmire.
Allowing a military government since the 60’s to govern as has had with accelerated period of the last 3 decades of absolute deprivation.
Yahkine state, one of the least economically endowed, is the example of clashes b/t 2 immovable civilizations due to economic desperation as historical examples abound within Myanmar.
Never too late to reverse deprivation.
Will like to see a balance instead of implicating “only Myanmar government well documented short comings”, which everyone here are quick to chime in.
One of the important short coming in ‘developing citizenship/residency status laws’ instead of promoting chauvinism and other acts that have led to this present quagmire.
The radicalization with destruction of historic Buddhist relics are ongoing within Yakhine as well as in Bangladesh.
Merely using HRW conveniently as well as declaring the obvious Rohingyas right do not absolve the West contributions as well as
How long b/f a suicide bomber appear on the pavilion of Shwedagon?
“The Rohingya is currently the most galvanizing affair where, as the rearest of occurances, the Human Rights groups around the world and the Muslim – main stream AND the radical groups of all persuations are united for the cause.”
The completion of radicalization is a matter of time.
Which part of “judgement day ending” did you missed?
My point was simply that our capacity to recognise that we are wrong and correct those wrongs allows for betterment. It doesn’t mean that Americans killing is more justifiable, it just means that this capacity to acknowledge and correct what is wrong is better than the systems that Pol Pot and other tyranical leaders found themselves in and perpetuated.
I am sorry to have been callous and amobious in the previous post derriding what I initially saw as crass death toll comparisons correlated with political system success.
I am wondering if I am reading the comparison table under the category of “unemployment” correctly. The author states that the US unemployment rate is at 17.6 percent while the proverty rate is at 15 percent. The ASEAN’s unemployment rate, on the other hand,is just below 5 percent while the poverty rate is nearly 18 percent. In the recent event, I have not recall the US unemployment’s figure ever be in two-digit numbers. It did come close to 10 percent during the early years of the Obama’s administration following the financial/banking debacle. To be exact, the rate was at 10 percent during October, 2009 but it has significantly decreased ever since. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics Data reports the rate at 8.1 percent for the month of August.
I am frankly relieved by your clarification JFLee about what you meant by ‘globalized MSM’. For a while I thought you were getting paranoid about the growing global scourge of ‘Men having sex with Men’. But I guess you are all right after all … paranoia of the USA is not abnormal.
Facebook 
Twitter 
Soundcloud 
Youtube 
Rss
The power of spirits
Sorry, that should not have been John Dawkins, it should have been Richard Dawkins. Apologies to John Dawkins who is an Australian politician respected by many, and treated as a God by some.
Annie
The power of spirits
The problem is that superstition underpins all cultures at all times. Mostly, superstitions are referred to as ‘religions’, but superstitions suffuse even those cultures (eg communism), where it is said no religion exists. One could even argue that communism is a mere superstition with its own hierarchy of guardian spirits and demons.
It has been stated (rightly or wrongly), that 95% of the world population has a belief in ‘unseen’ beings of one form or another. Many of the versions of evolution (including the ones hawked around by the amazingly bigoted John Dawkins) are superstitions writ differently. I think I agree.
The world is full of people who ‘know better’. The world is full of folk who consider themselves ‘wiser and more enlightened’. The world is full of folk who tell other folk how to make their lives better, more fulfilling etc etc. I’m sure they do so from what they think are the best of motives but they are a minority of 5%.
All religions are superstitions by definition, and all rely for their popularity upon children being pre-disposed to believe whatever they are told by someone they trust or respect. The less educated and less intelligent the child and the later adult is, the more the superstitions are likely to stick Buddhism (the Thai variety is particularly superstitious), Christianity, Shinto, Judaism, Islam, you-name-it. They’re all superstitions.
What makes this article so horrible – apart from what I believe is its outrageous superficiality masked as academic analysis – is that it involves one superstitious person subtly mocking what another superstitious person believes. As most such articles do.
What makes most commentaries offensive (including I’m afraid, RN England’s in this case), is their calamitous smugness.
Annie
In general I am not so very impressed by people…
The power of spirits
And here I thought the misery of the Aboriginal Australians had something to do with all their land being taken.
The power of spirits
It’s a problem with Australian anthropology, that it regards all cultural practices as equally valuable, whether they bring benefit or misery to the people involved. The black-magic spiritualism described here can certainly be described as superstition.
I can think of two kinds of superstition. The first is an innocent mistake, such as when somebody utters an incantation over a sick person, and when that person recovers, believes that the incantation caused the recovery. An example of the second, less innocent kind is blood-letting that was practised by the medical profession in former centuries for profit.
In either case, effectively disabusing people of superstition helps them improve their lives by guiding them away from ineffective or harmful behaviour. Cultural practices are thus extinguished, and a culture becomes leaner as a result. But the lives of individuals are more important. Utility is about giving decent lives to individuals, not preserving every aspect of a culture.
This argument leads straight to the heavy responsibility that the Australian anthropological profession bares for the present-day misery of Aboriginal Australians. It insists that they be encouraged to wallow in ignorance because of its loyalty to the cultures rather than to the individuals that are afflicted by many aspects of those cultures.
Counterpunch: Pol Pot wasn’t so bad
New Mandala becomes Global Mandala…
The benefits of contract farming
What are the corporations involved. Who are their lobbyists? What are their positions on Genetically modified Organisms? What are the seed policies of these corporations? How much transnational influence is involved? What is the position of the Transpacific Partnership TPP of contract farming? What influenced you to write this piece Andrew?
The power of spirits
Why do you think that would have been more useful R.N. And what do you mean by superstition?
Sectarian strife in western Myanmar
The unprecedented demonstration, first time ever against the USA, one of the greatest benefactor to Bangladesh, over a purported insult against Islam must serve as a reminder of the extend of radicalization.
A country known for perpetual victim of repeated natural disasters, diseases, heart wrenching social ills, now poised on becoming a force similar to other areas, dominated by extremists.
Next door to Myanmar, the daily persecution of the Buddhist within is well underway yet only the the Rohingyas plight is mentioned here at New Mandala.
The power of spirits
Exploring the link between superstition and poverty might have been more useful.
Counterpunch: Pol Pot wasn’t so bad
I presume most of us were much younger when those US-made napalms and other even deadlier bombs rained in Indochina. Could any of you recall your reaction(s) at that time . . . horror very definitely but there was that very palpable fear too, at least to a Thai like me. Fear too that the horrors of the Indochinese war could touch the Thai kingdom.
My next question is right now how do you all react to the horrors of the live daily HD telecast of the ongoing feral carnage at Damascus and Aleppo at Syria? Personally I rather not watch, I rather not read, and I rather not be told that the Syrian atrocities continue on and on . . . while we watch.
My final question specifically to one much outraged JFLee: How do you want the superpowers USA/EC/JPN/Russia/China to conduct themselves to stop the Syrian near genocidal civil war?
Counterpunch: Pol Pot wasn’t so bad
See, this sort of conflation is where I had a problem with you before John. The holoaust refers to a specific event in history. The attrocities that were committed by all sides in the Vietnam (and Laos) War were not a holocaust. They were not a genocide either. They were attrocities. Using the word attrocitiy and not genocide or holocaust does not diminish what occurred. Lots of people here know the second attack on the USS Maddox was manufactured, too. Perhaps they don’t have your self-hate complex, though.
Counterpunch: Pol Pot wasn’t so bad
This post started off being about ‘notoroious holocaust deniers’ … I note that the two posts of mine which refer to the the US-delivered holocaust in Indochina are about five to one red to green.
So we might say that 80% of Australian intellectuals with above average access to information on the US-delivered holocaust to Indochina … deny that holocaust ever happened?
Or just cannot bear to let it out of the closet?
ASEAN’s missed opportunities
lies, damn lies, and statistics …
Ths US is looking pretty 3rd world, isn’t it? No numbers on distribution of wealth or income .. they’d clinch it!
ASEAN’s missed opportunities
The poverty and unemployment statistics baffle me. Asean reports relatively lower unemployment (4.9%), yet its poverty is highest in the table (17.8%). Why is that when common sense suggests that unemployment would be the primary reason for impoverishment?
The case of USA with unemployment and poverty at 17.6% and 15.1%, and that too of India with 9.8% (I suspect even higher unreported unemployment) and 25% (poverty) seem to bear out my logic, though.
Japan’s 16% poverty surprises me. With Europe’s unemployment at 9.5%, its poverty (unreported in the table) rate would I suspect to be really dire considering the ongoing financial/economic crises at many of the Euro zone countries.
ASEAN’s missed opportunities
Hi:
There are some different measures for estimating unemployment.
In the USA, the so-called “U-6” unemployment rate (which includes “short-term discouraged and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment”) was listed at around 22% in mid 2012.
Then there is the “seasonally-adjusted SGS Alternate Unemployment Rate”, which estimates “long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of official existence in 1994.” The SGS rate came in at around 15% in mid 2012.
See: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts
I think these numbers could also increase if one accounted for the people caught up in the US prison complex/gulag archipelago, at 1.6 million people.
Not sure what U6 or SGS figures would like like in Southeast Asia.
But when comparing data across countries it would make sense to base it upon similar methodologies.
Sectarian strife in western Myanmar
Nich
Again absolute no mention of the West contribution to this quagmire.
Allowing a military government since the 60’s to govern as has had with accelerated period of the last 3 decades of absolute deprivation.
Yahkine state, one of the least economically endowed, is the example of clashes b/t 2 immovable civilizations due to economic desperation as historical examples abound within Myanmar.
Never too late to reverse deprivation.
Will like to see a balance instead of implicating “only Myanmar government well documented short comings”, which everyone here are quick to chime in.
One of the important short coming in ‘developing citizenship/residency status laws’ instead of promoting chauvinism and other acts that have led to this present quagmire.
The radicalization with destruction of historic Buddhist relics are ongoing within Yakhine as well as in Bangladesh.
Merely using HRW conveniently as well as declaring the obvious Rohingyas right do not absolve the West contributions as well as
How long b/f a suicide bomber appear on the pavilion of Shwedagon?
я╗┐Myanmar reshuffle: the reform agenda
“The Rohingya is currently the most galvanizing affair where, as the rearest of occurances, the Human Rights groups around the world and the Muslim – main stream AND the radical groups of all persuations are united for the cause.”
The completion of radicalization is a matter of time.
Which part of “judgement day ending” did you missed?
Counterpunch: Pol Pot wasn’t so bad
Thanks Greg,
I agree with you.
My point was simply that our capacity to recognise that we are wrong and correct those wrongs allows for betterment. It doesn’t mean that Americans killing is more justifiable, it just means that this capacity to acknowledge and correct what is wrong is better than the systems that Pol Pot and other tyranical leaders found themselves in and perpetuated.
I am sorry to have been callous and amobious in the previous post derriding what I initially saw as crass death toll comparisons correlated with political system success.
ASEAN’s missed opportunities
I am wondering if I am reading the comparison table under the category of “unemployment” correctly. The author states that the US unemployment rate is at 17.6 percent while the proverty rate is at 15 percent. The ASEAN’s unemployment rate, on the other hand,is just below 5 percent while the poverty rate is nearly 18 percent. In the recent event, I have not recall the US unemployment’s figure ever be in two-digit numbers. It did come close to 10 percent during the early years of the Obama’s administration following the financial/banking debacle. To be exact, the rate was at 10 percent during October, 2009 but it has significantly decreased ever since. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics Data reports the rate at 8.1 percent for the month of August.
Counterpunch: Pol Pot wasn’t so bad
I am frankly relieved by your clarification JFLee about what you meant by ‘globalized MSM’. For a while I thought you were getting paranoid about the growing global scourge of ‘Men having sex with Men’. But I guess you are all right after all … paranoia of the USA is not abnormal.