7 ms·

When I read about Inuit culture of non-violence in the 20th century [1], and wheb I read about them today [2], I have this disgusted feeling that Western cultur

• fxtentacle 4y ago
  Fully agree. For some inventions, such as LSD-trips for your lunch break, I truly wonder how people can be so f-ed up that they consider that a good idea. But then again, I see so many people with depressing faces every day, it's hard to deny that we have widespread psychological sanity issues in our society. BTW, it's not just Inuit having high suicide rates: "Suicide among teens and young adults reaches highest level since 2000" https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/suicide-among-teens-and-young-adults-reaches-highest-level-since-2000 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/suicide-among-teens-and-... "CDC report: Suicide rate among teen girls at all-time high" https://abc7.com/teen-suicide-girl-teenage-suicides-at-all-time-high/2279220/ https://abc7.com/teen-suicide-girl-teenage-suicides-at-all-t... "Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S., with more than 41,000 Americans taking their own lives each year and more than 494,000 Americans receive medical care for self-inflicted injuries." https://www.medicaldaily.com/suicide-america-high-rate-teen-girls-383223 https://www.medicaldaily.com/suicide-america-high-rate-teen-...
  • appletrotter 4y ago
    > such as LSD-trips for your lunch break, I truly wonder how people can be so f-ed up that they consider that a good idea. What does this mean? Are you against psychedelics, but only if its time for lunch?
    • revolvingocelot 4y ago
      I read that as disdain for the repackaging of authentic experiences by relentless and impersonal capitalistic forces. Psychedelic drugs are a paradigmatic example of "mind expansion", a concept that promises and threatens to allow individuals a broader perspective than that of the ego, the cog-in-the-machine, the member of society. Almost by definition, this is countercultural, or at least an expression of something that capitalism can't conquer. But capitalism can sure try, via concepts like micro-dosing or doing entheogens with a therapist or "LSD-trips for your lunch break", which I think is probably a reductio ad absurdum.
      • yababa_y 4y ago
        I think GP is just confused and meant DMT. edit: for context it is short lasting and known as the “businessman’s trip” because it genuinely fits in a lunch break.
  • bel_marinaio 4y ago
    Our culture is going down the tubes. However, since the current systems benefits the .01% at the expense of the 99% its full speed ahead with no course correction.
    • adventured 4y ago
      Our system is highly beneficial to the top quarter roughly. The median of that group has gotten significantly richer over 20 or 50 years and is better off in the US than they would be anywhere else in terms of wealth and scale (scale as in how many of them can reach that level of wealth and have access to the kind of economic opportunities that the US presents). Europe has nothing remotely like it, outside of small population nations like Norway or Switzerland (and you need to reach the top 10% there to be comparable). Wealth isn't everything? Correct, of course; the US culture is rotting rapidly, and devolving into predictable tribalism, an unavoidable result of government policy choices over the prior many decades. If you can get into the top quarter in the US, use that position for all its worth. If you can't, it's not going to be a great existence unless you live in a nice college town or the equivalent. However, the middle class (and the near groupings below or above that) across most of the developed world are facing a severe smashing, which will result in recurring French-like riots and protests in the decades to come. Most of affluent Europe hasn't seen consequential economic growth in two decades or more at this point. It's destroying their welfare systems gradually, weakening their social safety nets and loading their systems up with debt, just as their demographics are breaking. The huge French riots prior to the pandemic were one of the first big warning shots of what's coming. Japan, as another example, has seen a minimum of 1/3 of its standard of living wiped out over the past 20 years, and there's a lot more damage to come; the US and EU are both suffering from variations of Japanification economically (high debt, low dynamism, aged demographics, persistently mediocre productivity growth, low GDP growth, low GDP per capita growth, falling or stagnant standards of living for decades, struggling to allocate enough resources to the welfare state to maintain social promises, and so on). Or take Germany as an example. They've had a remarkable - supposedly remarkable - economic run for decades now. Riding on an artificially weak currency (for their economy) which they've used to build up a freakishly abnormal export juggernaut. And yet their median net wealth figure is mediocre, below that of the US; their workers are not benefitting as they should be. And at this point Germany has seen net zero per capita economic expansion for coming up on 30 years. How long can that situation continue before something breaks? Not much longer I'd wager. While the US is seeing many of the same problems, it's absolutely correct that it's better to live in cities in other affluent nations, rather than in the US. US cities are horrific by and large, with few exceptions.
  • everyone 4y ago
    "I see so many people with depressing faces every day" How much information are you making up based on how a persons face subjectively looks to you? How someone's face looks is a superficial thing and really doesn't give you any solid information.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • carapace 4y ago
      The human face is literally a communication device.
  • starwind 4y ago
    > I see so many people with depressing faces every day, it's hard to deny that we have widespread psychological sanity issues in our society. No society in history has ever had so much abundance as the West today. We've really moved up Maslows hierarchy beyond survival and safety towards needing meaning in our lives (more than what comes with doing the labor you need to survive). I wonder if there's just not enough meaning in the world to go around and that's the cause of our society's malaise.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • hnuser847 4y ago
      Maybe abundance itself makes us depressed. In the modern world you have to go way out of your way to experience any sense of sense of danger, adventure, chaos, or self-reliance. Sitting behind a screen while shoving food in your mouth might keep you alive but it kills the soul.
  • Muromec 4y ago
    > LSD-trips for your lunch break, It should be a very nice job that allows 5 hour lunch breaks.
• ggpsv 4y ago
  The documentary "The Economics of Happiness" [1] deals with this subject but in the context of Ladakh. Specifically how the introduction of globalized culture introduced sentiments of poverty, unworthiness, cultural repression, and substance abuse within the Ladakh community. [1] https://www.localfutures.org/programs/the-economics-of-happiness/ https://www.localfutures.org/programs/the-economics-of-happi...
  • alephnerd 4y ago
    My dad grew up in the region around Ladakh. His village got a single paved road in 1982 and a single electric connection in 1985. Relatives would have to walk MILES in the cold and high elevation to get an elementary education, and child malnutrition and mortality was significant (my grandmother and a number of her peers had lost at least 1 child to diseases like typhus, cholera, etc). All this happened before the development that globalization brought. Globalization helped a number of people in our region gain access to a better quality of life than anything their parents or grandparents could imagine. In addition, the benefits of globalized culture and communication meant even positive aspects like women empowerment could start to gain a foothold - no longer would you have to aim only to study up to the 10th grade if you're lucky and become a housewife, now you can aim for college and become a professional. There are a number of issues in the modern world, but firangis in their ivory towers with their weird orientalized conceptions of the worlds are not in a position to talk about this subject.
    • ggpsv 4y ago
      Thank you for your contribution. I understand that viewing it from said perspective doesn't account for the complete picture. That said, I believe we can agree that both sides can be true simultaneously? Standard of living is improved and worsened in certain regards. OP and the reference I'm sharing discuss some of the negative impacts to local cultures.
      • alephnerd 4y ago
        I can agree that some aspects of development may appear negative, but at least with regards to the negative aspects described in the Local Futures documentary (which btw is not something I'd treat as a reliable source - being a linguist trained under Chomsky doesn't make you an economic analyst for example) were already common before globalization came through - drunkards and opioid addicts always existed, the disparity between haves and have-nots always existed, and the traditional local power structures were inherently exclusionary. A lot of these kinds of documentaries tend to look nostalgically to some form of a utopian past, but if you have rose tinted glasses on, you don't see the red flags. PS - I wouldn't extrapolate this conversation about indigenous communities in Inner Asia with those of the First Nations. There are a bunch of different political, economic, and social dynamics that cause this to be an apples to oranges comparison.
• hinkley 4y ago
  Lead posisoning was a disease the white man brought to the entire world. Thomas J. Midgley, the inventor, perpetrator and chief apologist for leaded gasoline, also brought the world CFCs. Veritasium did a bit on him and was not kind. In fact he implied Midgley may have been the worst mass murderer in human history. The other day I had a chilling thought, after a day with both gardening and another conversation with my friend whose estranged boomer mother is probably a narcissist: we know about lead poisoning and violence, but has anyone studied lead poisoning and narcissism?
  • oliveshell 4y ago
    I haven’t heard of this being looked into specifically, but IMO there could certainly be a plausible connection. Adults exposed to lead as children have less brain volume in the prefrontal cortex and several other areas. It’s definitely not impossible that this could kickstart maladaptive cognitive patterns such as narcissism. I found the following, from a WHO page about lead poisoning [1], particularly interesting: “IHME also estimated that in 2019, lead exposure accounted for 62.5% of the global burden of developmental intellectual disability whose cause is not obvious.” [1] https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/lead-poisoning-and-health https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/lead-poi...
    • framebit 4y ago
      The connection of lead poisoning and narcissism does seem plausible. It's also worth noting that, broadly speaking, the parents of Boomers (depending on their age) went through 1 or 2 world wars, the great depression, the spanish flu, etc. and probably didn't come out unscathed. The trauma of the parents is bound to have ripple effects on the mental health of the kids. There's more than a few stories of dads who went off to war and came back silent, drinking, and traumatized.
  • zionic 4y ago
    >Lead posisoning was a disease the white man brought to the entire world. >Thomas J. Midgley Wait, are we now ok with blaming hundreds of millions of people for the actions of one person because they had a common skin color? If so things are going to get really interesting.
• llip 4y ago
  We brought alcohol, they brought tobacco. Also masculine, peyote, mushrooms, etc
  • njarboe 4y ago
    Their warriors were admired by many but I don't think "masculine" was the word you were looking for here. :)
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• quarterdime 4y ago
  Your thoughts are interesting, but I am having trouble seeing how this relates to the Wikipedia article. The Wikipedia article is about police murdering a number of Indigenous Canadians. I am not sure what the connection is to a "virus" of drugs and anger spreading among Inuit people. I believe that none of the men in this Wikipedia article are Inuit. Wikipedia reports 2016 census showing the following Indigenous population of Saskatoon: 85 Inuit, 14,430 First Nations, and 12,255 Métis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saskatoon#Demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saskatoon#Demographics
  • voisin 4y ago
    > I am not sure what the connection is to a "virus" of drugs and anger spreading among Inuit people. I think the parent poster is referring to the non-native population’s history of inflicting trauma on native populations and how this trauma is like a seed that begets it’s own cycle of behaviour that causes still more trauma (hence a virus that spreads). Prior, native populations weren’t known to have traumatized their own peoples (though wars between tribes are well documented). Edit: are you strictly limiting your comment to the Inuit? I think collectivism was the base case among native populations. Non-violence within tribes as well.
  • ygjb 4y ago
    First, the practice of "Starlight Tours" wasn't isolated to Saskatoon. It was, and is speculated to still be a practice in many communities, with verified occurrences in Montreal and Winnipeg, as well as claims of it happening in many other small communities. Second, the genocidal practices of the Canada towards it's indigenous population included the Inuit. There is a laundry list of genocidal tactics: * criminalization of cultural practices * residential schools * isolating communities into reserves * underfunding or denying funding for critical infrastructure * forced separation at birth * forced sterilization * extrajudicial punishment by federal, provincial, and municipal police forces The list goes on, and on, and on. There isn't a direct line between the spread of drugs and destruction of Inuit culture, and the prevalence or incidence of starlight tours, but they are all part of the threads of racism and genocide that are tightly woven into the fabric of Canadian culture.
• akira2501 4y ago
  "Western culture of drugs and anger?" That entirely discounts all the positive aspects of the culture. If you have disgusting views, you're likely to be disgusted a lot. If you find a population that largely lives somewhere where drugs don't or can't grow, the results should be obvious once they do become available. Whether through a "culture of drugs and violence" or a "culture of drugs and love" or mere "natural market realities." And in both cases, it's not as if we created drugs or smallpox with the specific intent of eradicating entire native societies. Or that our cavalier attitudes were at all in service of that goal.
  • palmetieri2000 4y ago
    I think its interesting that your two examples of 'uninitentional' eradication both have demonstratively been used intentionally to do just that. Smallpox US: https://daily.jstor.org/how-commonly-was-smallpox-used-as-a-biological-weapon/ https://daily.jstor.org/how-commonly-was-smallpox-used-as-a-... Smallpox(Or Other) in Australia: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/was-sydneys-smallpox-outbreak-an-act-of-biological-warfare/5395050 https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/w... CIA and Crack. https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9712/ch01p1.htm https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/... Australian Colonialists paid Indigenous workers with alcohol and tobacco. https://cspm.csyw.qld.gov.au/practice-kits/alcohol-and-other-drugs/working-with-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-communit/seeing-and-understanding/aod-and-aboriginal-culture https://cspm.csyw.qld.gov.au/practice-kits/alcohol-and-other...