how come native americans don't bitch as much as blacks do?

[musclemom]

I'm not excusing genocide, where in any of my posts do I condone any action? My ancestors except for my one great-great grandmother (A Cree indian) didn't come over here till the 1890's at the earliest.

Musclemom, addressing your problems with technology in this forum is slightly ironic, as without written communication we would never have corresponded.

GJohnson, If you have a problem with genocide why aren't you in the Sudan right now protesting the outright extermination of mostly christian blacks in Darfur by the government and Arab militias? Stalin, and Chairman Mao commited vastly more heinous acts.

Red, I honestly thought better of you than to see you to stoop to such rhetorical nonsense. I don't devalue the written word, all I'm saying is you have no right to devalue a culture that DOESN'T have it. To judge a culture based on YOUR POV without making the slightest effort to understand what their lives were about, their culture, their traditions, is the true mark of a bigot. To make a blanket statement such as "American Indian culture was stagnant and [essentially] deserved to be obliterated," is ignorance of the highest caliber ... especially since it was spirit of the Iroquois people who gave you the right to SAY those words.

 

[Lao Tzu]

1. Fact: The average hunter-gatherer worked about 15 HOURS a week to take care of business for life, the rest was spent being silly, screwing chillin, doing whatever (which ties in with about how much time modern man actually works at his desk ...)

2. Natural selection is no more brutal than any other fact of natural life. It is reality. Our species is the result of natural selection, what's so brutal about that?

3. Obesity is on the rise, many cancers are on the rise (although humans are doing better at "controlling" some of them), autoimmune diseases in particular (which is the body's immune system going completely beserk) are on the rise and all of them are hitting younger and younger people. While these numbers can be skewed by statisticians the fact is, while our species may (or may not, seriously, ever walk around a REALLY old graveyard?) be living longer, frankly we are not living WELL. We have the audacity to be the fattest country in the world when how many people die of starvation a day in other lands? And you think that's GOOD?! We make the biggest, strongest bombs, but children throughout the world can't get the basic nutrition they need to avert blindness? And you think that's a natural state of affairs? Psychotically violent crime just keeps going up, and up, and up, and that's indicative of a healthy society?

Yet you call me brutal. I'm just calling a spade a spade.

I call what you said brutal because you speak nostalgically about an age run by change and a set of rules designed to purge the weak and augment the strong that would make Hitler green with envy.


1. Fact. A person living in the 21st century can have the same standard of living that hunter/gatheres have with about 1-3 hours of work a week, assuming you earn $10/hr.

Fact: According to Robert Wright in his book 'the moral animal' the time acutally spent working in hunter/gatherer tribes was much higher. Much much time went into planning, changing venues, and things like that due to the drastically limited resources. The workweek was much longer. Plus, no medicine.

And most of life back then was also tied into being illiterate; not knowing anything about science, math, geography, communications etc; having to deal with rampant disease; being a slave to chance; never knowing what the world or universe is like outside of your tiny village, etc.. I'll take my current life over that anyday.

2. What is brutal about natural selection? It purges the weak for one thing. Have you ever heard of the deterministic mutation hypothesis? It is a hypothesis on sex, basically when a man and a woman both have mutations, they pass these mutations onto one of their children who dies young. That way none of the other kids get the mutations. Basically we have sex in the hopes that all of our shit genes will get passed onto one of our kids and s/he will die and none of our other kids will get it. Its kindof like what was said in the movie Twins "All the good stuff went into Arnold and all the leftover shit went into Danny Devito". Natural selection is brutal in ways most people can't even fathom. The more inhumane horrors you can imagine mean nothing if they provide a modest improvement in survival and reproduction.

3. Its not a big deal. Obesity is on the rise, but now there are more obese people than starving people on earth. Hurrah us indeed. How many other generations had so much food that there were more fat people than thin people? Furthermore, world hunger is consistently going down. As of right now only about 1/8th of humanity suffers from malnutrition, down from about 1/3 in the late 1970s. It is likely that it will be down to 1/20th of humanity by 2020 or 2025 that suffers from malnutrition. FTR, cardiovascular disease has consistently gone down during the obesity epidemic. The majority (60%+) of deaths attributed to obesity are due to CVD, yet during this epidemic CVD rates have declined.

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4830a1.htm

"Decline in CVD Death Rates

Age-adjusted death rates per 100,000 persons (standardized to the 1940 U.S. population) for diseases of the heart (i.e., coronary heart disease, hypertensive heart disease, and rheumatic heart disease) have decreased from a peak of 307.4 in 1950 to 134.6 in 1996, an overall decline of 56% (1) (Figure 1). Age-adjusted death rates for coronary heart disease (the major form of CVD contributing to mortality) continued to increase into the 1960s, then declined. In 1996, 621,000 fewer deaths occurred from coronary heart disease than would have been expected had the rate remained at its 1963 peak (1).

Age-adjusted death rates for stroke have declined steadily since the beginning of the century. Since 1950, stroke rates have declined 70%, from 88.8 in 1950 to 26.5 in 1996. Total age-adjusted CVD death rates have declined 60% since 1950 and accounted for approximately 73% of the decline in all causes of deaths during the same period (1)."


What makes you feel I like starvation? I donate money to and try to raise awareness to global poverty issues, and I know more about them than 98% of the population.

Cures for cancer are on the rise and are outpacing the rise in cancer.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/jan-june98/cancer_3-12.html

http://health.discovery.com/centers/cancer/top10myths/myth1.html

Furthermore, most of the diseases you list can be treated or prevented with lifestyle interventions. If people ate healthy, took supplements, exercised, had low stress, didn't smoke and saw a doctor regularlly people would avoid most chronic diseases.

The point I feel you are missing is that due to technology most of the pople who doesn't want to live a sickly life due to chronic disease is forced to. We have tons of information about how disease works, but people don't apply all of it. People in hunter/gatherer societies didn't have that control over their lives, they didn't know any better. Healthspan, to my knowledge, is going up. The years spent w/o major disease are going up but I'm having trouble finding a citation.

You're a cool woman, and I don't think you're brutal. But the system you are defending is inhumane in how brutal it is. For example, the only reason men find women with attractive bodies attractive is because their kids are less likely to die in the womb or in childhood. What kind of life is that, desperately trying to find a woman with a certain appearance just so your kids wont die? That is hell on earth, not something to look forward to. Most of what we are physically attracted to is fundamentally based on the unconscious knowledge that 'attractive' people have kids that are more likely to survive into adulthood and we are less likely to have to watch them die.

In my eyes it is a choice between self determination and being a slave, between leading your own life and being led, between a happy & fulfilling life and a life full of disease, violence and misery. I prefer to be in control of my life and technology lets me do that. If that means I have to violate a set of 'natural laws' that are so evil that they would make Hitler blush then so be it.

 

[Gambino]

Nothing sad or true...

Owned for life

stfu jesse jackson

 

[PICK3]

stfu jesse jackson

lol! Best Thread Ever!!!

 

[perkele]

Hmm, I just realized that Gjohnson quotes posts like *missfit*

 

[Gambino]

What's up with these stereotypes. All tribal nation do not live in a reservation.

And if I read some crime statistics from a white supremacy group like I found out Hengst was a member of they will be owned for life (just like hengst is)

Man some of you are just full of shit

lol maing, you don't see it, but i see a lot of similarity between you and hengst, different spectrums though
i'll voice my opinion, your fucking gaye "owned for life" posts are silly...what just because i don't toe your pc-white is the devil shtick? please

 

[gjohnson5]

I want you to find even 1 post where i said white is the devil. I never said that and that is never been my intention to demonize a whole race of people

I just think some of you are so right winged they you end up demonizing others and I take offense to that.

This first sentance is just you making excuses for your own silly words

lol maing, you don't see it, but i see a lot of similarity between you and hengst, different spectrums though
i'll voice my opinion, your fucking gaye "owned for life" posts are silly...what just because i don't toe your pc-white is the devil shtick? please

 

[juiceddreadlocks]

Why does everyone rip on Hengst? He cites everything he says and then defends himself with links, quotations, and cites all his sources. While there's something to be said for anecdotal evidence at least he's using peer reviewed, published empirical evidence.

 

[redguru]

Why does everyone rip on Hengst? He cites everything he says and then defends himself with links, quotations, and cites all his sources. While there's something to be said for anecdotal evidence at least he's using peer reviewed, published empirical evidence.

Do you want a quarterback, cheap?

 

[gjohnson5]

When the source of the data is a white supremacist group , then the numbers must automatically be thrown out. Statistics with bias are automatic lies...

Why does everyone rip on Hengst? He cites everything he says and then defends himself with links, quotations, and cites all his sources. While there's something to be said for anecdotal evidence at least he's using peer reviewed, published empirical evidence.