Diwundrin
Well-known Member
- Location
- Nth Coast NSW Australia
I agree with you Drifter, pinning down that 'something else' which is changing behaviour is the problem. No one will accept responsibility for a wrong decision of the past and be willing to change it, they tend to stand up and defend whatever it was, right or wrong without even thinking about it.
A lot of individual changes have contributed to turning society in on itself. Too many rights too quickly perhaps, but who has the 'right' to decide on which ones were good for everyone and which ones were trendy at the time and have proven to contribute to the problems of the many to salve wounded egos of the few? Even if we pinpoint the problems, fixing them is a whole other ball game.
ramble...
Can't resist the pun... No one magic bullet for this problem.
A lot of individual changes have contributed to turning society in on itself. Too many rights too quickly perhaps, but who has the 'right' to decide on which ones were good for everyone and which ones were trendy at the time and have proven to contribute to the problems of the many to salve wounded egos of the few? Even if we pinpoint the problems, fixing them is a whole other ball game.
ramble...
None of our 'Western' countries represented here are the same demographic that they were a century ago, or even when we were kids.
We are all far more ethnically and culturally mixed now and the social rules that governed those calmer thinking, more 'homoeneous' societies no longer apply to everyone. Other cultures had other rules and solutions and those were right for them, there. But they've brought their old rules and attitudes along with their baggage and many are at odds with our own old ways. Not to say that's 'the' problem, just one of many. Here.
I may be dead wrong but I see the current surge of 'gun-culture' awareness being more defensively than offensively based. For every idiot redneck we see waving guns around there must be thousands who keep them simply as a last line of defense against a society they no longer trust nor understand. I'm presuming that the majority would rather be rid of them, but can't be free of them until the reasons for needing them are gotten rid of first. What I fear is that we will soon begin to see it that way too and it will all go to hell in a blink.
I get into trouble for saying that replacing gently enforced assimilation with the grandiosely high minded concept of multiculturalism was a monumental mistake here. It divided society, and I'm speaking of OZ here, and formed 'them and us' attitudes where none need have existed. It has made both sides of it defensive.
New immigrants always got a hard time before we made room for them, granted that, but by the time they were accepted as friends they were 'Aussies' first, and proud to be accepted as such, they just came from somewhere else. They didn't call themselves Wahoompian-Australians, living apart from us while deigning to enhance our country with their presence and tolerating us until they can change us into something more suited to their tastes and rules.
Like you Drifter, I was used to guns being part of life, not in the city so much, although we had a .303 in the house that was never fired for years, but in the homes of rural relatives and they were just tools of the farming trade, no mystique or status attached to them at all. They've become status symbols now though haven't they?
Even here where handguns are, except to a very few, unilaterally banned, punk kids big note themselves by getting illegal ones to shoot out peoples' windows with. Some status eh? That these kids see only their peers and other, bigger time, crims as being the role models to impress is the nub of the problem. What makes them think that way?
To my hazy memory, and I'll quickly be corrected, all reports of these kids placed them in 'ethnic' groupings. They were born here, but they don't think of themselves as 'Aussies' first. Aussies are just 'Skips', and a different people to them entirely apparently. Their ethnic connections are much stronger than with their birth Nation and it's population.
Yeah, that can burr you up a bit I guess.
They though are not the sole source of home invading crims and the bank robbers and nutter junkies, but they are the 'gun' awareness examples most reported on by media and so more in our faces and somehow more scary because it's our neighbourhoods they shoot up.
I'm afraid we can't unmix the cake, whatever ails society it's going to take some very brave and smart thinking to sort it out now.
We are all far more ethnically and culturally mixed now and the social rules that governed those calmer thinking, more 'homoeneous' societies no longer apply to everyone. Other cultures had other rules and solutions and those were right for them, there. But they've brought their old rules and attitudes along with their baggage and many are at odds with our own old ways. Not to say that's 'the' problem, just one of many. Here.
I may be dead wrong but I see the current surge of 'gun-culture' awareness being more defensively than offensively based. For every idiot redneck we see waving guns around there must be thousands who keep them simply as a last line of defense against a society they no longer trust nor understand. I'm presuming that the majority would rather be rid of them, but can't be free of them until the reasons for needing them are gotten rid of first. What I fear is that we will soon begin to see it that way too and it will all go to hell in a blink.
I get into trouble for saying that replacing gently enforced assimilation with the grandiosely high minded concept of multiculturalism was a monumental mistake here. It divided society, and I'm speaking of OZ here, and formed 'them and us' attitudes where none need have existed. It has made both sides of it defensive.
New immigrants always got a hard time before we made room for them, granted that, but by the time they were accepted as friends they were 'Aussies' first, and proud to be accepted as such, they just came from somewhere else. They didn't call themselves Wahoompian-Australians, living apart from us while deigning to enhance our country with their presence and tolerating us until they can change us into something more suited to their tastes and rules.
Like you Drifter, I was used to guns being part of life, not in the city so much, although we had a .303 in the house that was never fired for years, but in the homes of rural relatives and they were just tools of the farming trade, no mystique or status attached to them at all. They've become status symbols now though haven't they?
Even here where handguns are, except to a very few, unilaterally banned, punk kids big note themselves by getting illegal ones to shoot out peoples' windows with. Some status eh? That these kids see only their peers and other, bigger time, crims as being the role models to impress is the nub of the problem. What makes them think that way?
To my hazy memory, and I'll quickly be corrected, all reports of these kids placed them in 'ethnic' groupings. They were born here, but they don't think of themselves as 'Aussies' first. Aussies are just 'Skips', and a different people to them entirely apparently. Their ethnic connections are much stronger than with their birth Nation and it's population.
Yeah, that can burr you up a bit I guess.
They though are not the sole source of home invading crims and the bank robbers and nutter junkies, but they are the 'gun' awareness examples most reported on by media and so more in our faces and somehow more scary because it's our neighbourhoods they shoot up.
I'm afraid we can't unmix the cake, whatever ails society it's going to take some very brave and smart thinking to sort it out now.
Can't resist the pun... No one magic bullet for this problem.
