How do you deal with your position within Australia; how closely do you feel the need to examine it?
I think a lot about the fact that I'm overprivileged, although mostly I think about being overprivileged compared to other animals. I don't think that much about colonial issues ... but when I do I think, hey, isn't there a lot of racism directed at indigenous people? And isn't that awful? E.g., once I was at a demo at which the police arrested 6 people; took them down to the station; then immediately released the 3 white people. The 3 Aboriginal people they held and charged.
I'm bothered by the misinterpretation of conflict (eg, the Stolen Generations) as a distinct entity with a birth, a peak & an end
Yes. I think that's a VERY good point. That's one reason I try to summarise the problem in terms of racism, rather than in terms of particular events like the Stolen Generation.
I want to come home & burn my privilegeAre you sure? Why not use your privilege to publicise the problems
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For sure I'd rather use it! I think that was what I was trying to say originally but for some reason it came out sounding really clunky. I also wish on principle of course that I just didn't have this privilege, & feel useless anger at History for endowing me as such
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It makes perfect sense to me that you might wish you didn't have a privilege. But if someone's got to have it then I'd rather you had it than many other people
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i like your view of rights as an approximation - murray bookchin calls them only as set of "norms" that it'd be desirable to see manifest. & thanks for the bentham link! i like utilitarians; i also like his "nonsense upon stilts" idea of natural rights :)
& yeah! i came to vienna last summer as part of a speaking tour my friend & i did after leaving palestine. the guy who organised our talk here ended up becoming my boyfriend, so i guess you could say i ended up here for love, ho ho. it's been a weird place to get acclimatised to but it's a nice base, for visiting places like kurdistan! i'd really like to go back to visit the iranian & syrian parts... & to iraq again actually... i felt really wretched leaving the place when i felt like i'd only scratched the surface of so many issues, & the organisation i was with was, by & large, doing pretty good stuff.
you're living in melbourne, right? the boy & i are hoping to move there at the end of this year for a while!
I live in Wollongong, which is not a great place for vegans, although at least it's close to Sydney. (I work in a vegan business in Sydney one day a week.) Moving to Melbourne sounds like a great idea to me.
Did you know that several of the most active people in veganpeople are in Melbourne?
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I think a lot about the fact that I'm overprivileged, although mostly I think about being overprivileged compared to other animals. I don't think that much about colonial issues ... but when I do I think, hey, isn't there a lot of racism directed at indigenous people? And isn't that awful? E.g., once I was at a demo at which the police arrested 6 people; took them down to the station; then immediately released the 3 white people. The 3 Aboriginal people they held and charged.
I'm bothered by the misinterpretation of conflict (eg, the Stolen Generations) as a distinct entity with a birth, a peak & an end
Yes. I think that's a VERY good point. That's one reason I try to summarise the problem in terms of racism, rather than in terms of particular events like the Stolen Generation.
I want to come home & burn my privilegeAre you sure? Why not use your privilege to publicise the problems ( ... )
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& yeah! i came to vienna last summer as part of a speaking tour my friend & i did after leaving palestine. the guy who organised our talk here ended up becoming my boyfriend, so i guess you could say i ended up here for love, ho ho. it's been a weird place to get acclimatised to but it's a nice base, for visiting places like kurdistan! i'd really like to go back to visit the iranian & syrian parts... & to iraq again actually... i felt really wretched leaving the place when i felt like i'd only scratched the surface of so many issues, & the organisation i was with was, by & large, doing pretty good stuff.
you're living in melbourne, right? the boy & i are hoping to move there at the end of this year for a while!
Reply
I live in Wollongong, which is not a great place for vegans, although at least it's close to Sydney. (I work in a vegan business in Sydney one day a week.) Moving to Melbourne sounds like a great idea to me.
Did you know that several of the most active people in veganpeople are in Melbourne?
Reply
where d'you work in sydney?
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