Boy, this video brought back some really nice memories for me. I spent a year living in West Papua (the other half of the island that belongs to Indonesia). Although the people I worked and lived with were not seeing white people for the first time, it was still one helluva a culture difference.

>> ^KnivesOut:

This video gave me chills. The first contact, with the armed warriors approaching the camera-wielding white ghosts.... That could have gone really poorly. What brave people, on both sides.


Never once did I worry about anything like that. While it is true that there is near constant tribal fighting on the island, I would contend that the larger society is extremely peaceful. Always welcoming and trustful with huge smiles and even bigger feasts for anyone that came to their villages.

Basically, violence there comes in downward spirals that start with directed aggression. That mostly has to do with the fact that they believe wholeheartedly in equality. If one tribe raids a village and kills someone, then retribution must be made and one person form the attacking tribe must be killed. Of course, the raid that seeks retribution ends up killing two people, so then the attacks start again. This goes on and on until the numbers are equal on each side, which can take a while. However, if you come in peace, there is nothing to worry about.

As pointed out in Guns, Germs, and Steel, they are also an extremely democratic society. There is no chief, only a 'big man' whose job it is to facilitate discussions and carry out the final decisions. In this way, it is unlikely that one person would freak out and somehow cause something terrible to happen since they must rely on the consent of the entire tribe.

>> ^raverman:

I come bringing viruses and diseases you have no immunity to and no medicines to treat. Here eat my food and handle my possessions.


It's not quite the same situation as it was with Native Americans or those tribes still surviving in the Amazon. While these people may have never had direct contact with a white person before, they certainly had indirect contact. Europeans have been visiting the island since the spice trade began in the 14th century.

The tribes can be roughly divided into coastal peoples and mountain peoples. The coastal peoples have had contact with Europeans for hundreds of years and built up tolerances to their diseases. Mountain people sometimes comes to the beach, and vice-versa, so in this way, resistances to common European diseases are pretty well dispersed among the population.

Actually, it is the white people that are in much more danger of falling ill. We are poorly equipped to handle malaria, dengue, and yellow fever. This, in part, is why there were still 'uncontacted' tribes well into the 20th century.


It's been almost a year since I lived there, and I must say that it is the one place I constantly dream of returning to. They could really use the money from tourism so if you are looking for something off the beaten path without being extremely dangerous, I suggest you check it out. It really is a paradise.

>> ^mrsid:

Not a single line from Snatch?


Agreed. How about this one from the movie:

Brick Top: Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution, manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible c**t... me.

So, this is 2.5 months old, but what the hell...

No, I don't think extortion, in the very broadest sense that we used in this context, is intrinsically immoral, particularly on a Kantian level, but on just about any level. All social behavior is based on extortion. The difference is the source of the threatened consequences, and the purpose of the threat. Consider how theft would be prevented in a completely voluntary society. There would still be a threat of retribution of some sort, and so extortion. Collecting all the generally acceptable extortions into one institution is part of what we call government (even when its religious). No doubt, institutions naturally try to grow their power, but that's going to happen regardless of how decentralized you make them, and in some cases will make it worse (like mafia).

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
The government does benefit the whole of society, but it also benefits special interests, corporations, lobbyists, those who skim off the top, and so on. But aside from who benefits, the action of extortion within itself is probably immoral on some Kantian level, right?

In reply to this comment by jonny:
No, the difference between government extortion and mafia extortion is who benefits. The government extorts to benefit everyone, the mafia extorts to benefit itself.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
The difference between the government and the mafia is the process of voting for or against those who rob you and to a lesser degree what is taken from you.

As you may have notice, this message is very long. Please take a while and read it a few times, in chunks, before you respond. I ask a lot of questions here so I’d like it you pretended as if you were asking the questions to yourself.

I should have qualified my statement about religions. I meant to clarify that in the Persian and Pre-Rome regions of the world, which were primarily Pagan, a huge majority of the religions didn’t have religious structures that were based around fear, for the most part. Yes, I admit that there was the concept of retribution from the gods but it wasn’t anything to the degree of everlasting punishment. I currently don’t know anything about the religions of the very early Americas (Mayans, etc). It wasn’t until the god concepts became more personalized and more humans that it became more about fear. There is a natural progression in the ideological development in religions that goes from being nothing about humans to being all about humans. Eternal suffering or anything resembling a “hell” is relatively new and came about around the time of monotheistic religions.

Let me ask you a question. Why do you trust your personal revelation?

I ask this because I used to be very “spiritual” and I’ve even had out-of-body experiences, experiences that I can only call past life regressions. I grew up in a practicing Christian family and I have memories of experience that I can only call “personal revelation”. I’ve come to a lot of reasons why I shouldn’t trust those personal revelations; I want to know if you’ve come to understand how the human brain is very easily tricked into irrational behaviors and beliefs (not just religious)

You say that this has been an ongoing revelation since you were 14. If you had not had this history of personal revelation at all and it came to you suddenly today, would you find it believable? I imagine that you’re beliefs have been challenged many times. Are you certain that the strengthening effect of the challenges aren’t just from the boomerang effect, caused by a need to justify something that you feel committed to?

Here is another great question. How much of your belief system is tied to your identity; how much do you identify with it, personally or socially? Meaning, if you came to disbelieve what you now believe, would you know who you are or would you have a sort of identity crisis? If you stopped believing as you do now, do you feel that you would you lose a part of who you are?

You ask a good question in “Maybe it is you who is delusion and I see things as they actually are.” Yes, perhaps I am and perhaps you are and perhaps we both are. So how can we know, how would we find out, what kinds of tests and experiments could we do to illuminate the answer. It isn’t good enough to simply say that we both might be delusional; therefore our views are equally valid. Either one of us is correct and the other is not, or we are both incorrect.
You know, I used to have a dualistic view on the nature of humans. I used to believe in the soul or the spirit as something separate from the body. I used to resonate heavily with the lyrics of Tool and the ideas behind the art of Alex Grey.

I guess my biggest question would stem from this statement that you made
“My faith is that i have a spirit, a soul, a divine spark that is connected to the ALL, the ONE, also known as "the source".”
What makes you think that there is an “ALL”, a “ONE” or “the source” and how do you know that you’re not just fooling yourself? What would it mean if you discovered that it’s probably not true, and that the real explanation for the subjective experiences that you’ve had are far more elegant and interesting than the ideas of spirituality that you currently hold?

To be blunt, I don’t think that you’re thinking this whole notion of an ego through far enough. It sounds like you’re just accepting the ideas as being true without going through the motions of analyzing what the concept implies. The notion of an ego implies several things; one of which is that we as humans are special to the degree that we have egos when, either, other animals don’t, or, other animals are better than us in controlling it. The questions then become, do other animals have egos? If so, how does the ego operate in them? Do other life forms, such as plants or bacteria, also have egos, or does the ego require a certain degree of cognitive function? If the ego does require certain cognitive functions to be noticeable, and since we are extremely closely related to other apes such as chimpanzees, do they also exhibit features of having egos? If they don’t and having an ego is strictly a human feature, what happened during the development of the brain that allowed for the access to what we might call the ego and at this point, do we really believe that the “ego” is actually something that exists outside of the brain? If it doesn’t exist outside of the brain than how can we separate who you perceive as yourself and what you perceive as the “ego”? Are all “ego’s” the same or is it brain dependent with variations depending on brain structure and chemistry? Can you see why I would say that the notion of the ego as something outside of or separate from oneself is inherently egotistical.

The way that you talk about the ego makes it seem mystical and somehow separate from “self”. To me, that sounds like someone trying to escape responsibility. Why not just cut out the middle man and admit that you, not your ego, has the tendency to be possessive, needy, insecure, wishes for self-aggrandizement, etc. The notion that “negative” qualities are part and partial of some sort of external thing that is separate from “you” just seems childish to me, not to mention, completely unsupported by research.

For myself, I suppose that I recoil at the idea of an “ALL”, or “ONE”, or “the source” because it doesn’t really answer any questions. If someone were presenting these ideas to me for the first time, I would immediately start asking questions like “What is it made out of, what kind(s) of particles?” “How does it perpetuate?” “What is the physics of this thing?” “By what mechanism does it connect to everything?” “How does a source not also have its own source?” “What tests and experiments can we do to learn more about this thing?” “What objective information do we have about it?” “Does this thing operate differently between animate and inanimate objects?” “If spirit or soul is inherent in the system, do animals and plants also have a spirit or soul?” “What exactly constitutes as a spirit or soul, what can it be defined by?” “Did “the source” have a beginning or a history?”

I think you understand my point. My problem with subjectively believing something is true is that it’s more susceptible to not going far enough in scrutiny. It is much easier to subjectively believe something that feels good or feels right and not go any further than that. Very few subjective beliefs translate into objective or rational understandings of nature; it’s very easy to get it wrong. Subjective beliefs are as prone to fallibility as humans are to irrational thinking.


In reply to this comment by enoch:
hmmmm..
i disagree with your statement that only the monotheistic religion control by fear.
buddhism (yes..buddhism) shinto,mayan,toltec,arminianism,zoroastriasm..the list is legion and they ALL have punishment/reward doctrine.each at varying degrees but its in there.

i do enjoy hearing an atheists perspective on how my faith translates.
very..analytical of you my friend.
suffice to say my faith is born from personal revelation and has been an ongoing revelation since i was 14.
nothing i have encountered or experienced has taken away from this revelation,in fact it has strengthened it.
could i be delusional?
i guess its possible.
or maybe it is you who are delusional and i see things as they actually are.
not trying to be an ass,just pointing out the subjective nature of this particular polemic.

i guess..in its most simplest of terms.
my faith is that i have a spirit,a soul,a divine spark that is connected to the ALL,the ONE,also known as "the source".
freud believed that the ego WAS who you were.i could not disagree with that more.
the ego is who you THINK you are.predicated and perpetrated by those who are close to you.
we cant help that.it is very human.
so around 12 yrs old we start to have a sense of self.this self understands the world and how he/she interacts with it by rules set by his/her parents.
as we grow older so does the circle of influence i.e:friends,lovers,teachers etc etc.
think about this for a second because i am expressing a very huge idea in a very short amount of time and glossing over all the implications of said idea.

my philosophy..or my faith if you will,views the ego as my "false" self.
the ego wishes only to validate itself (thats why mass marketing is very VERY effective).
the ego wishes to perpetuate its own existence by way of constant feed-back.
the ego gets jealous and possesive.
the ego gets insecure and needy.
the ego has demands...and desires...which seek only for self aggrandizement.
now societal roles consisting of compassion and empathy will,and can,curb the destructive nature of the ego (think your teenage years and just how self centered you were to give you an idea of ego gone wild)

through my faith and discipline i am quite aware of my ego and have suppressed it to the point where it no longer manipulates my thinking nor my emotions.
so i have no urge nor a desire to be perceived as "correct" because to me that is irrelevant.
(though i do prefer to be "corrected" if i misstate something).
i do not experience jealousy,nor envy.
but i do experience pride.
i do not allow anothers limited perception of me based on their own subjective reasoning influence how i feel about who i am.
i am open and honest because my faith is that we are all connected with the divine and to lie,steal or cheat you is to be doing to myself also.
i do not judge anothers faith or lack of it because that is THEIR path and the only time i ever feel the need to intercede is when it flows into my domain and affects me in some way.

even as i write these words,which to me seem pretty articulate and clear,i know that you will understand them based solely on..well..your understanding.
i do not say that as a slight but rather a statement.
trying to convey complex thought patterns by way of text can be so..limiting.

everything i do or say i do so with spirit in mind.
sometimes i fail..sometimes i succeed.
i am human.
with a spirit! ziiiiing!
anyways..
i really do enjoy our conversations.
you are a pleasure my friend.
namaste.
(look that word up btw..its a great word)

I'm more worried about potential retribution.

The man was no more then just a figure, an idol to them, at this point. The man who avoided America.

Now he's dead, and there's going to be a whole hell of a lot of pissed off Al Queda.

This kind of thing is so fucking ridiculous. First of all Glenn Beck does it in the most recreant asinine way possible, 'I'm, not not saying that God didn't not cause the earthquake and send the tsunami to kill all those horrible Japanese people for not being American, cause that would be supposing God, but yeah he totally did.' At least Pat Robertson had the balls to right out say the crap he did.

Secondly, and more importantly, why the fuck do natural disasters have to have a human reason? Hiroshi Iwate was beating off to pictures of cartoon girls with impossibly large breasts, therefor, thousands of other people had to die. What about when earthquakes and other natural disasters just destroy plants and kill animals, did those animals do something, with their lack of free will, to piss off God? Are we to assume everyone who died was a horrible person who deserved it?

People need to stop with the kindergartner level of reasoning. Getting killed is bad, bad things should happen to bad people, therefore anyone who is killed is bad.
How about, shit happens regardless of where we are or what we're doing. Sometimes we're in the way sometimes we're not. There is no cause and effect between our actions and an earthquake, we can not decide to cause one by 'sinning'. We have no control over it.

And just to be fair apparently the the Governor of Tokyo said the quake and tsunami were divine retribution for the Japanese's egoism. So the crazy stupid magical thinking doesn't limit itself to the crazy and stupid in the US.

@GeeSussFreeK

I didn't say GDP, I said GDP per capita. Both Finland and the US have roughly the same GDP per capita.

My assertion is that crimes are more likely to be committed by criminals who are empowered by guns. Suicide has nothing to do with this and that's why I didn't address it.

Murder rates are the only universally comparable measure when you consider various violent offenses are classified differently and with varying degrees of tolerance in difference countries.

I think it would hardly be a stretch to assert that guns allow criminals and delinquents to dish out far more death per violent incident - being a reason why crime is average/above average, but murder (especially by firearms) is astronomical.

Either way, I want to address murder singlehandedly as I think it's certainly still an important (and far less finnicky) topic to argue in and of itself, not crime generally.

Crimes again are classified and reported to varying degrees in different countries.

Again, I want to point out that my argument isn't about gun legislation but about gun ownership rates. I have no doubt that if you were to ban guns immediately in one state, there'll not be a chasm of a decline in gun murder rates. Arguments that look at gun laws ignore the blatant fact that US borders are very porous as far as I understand, and that even then, gun laws take years, decades perhaps to have meaningful effects on ownership rates and as a result, general availability at above minimal cost to criminals. Looking at the wikipedia page for California's gun laws, the only meaningful law I see is a 2005 ban in San Fransisco on all firearms and ammunition. Something like this would take at least a decade to have any meaningful effect though, I'm sure I would agree with you here when I say that smuggling guns into simply a city of all places (not a country with customs, or even a state) and selling them on the black market would hardly be difficult - where surrounding areas have no such ban.

I agree that no legislation will prevent a determined terrorist or capable individual from inflicting massive damage if nuclear weapons were readily available and manufactured in large amounts in one area of the world. A concerted and enforced gun ban on the other hand (with restrictions for hunting in some areas, target shooting, and potentially eased laws for protection in remote areas with low police presence) would do a great deal to reduce availability and reduce the incidence of gun murder by petty criminals which makes up the majority of gun deaths in the US.

Take for example our legislation in Australia. There's nothing exceptional about it, I'm just most familiar with it:

"State laws govern the possession and use of firearms in Australia. These laws were largely aligned under the 1996 National Agreement on Firearms. Anyone wishing to possess or use a firearm must have a Firearms Licence and, with some exceptions, be over the age of 18. Owners must have secure storage for their firearms.

Before someone can buy a firearm, he or she must obtain a Permit To Acquire. The first permit has a mandatory 28-day delay before it is first issued. In some states (e.g. Queensland, Victoria, and New South Wales), this is waived for second and subsequent firearms of the same class. For each firearm a "Genuine Reason" must be given, relating to pest control, hunting, target shooting, or collecting. Self-defense is not accepted as a reason for issuing a licence, even though it may be legal under certain circumstances to use a legally held firearm for self-defense.[2]

Each firearm in Australia must be registered to the owner by serial number. Some states allow an owner to store or borrow another person's registered firearm of the same category."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Australia

There is a very good reason why this has led to a 5.2% ownership rate among citizens and a murder rate by guns of between 29% and 19% that of the US per capita depending on which numbers you use from here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

If you want to come back to saying that people simply murder in different ways, then look at purely the murder rate - the number goes up just slightly to 35% (the rate of murder per capita in Australia of that in the US).

Gun laws aren't punishment. Just like nuclear weapon bans aren't punishment. Or Sarin Gas bans. They're good policy.

Just like making everyone buy basic health insurance to reduce risk among consumers and lower prices, where the poorest are subsidised. If you insist on using analogies, I think this compares incredibly well to a gun ban which makes allowance for recreation and hunting (and at least in my view, allowances of 'for protection' licenses in remote areas with limited quantity and strict restriction to avoid smuggling).

Just like the compulsory third party car insurance we have here, that ensures that if you are at fault and damage another car, the innocent party is guaranteed to have their car repaired.

What I hope you understand coming from a libertarian position (and this is repeating the first thing I said in this whole discussion to blankfist) is that libertarianism is not a flat and universal position on individual rights. You, just like anyone I would imagine, have limits to how far you go with individual rights. You recognize the validity of a system of laws to limit the impact of one's individual's actions on another, and the retribution they should receive for violating it. You simply draw the metaphorical line on rights further right on the ideological spectrum than I do.

Therefore you can't simply justify gun ownership by claiming individual rights and the notion that everyone's entitled to them as they are not presumed guilty. You have to consider whether it does harm in society or not, just like the rest of us.

I hope I've laid out a pretty convincing arguments based on the statistics (speculative of course, I have neither the time nor resources to do a rigorous analysis controlling for a multitude of variables) that gun ownership does lead to more (gun) murders. If we were taking about a 10-20% difference, sure it would be debatable, but we're talking about a 2 to 3 fold increase. Let's not kid around about what causes this.

If you think that individual rights are so incredibly important that they trump this palpably gargantuan increase in death (and suffering) then that is certainly a position you can take, but let's be honest about this if that's the position you want to take.

As far as I'm concerned, I don't think they are. I think the opportunities for self defense, the willingness to use a gun of most people, the willingness of normal and ration people to risk death for losing their property are small. The sheer empowerment and impetus a gun (easily available from a nearby store at a price anyone can pay) can give a criminal on the other hand is huge.

---

Just a quick recap on things I didn't cover.

If you want to demonstrate guns are less devastating than drugs then kindly provide data to support this. If you are referencing the drug war or even if you are not, this is totally irrelevant to the question I posed to you.

Comparing guns to drugs and referencing the opium war is just not a good analogy. Colonialism. Colonialism. Colonialism.

Yes cars kill people, so do airplanes. So do pretzels. In fact, just about everything kills people (although yes car accidents are far more significant than pretzels). We do have a plethora of legislation that increases car safety. Guns are of course unique in that supposedly (if you would believe people in the US), more guns and LESS gun legislation protects you from the more guns you now have and so on. Let's look at this objectionably just as I compared the benefits to defenders versus aggressors for gun ownership. Cars provide an obvious benefit and are fundamental to commerce and modern life (unlike guns 99.9% of the time for private defenders of civil liberty). More legislation and safety requirements can obviously reduce death rates. To me it seems pretty obvious how to proceed here.

The start of the Zombie plague is always the most boring part. It when she tears the drivers-side window out for retribution that things get interesting.

There's extremists on all sides, and they all seem to have one thing in common... the belief in divine retribution. Maybe it's not intolerance you encounter most of the time (I'm not debating that intolerance dosn't exist, and not to downplay anytime someone is threatened or killed for what they believe) but there's some healthy skepticism that your vengeful flaming horse riding god from the sky will come with his angelic horde and blast me into light particles if I don't believe in him... you know, give or take some artistic license with that interpretation of this video. I guess what I mean is, if you're going to believe in this kind of thing you should really start to develop a thick skin.

If I were desperate and had to use an animal to move shit, I still wouldn't keep whipping it again and again. @handmethekeysyou it seems to me that you're putting in meaning that others aren't getting at.

People aren't turning up their noses because "oh no, that poor animal has to drag a log and do physical labor", it's because he beats the shit out of it. And faces righteous retribution.

>> ^Djevel:

Tales of little girls with retribution in their heart for the death of their daddies? Sign me up!


The Quick And The Dead?

Tales of little girls with retribution in their heart for the death of their daddies? Sign me up!

viral
Advertising for computer game Dead to Rights Retribution.

Blame it on America's unyelding sense of justice. All must be punished. We are like the borg and we raise borg police officers. Our society (and many like ours) dole out punishment to placate everyone's need for hypocritical retribution.

Pot? Go to jail! Fight? Go to jail. Accident? Go to jail. Have to pee, public? Go to jail. Accidentally kick a paramedic in the face due to medical condition, which is still agaianst the law? Go to jail. Sick.

>> ^CyberViperDriver:
About five years ago I woke up in the middle of the night with severe pain in my groin and lower back/abdomen. I had my wife call an ambulance because I was afraid my appendix was about too burst or something. Fast forward 30 minutes later. The ambulance has arrived and I am on the gurney behind the ambulance in my yard. thats when the cops rolled in. In a case such as this it is common for the paramedic to do a test to see if it is indeed appendicitis or something less severe such as a kidney stone. The test is that they lift one leg (the affected side) and bend the kne, raising the knee as close to the torso as possible...if it is your appendix you will feel an intense but brief shock of pain and instinctively kick hard to straighten your leg. it was indeed my appendix and when he bent my leg I kicked, the paramedic lost control of my leg and I ended up bloodying the paramedics lip. he laughed it off since it is common (I learned later)
The two county sheriff deputies drew their tasers and commanded me to stand down. I was writing in pain strapped to a gurney. there was alot of shouting, one of the officers starting chanting his mantra of "lay still or I will tase you!" I couldn't lay still, I was in agony. the paramedic actually put himself between the sheriff and myself saving me from getting tased. Off we went to the hospital, My wife had to stay home because we have small children and couldn't get anyone to stay with them at 3am. later I learned that the officers had entered my home and performed a search without my wifes consent. she finally relented when they threatened to tase her and charge her with obstruction...this would have led to her arrest and the children being placed into police care shudder The police left when they couldnt find anything damning.
a few days later as I was recovering in the hospital from the surgery I received a notice that assault charges had been filed on me ON BEHALF of the paramedic I had "Assaulted" after getting home from the hospital I contacted the EMS service and was notified that the paramedic had refused to file charges even after being threatened by the two officers...so they went and filed charges on his behalf (perfectly legal for them to do I guess)
three court appearances and almost a year later I was finally cleared of this charge of assaulting an emergency responder (a felony) when the paramedic took the stand and explained to the judge just how everything had went down. since I had obviously plead not guilty I was liable for all the court fees on the defense. a few grand.
I have never had a criminal record, and a well established successful member of my community and I was almost raped by the people who are supposedly there to serve and protect...so yeah..cops can go suck a dick, every last one of them.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

The sad thing about this video is that we're probably looking at a divorce and vindictive retribution - though it's hard to say for sure of course.