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AusPoliGAF |OT| Boats? What Boats?
- Thread starter Bernbaum
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Elaugaufein
Member
Ahh I see, you meant the "It contradicts the Bible and must be wrong" popular branch. I thought you were talking about the "It hurts our profits so we're going to fund a movement against it" corporatist branch.
I can't really see the first accomplishing much without the second honestly. The Christian Democrats and Family First are basically that already and they pretty much amount to statistical noise. You need either corporate level financial backing or some kind of populist stance (as I said One Nation was quiet leftist economical in terms of the demographic it was directed at, as are most far-right parties of that nature) to succeed. Which is probably why they are largely content to try and control the Liberals. It's also more difficult to try and pull a One Nation on the Liberal Party than the Nationals. The National seats are much safer from Labor* and thus far more susceptible to being flanked by the SAME THING BUT MORE! kind of parties.
*And historically they've been safe from the Greens too because people regarded them as basically Ivory Tower Academics here to take away our living. But that seems to be changing (maybe related to the agglomeration of farms into basically industrial entities and that in the case of the existing family properties we've reached the point where the ever increasing average age of farmers/graziers has resulted in them being unable to continue working and we're starting to see an influx of college educated effectively taking over to keep the family property running ? ).
No, I reckon the necessity of international diplomacy will make that branch begrudgingly accept it. The conservative branch seem to require far less attachment to reality.
I think you're right, but I reckon there's enough pent up rage on that side of town that makes a serious attempt seem likely.
bobnowhere
Member
Pretty much, the day before Australia were awarded the prize for doing the most that day to slow/hijack the process with J Bish's latest version of the "Coal is good for Humanity" speech. However it plays at home at some point you have to stop pointlessly swimming against the tide.
It will be interesting to see Turnbull and Hunt continue to defend the Direct Action nonsense in light of this and what the National Party will say. The Nats are already throwing a wobbly over the Diesel Fuel Excise break perhaps being removed for Farmers and Miners as it is seen as a fosil fuel subsidy, something the conference is trying very hard to rule out world wide.
Elaugaufein
Member
I've got to admit it's amusing seeing a group other than poor people getting screwed over by someone using an efficient method to collect money for a purpose rather than an appropriate one since the Diesel Fuel Excise wasn't really about taxing Diesel.
bobnowhere
Member
Looks like McFarlane's attempt at switching parties has fallen at the final hurdle with the LNP executive (state I assume) blocking it. I wonder what shade of beetroot Barnaby is right about now?
Bahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! What a pathetic and ridiculous power play by the Nats.
Bahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! What a pathetic and ridiculous power play by the Nats.
Elaugaufein
Member
He can't though. The Libs require the Nats to form government unless they absolutely sweep in (Abbott's ascension was insufficient to give you an idea of the scale needed). And that's not even accounting for the Nat's technically being the dominant faction in Queensland (who choose their party room) and the Northern Territory (who sit as Nationals). The majority of the Queensland LNP sit as Liberals because of the greater influence rather than any actual loyalty.
Trapped between the need to moderate and the inability do actually do so.
I always assumed he was just fucking with Labor as the cherry on the top, but apparently he was allowing it to override actual policy. Thank god he's no longer PM.
Elaugaufein
Member
Pretty much everything the Coalition claims about Labor and Greens influence applies to them x10 because National voter distribution is much better suited to winning Lower House seats. And the Coalition agreement means there's no risk of the Liberals funneling votes to Labor over the Nationals unlike Labor and the Greens. But that's a much more minor factor since there's only a handful of electorates where it would matter even in theory. The Nationals are largely impregnable from the centrist parties since they are waaay more economically socialist for their demographic than the Labor party while upholding the socially conservative traditional rural values in ways the Liberals generally can't and equally stand no chance in more urban environments where their generous economic policies don't apply. You do get some Labor vs Nationals battles in rural areas with large numbers of blue collar workers like Mt Isa but you have a hard time seeing the Liberals making much of a difference in those fights.
(And note that despite that the Nationals are very much the junior party which is about how it plays with Labor and the Greens, the Greens never have Labor over a barrel to a greater extent than the Coalition does since if they prefer a centre right solution to a left solution they can go that way which gives them a pretty good negotiating position when combined with the fact the dominant Labor faction is ideologically closer to the Liberals than the Greens. And the part that is closer to the Greens ideologically is often more threatened by them so there's no love lost there. )
Elaugaufein
Member
We did have Tony Abbott for a while and he wasn't that far off. But apart from that I am. I'm just not ready to concede victory to "Things could be worse" when "Things could be better".
If they ever get into power they'll be our republicans too. So it's still kinda scary from over here. We're just less likely to get shot.
D.Lo
Member
We do, except here they're called 'Monarchists'.
Elaugaufein
Member
I dunno, we're a country and we have resources and we have nothing to do with attacks on the US, so we seem to meet most of the criteria to be invaded by a Republican President.
viciouskillersquirrel
Member
Man, you're in Texas and working in a resource industry. You're basically in the belly of the beast as far as shoot-from-the-hip, I-feel-it-in-my-gut, my-in-group-uber-alles reactionaries go in the entire Anglosphere.
I've met enough accomplished, educated, competent STEM professionals who also happen to be climate change deniers here in Brisbane that I can't even imagine what it must be like for you over there.
Aarglefarg
Member
You did make an assumption she's a man though.
http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-...anies-are-not-paying-tax-20151216-glpl3a.html
38% of the top companies in Australia pay no tax.
Tax systems around the world are really not set up to deal with multi-nationals.
38% of the top companies in Australia pay no tax.
Tax systems around the world are really not set up to deal with multi-nationals.
Houston is progressive. They elected a lesbian Democrat mayor. It's more multicultural than Brisbane and there is a massive gay community with rainbow flags all over the street. A gay person would have more civil liberties in Texas than they would in Queensland (unfortunately, that includes an absence of gun control).
You get a good mix across the political spectrum in the resources industry. I can name multiple Greens party voters from the office back in Queensland, even though my old company was specifically targeted by Larissa Waters and the Lock the Gate crew. Us geologists are outdoors people and have a soft spot for the environment. The Republicans in my office are the gentle, soft-spoken, old-school type of southern conservative and they can't stand Donald as his policies and vitriol are tearing the party apart.
As for climate change, I try to avoid discussions on that largely because I work for the oil industry and that will always taint the conversation. Before quitting, my PhD thesis was in palaeoclimatology, and man, that shit is complicated. Dedicated climatologists don't even fully understand climate change, so why should the average reader of The Guardian? The layperson can take a progressive stance on immigration, marriage equality, drug use, sexism, racism and most envrionmental issues with a fair degree of confidence in the evidence supporting that position, but the technical basis for climate change is so complex and unwieldy that it's really just an 'off-the-shelf' belief that most people follow just because it seems to be the progressive thing to do.
I think the best summary of my position on climate change can be found in Phillip Ruddiman's 'Ploughs Plagues and Petroleum'. He describes a unique position on pre-civilization climatic processes and what the human impact has been over the last 10,000 years or so, whilst outlining just how complicated atmospheric processes really are. He makes a few passing comments on modern anthropogenic climate but largely skirts around the issue because it's become much more of a political conversation than a scientific one.
You did make an assumption she's a man though.
god damnit!
I think it's broader than the set up of tax systems. We lack the organised social structures to restrict the continual growth of business. A business is just a class of organisation with a singular profit focus, which isn't a bad thing in an of itself, but it needs to be restricted by some means. I think the traditional means of doing so, unions and religion, have been in decline. Unless some sort of organised social structure is grown with focus other than profit extraction, business will eventually just eat itself. I'm imagining some kind of plant analogy here, but I don't want to belabor the point.
I get that future climate stuff is very hard to predict because there are so many inputs and interacting systems, but I think that list of progressive stances are also very complicated. The only real "clarity" is standing in opposition to certain extremist positions, and once you move beyond the swastikas and daily Facebook posts from my Dad about how windmills don't work, actually nailing down specific positions that are not only right but also practically (not just politically) implementable is... complicated. You see a lot of complexity to the issue that most of us don't because it's what you specialise in, which is what is expected. There's often this kind of disconnect between the academics or others on the frontline, and people that have to get the message out about those fields. The old argument between scientists and science reports is often. along the same lines as the argument between academics and elected MPs. There's probably not much we can do about it other than to try to understand each other better and sing kumbaya.
For example!
From: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8462.12127/full
Which is so dry that I sure as fuck can't get through it, but a union employed economist tweeted it expressing the frustration of explaining to "lefties" that workers are a key beneficiary of the current tax arrangements of multinationals.
Not sorry for triple posting because someone has to pick up the slack. Thread is kinda slow post Abbott.
Elaugaufein
Member
For example!
From: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8462.12127/full
Which is so dry that I sure as fuck can't get through it, but a union employed economist tweeted it expressing the frustration of explaining to "lefties" that workers are a key beneficiary of the current tax arrangements of multinationals.
Not sorry for triple posting because someone has to pick up the slack. Thread is kinda slow post Abbott.
I mean that's not exactly new. Workers are a key beneficiary from mining/burning/processing/fishing/grazing everything we can get our hands on too, hell funeral home workers are a key beneficiary of killing everyone we can (as long as we keep population stable or growing). The left is (like most simple political groupings) a bunch of groups who share overlap with some other of those groups rather than a homogeneous block. The disagreement between workers and environmentalists is pretty much as old as the realization that infinite consumption is impossible because we lack infinite resources (and our economy is incapable of dealing with infinite resources anyway, in the areas we are close (intellectual property) we basically legally pretend that we aren't). And technically its worker employed by said multi-nationals rather than workers as a class,
roosters93
Member
Fredescu stoner sloth
bern your contributions are delightful
bern your contributions are delightful
I'll admit I've completely zoned out since the coup. Guess I'm part of the problem.
I've been making my way through Will Durant's 10,000 plus page history books for the past, like, year, and he seems very much of the view that religion has a important role in moderating our more base instincts. Not a view I necessarily subscribe to, but it's interesting.
I've been making my way through Will Durant's 10,000 plus page history books for the past, like, year, and he seems very much of the view that religion has a important role in moderating our more base instincts. Not a view I necessarily subscribe to, but it's interesting.
I have too, and I find it kind of unsettling.
I think there's validity to it, but more on an organisational level rather than a direct personal one. Like how people tend to equate legality with morality, especially when they're acting on behalf of an organisation (ie doing their job). What can possibly regulate the instinct to act legally on behalf of a company to put food on the table other than something like a religion? I really should do some more reading on it though so I can advance beyond kindergarten level sociology and discover that... it's complicated.
viciouskillersquirrel
Member
I think what religion provided historically was a common ideology and common values. On a society-wide level, this can be useful for fostering social cohesion, weeds out violence between disparate groups and allows a ruler to govern with a light hand. It's why the ancient societies of the Middle East almost all featured a society-wide ruler god who set the rules for all the lesser local gods and why the Greeks and Romans had a habit of fusing/conflating/connecting the gods of conquered peoples to their own (e.g. Zeus-Jupiter-Amun). Basically everyone believing the same thing gets people on the same page and allows people to see the people across the river as fellow believers as opposed to dangerous foreigners.
Later societies built around Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam all attempted to do the same thing - unifying otherwise disparate people with a common faith. This meant that after a while, everyone would have more similar values, worldviews and cultural practices.
You can't really create lasting empires with force alone. Unless there's a pre-existing common structure binding people together beyond just the power of the state, a successful empire builder will try to impose one. That's where religion can come in handy.
There have been many religions in the world, but none of them have been anywhere near as successful as Christianity and Islam. In particular, Christianity seems to have the ability to spread like fucking wildfire wherever it's introduced.
I think the success of Christianity is due to the concept of Christ. If you go back far enough, we would see within every single society that we've ever encountered some form of ritualistic or religious sacrifice. Then along comes Christ with the revolutionary idea that he was sacrificed for what we've done and what we will do and therefore no one ever needed to be sacrificed again. Pretty amazing concept, if you think about it.
In that sense, it was a revolutionary idea that allowed religion to be structured and compartmentalised, come pray every so often and trust in Christ...aside from that, get on with your lives and contribute to society at large.
*Shamelessly stolen from an essay I read once, whom I can't credit because I've forgotten.
I think the success of Christianity is due to the concept of Christ. If you go back far enough, we would see within every single society that we've ever encountered some form of ritualistic or religious sacrifice. Then along comes Christ with the revolutionary idea that he was sacrificed for what we've done and what we will do and therefore no one ever needed to be sacrificed again. Pretty amazing concept, if you think about it.
In that sense, it was a revolutionary idea that allowed religion to be structured and compartmentalised, come pray every so often and trust in Christ...aside from that, get on with your lives and contribute to society at large.
*Shamelessly stolen from an essay I read once, whom I can't credit because I've forgotten.
viciouskillersquirrel
Member
I think the revolution goes back a bit further than that - back to Judaism and the social prophets. In a lot of ways, Judaism before the exile to Babylon was a lot like neighbouring religions apart from the monotheism thing. The destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, however, really limited what you could do ritual-wise. It meant that the faith needed a different focus from that point in order to survive. The social prophets really emphasised justice, kindness and charity as instrumental to pleasing God and tended to relegate the importance of ritual sacrifice to a symbolic level.
It made worship more personal than public and more about how you treated each other than how you treated God. More importantly, I think, it did a lot to decouple political greatness from holiness. The overriding assumption of the time (and up until the Renaissance) was that political and material success were signs of favour from God (or the gods, as the belief was near-universal), so therefore rich people were almost automatically assumed to be more holy than the poor and defeats in war were often blamed on the nation or rulers having somehow displeased heaven.
After the social prophets did their thing, however, it was perfectly possible for the son of a carpenter to become a respected prophet (and later Messiah) having never gained a military victory or for the tears of a peasant (i.e. Peter crying having denied knowing Jesus thrice) to be portrayed in writing with something other than derision.
I think what makes Christianity so revolutionary is that it allows for anyone to have a close relationship to the central deity and all the benefits of the religion, no matter who they are. It didn't matter if you were a peasant, a woman, a foreigner or even a slave, everyone had access to salvation. Priests might have monopoly on certain rituals, but they don't get to go to a special heaven. The idea of spiritual equality even with kings is intoxicating.
EDIT: Judaism and later Christianity were slurred with the epithet of "atheism" by the larger world of Antiquity. The belief in none of the gods (except one) was considered a dangerous one that threatened to undermine the very moral fabric of society and even formed a national security risk.
It made worship more personal than public and more about how you treated each other than how you treated God. More importantly, I think, it did a lot to decouple political greatness from holiness. The overriding assumption of the time (and up until the Renaissance) was that political and material success were signs of favour from God (or the gods, as the belief was near-universal), so therefore rich people were almost automatically assumed to be more holy than the poor and defeats in war were often blamed on the nation or rulers having somehow displeased heaven.
After the social prophets did their thing, however, it was perfectly possible for the son of a carpenter to become a respected prophet (and later Messiah) having never gained a military victory or for the tears of a peasant (i.e. Peter crying having denied knowing Jesus thrice) to be portrayed in writing with something other than derision.
I think what makes Christianity so revolutionary is that it allows for anyone to have a close relationship to the central deity and all the benefits of the religion, no matter who they are. It didn't matter if you were a peasant, a woman, a foreigner or even a slave, everyone had access to salvation. Priests might have monopoly on certain rituals, but they don't get to go to a special heaven. The idea of spiritual equality even with kings is intoxicating.
EDIT: Judaism and later Christianity were slurred with the epithet of "atheism" by the larger world of Antiquity. The belief in none of the gods (except one) was considered a dangerous one that threatened to undermine the very moral fabric of society and even formed a national security risk.
Part of the success of Christianity is the sense of individuality that comes with salvation. Other religions have their deities, creation myths, moral creeds etc, but with Christianity you get your very own personal God who cares about your daily concerns and is looking out for you (as well as billions of others). That's why Christianity is such a prevailing cultural force in the USA where the individual is king, and not so widepsread in Asia where the collective society is more important.
Plus there's free booze.
Plus there's free booze.
I may be talking out my arse, but I thought that was to do with the religious background of the settlers and the individual is king kinda came later when the sense of importance of their independence became overblown and later coupled with exceptionalism due to being relatively untouched by WW2.
Depends on the Asian country, Catholicism is pretty big in the Philippines. Obviously that's US influenced, but it took hold pretty well without the pre existing individual is king stuff.
Individualism is a doctrine that's really only centred on the Anglosphere, along with France and to a much lesser extent the northern Scandinavian countries. It definitely is not a feature that features in most other European countries such as Germany, Spain or Italy, where the collective family bears out over the nuclear family.
It also fails to account for the entirety of Latin America, where collectivism is so well entrenched that they (mostly) suffer from lurching from one collectivist regime to another.
I think there is some merit in the success of Christianity being in the individual connection between the diety and the worshipper, but that's not really a cultural thing.
It also fails to account for the entirety of Latin America, where collectivism is so well entrenched that they (mostly) suffer from lurching from one collectivist regime to another.
I think there is some merit in the success of Christianity being in the individual connection between the diety and the worshipper, but that's not really a cultural thing.
This is more Protestantism than Christianity in general I think. It's funny looking back at how all the Protestant sects loved individual interpretation of the bible when they started out but as soon as they got any power they were worse than the inquisition.
The aforementioned will Durant's Story of Civilisation is highly recommended, as is the hardcore history episode about the anabaptists in Germany.
My understanding of the processes behind the establishment and propagation of religion comes entirely from Civ III, IV, and V but I guess I'm talking about the modern, post-WW2 prevalence of Christianity.
Just look at the NBA! LeBron, Dwight, KD, Steph Curry, Dwyane Wade, Jeremy Lin etc... All those superstars (and Jeremy Lin) on a mission from God. Bible quote tattoos, 18-carat Christian cross jewelry and a nice big finger to the sky after a game-winning shot. God is looking out for me.
Yeah I find the notion of a God that micromanages peoples lives and hand places every little thing to be pretty distasteful. If I had a God, she would just be the personification of being a good person and the faith involved is the faith that being nice to people will ultimately have good results even if I don't see it and in fact sometimes see the opposite.
I don't think we're talking politics anymore, but the flipside of "My success is divinely deserved" is "their failure is also divinely deserved", which is to my mind pretty clearly not very often the case
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-...-port-expansion-gets-federal-approval/7047380
My lack of surprise, here it is.
My lack of surprise, here it is.
Yeah I probably should have been a bit more explicit about the effect of that kind of belief on the visibility of structural inequality. Also that I think a religion-like social movement is probably required to prevent capitalism from eating itself.
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