The rise in mental health problems - and other measured diseases

Over on Club Troppo, The Mental Health puzzle, part III: the cultural hypothesis continues Paul Frijter's examination of the puzzle of the measured increase in in mental health problems (depression, anxiety, and obesity in particular) across the Western world since the 1950s and in Anglo-Saxon countries in particular. In looking at this, Paul explicitly took it as a given that that this was a real increase and not just a measurement issue.

Now I have only just come across the series (I missed the earlier posts), so have nor properly absorbed Paul's arguments. However, the discussions links to some things that I have been thinking about that I just wanted to jot down.

The rise in measured diseases is not limited to mental health. My impression is that we are looking at a pattern that is broader than that. I suppose that the two that have most puzzled me are the apparent rise in asthma and in allergies of all sorts. If we take asthma as an example, I was in my early twenties before I met anyone with serious asthma. It wasn't talked about in a day to day sense. Now I see puffers everywhere and I have met multiple people suffering from what appears to be relatively severe asthma.

No doubt part of the answer lies in the increase in population. Where serious conditions are rare, the visible numbers and hence the commentary rise as the population rises. However, it would appear to be more than that. Here, and just looking at social things, I want to list three interacting things.

The first is the combination of reporting and measurement. Our capacity to collect data has risen sharply, as has the desire to report on different things. There is, I think, plenty of evidence to show that better reporting and data management systems leads to a rise in the number of recorded incidents and responses to those incidents.

The second is the professionalisation and especially the medicalisation within our community. All professionals look for problems that they can solve with their respective tool kits. They classify things in terms of their own taxonomies. You can see this in the mental health field, for example, where there has been a very large expansion in the things classified as "mental Illness" and therefore addressable via medical means. This is not helped by our own desire for answers.

The third can be classified as feed-back loops. As we become more aware of things, we apply them to ourselves. We seek help and advice on more things. This is reported. We become more aware. Its kind of a reverse placebo effect.

These three interacting things to my mind play a significant role in some of the trends that we see. If we really want to measure something like the of serious allergies, asthma or mental illness we have to be able to net these other trends out, and this can be hard.      

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Saturday Morning Musings - a melange

This post is simply a melange of things I have noticed that struck me in some way as relevant to my current thinking.

In Somaliland votes I reported on the elections in this portion of Somalia, a de facto independent state for a number of years. The opposition won the election, leading to a peaceful transition of power. In an opinion piece on Al Jazeera, Professor Afyare Abdi Elmi suggests that this significant event brings into focus two contradictory approaches to the future of the region: (1) recognising Somaliland as a new state or (2) establishing the Somali state from Somaliland. He opts for the second.

The discussion brings into focus a broader issue, the struggles many nations have and do face in maintaining territorial integrity in the face of internal division.

In the ruling by the International Court on Kosovo, Court President Hisashi Owada said in part: "The court considers that general international law contains no applicable prohibition on declarations of independence." While this may give heart to separatist movements everywhere, the path from de facto to full de jure remains a long and difficult one.

Political entities respond to internal tensions in different ways. Their responses take place within a global environment marked by the rise of bigger entities on one side with an increased desire for closer local, group or regional identification on the other. As life becomes more complex, many seek simplified identities.

This month's Anthropology Carnival introduced me to a new concept, WEIRD - Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic = ‘WEIRD’. I quote:

‘The Weirdest People in the World?’ establishes that most behavioural science theory is built on research that examines only a very narrow sample of human variation (disproportionately US university undergraduates; more specifically, those in psychology classes) -- who are, in a word, WEIRD.

Equally distorting, research published in the top journals in six sub-disciplines of psychology relied on 68% of subjects from the US and fully 96% from ‘Western’ industrialized nations (European, North American, Australian or Israeli). Unsurprisingly, this skews our understanding of the empirical foundation for claims being made, either explicitly or implicitly, about human nature.

Now the point in all this is that WEIRD subjects tend, it is suggested,  to be outliers in global terms on a range of measurable traits that do vary, including visual perception, sense of fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, and a host of other basic psychological traits.

This conclusion links to another issue I have talked about, our tendency to assume that our own views are in some way the norm when in fact they probably (almost certainly) are not. I have also suggested that this is becoming an increasing problem because of the way that globalisation is jamming us all together willy-nilly.

The continuing US reactions to the release last year by the Scottish Government of Abdul Baset Ali al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds raises some interesting issues.

Under the new definition of a devolved United Kingdom as a country of nations and regions, it seems to me that the Scottish Government was within its rights to release al-Megrahi. Whether the British Government as the central government should have intervened, indeed just how it might have intervened, is a different issue.

I wonder whether readers of this column have read any of Tom Clancy's books? I make this point because whether or not one likes Tom Clancy, I have found his books to be a remarkably good representation of one stream of US thought. One central element in those books is a belief in the centrality of US power. They are very US focused.

It is an odd feeling from my viewpoint that in my short life I have seen the final decline of one great Empire, the British, and the middle to end stages of another, the US. The point about Imperial entities is not their form of Government, but that they are big enough to consider not just that their views are central, but also that they have an implicit right to impose those views. This centrality of view continues into the decline phase even as the capacity to enforce it diminishes.

The assumption by the US Congress that it if it requests senior officials or Ministers of another state to attend a hearing then they should attend is an example.

This is not an anti-US comment. I am not anti-US, far from it. Rather, I am talking about mind-sets.

You actually see the same thing in Australia at both popular and official levels. At popular level, there is a belief that if there is an external problem, something that breaches local views, then the Government can and must do something about it. At official level, you see it in official arrogance and insensitivity in handling relations in those areas where Australia's power and influence is greatest. 

If this is bad in the US, it's far worse in Australia because our real power is so limited.

The roots of prejudice

My thanks to Kanani for this photo.

I recommend you read the full story, Words may hurt, but the will has to be stronger. In this post I want to deal with just one thing and that very shortly, the roots of prejudice.

As a manager, management consultant and trainer, part of my job has been to create a sense of group identity; team building. Often this involves opposing the group to an external entity. We are going to show them!

There is nothing wrong with this. Competition is part of life. But sometimes it can go badly wrong.

Prejudice starts with a sense of difference combined with group loyalty. To this is added derogatory labels often applied from both sides. Add fear and historical grievances and you have a poisonous mix.

I am not immune to this, none of us are. Yet for the sake of the species and indeed this planet we have to fight our own human tendencies.

Multi-ethnic communities - respecting the rights of minorities

In the third post in this series, Multi-ethnic communities - Adolf Hitler's contribution, I suggested that Adolph Hitler’s greatest contribution lay in the way he and the Nazi regime in their mad obsessions crystallised, took to their logical extreme, ideas that had been built into European thinking and thus discredited them. In doing so, Hitler laid the basis for the Nuremberg trails and for subsequent international action against war crimes.

This was a not insignificant achievement even if it can be likened to medical advances flowing from a deadly global pandemic. I finished the post by suggesting that international law was the first building block in encouraging different ethnic groups to live together in harmony because it imposed sanctions especially on official leaders who wanted to play the race or ethnicity card.

In this post I want to extend my discussion by looking briefly at one aspect of the Canadian experience.

The Seven Years War (really the nine years war:1754–1763) involved all the major European powers of the period and was, in some ways, the first fully global war because it was fought across three continents.

To give you an indication of scale, the map from Wikipedia shows the areas involved. Blue: Great Britain, Prussia, Portugal, Sweden with allies. Green: France, Spain, Austria, Russia with allies.

In the settlements that followed the end of the war, Britain gained, among other things, the French Settlements that had formed the heart of New France in what would become Canada. In doing so, they gained a deeply Roman Catholic population speaking another language. The continuing tensions between ethnic French and English in Canada has brought the country to the verge of break-up a number of times, yet so far Canada survives.

A key reason for this is that French Canada has been able to exercise direct political power in Quebec while also participating in power at national level. This need not stop a country breaking up, but it does provide a powerful weapon in keeping it together. Importantly in the Canadian case, it was French Canadian political leaders who played a key role in fighting the separatist tendencies present in Quebec.

In 1774 the British Parliament passed the Quebec Act. The Act was passed for purely pragmatic reasons. It was also passed at a time when the tensions and restrictions flowing from the Reformation were still very much alive, when those of the Roman Catholic persuasion were effectively prevented from sitting in the Parliament at Westminster.

The Act restored the former French civil tradition for private law, which had been ended in 1763. It allowed public office holders to practice the Roman Catholic faith, by replacing the oath sworn by officials from one to Elizabeth I and her heirs with one to George III that had no reference to the Protestant faith. This enabled, for the first time, French Canadians to legally participate in the affairs of the provincial government without formally renouncing their faith.

It also reestablished the collection of tithes, which had been stopped under the previous administrative rules, and it allowed Jesuit priests to return to the province.

The new Act was deeply unpopular further south and became another yet another of the planks that led to the American Revolution in the thirteen colonies. Deeply suspicious of papist influnce, angry that the new province of Quebec had been given title over part of the land that had belonged to New France, the rebels listed the Quebec Act as one of the grievances in their Declaration of Independence.

So in granting civil liberties to one group, the Act helped trigger a rebellion in another group. Yet it also helped lay the basis for what would become the Canadian nation.

Note to readers: You will find a full list of posts in this series here.

By global standards, Australia is NOT a racist country

I have mentioned before that I watch with dismay the constant stream of searches on Australian racism. The latest was a search on "why are Australians so racist" from someone in Arlington Virginia.

Running the same search again, I noticed a pattern. There are mainly two types of posts. The first are posts from Australia saying that we are. Just two quotes:

• Australia is a backwater, a racist and inward-looking country - from an on-line opinion article
• White Australia was founded upon invasion, theft, and genocide. It was subsequently shaped by social inequality - from a South Australian organisation.

Then we have overseas posts or articles that largely reflect Australian stated views back to us.

In the middle are a group of posts and stories that try to redress the balance - if australians are all racist how come I see so many black africans with white women girlfriends and white men with asian girlfriends read one.

Those inwardly focused Australians, and I include the media in this, who for a variety of reasons stereotype Australia as racist, or who are so concerned to fight against racism that they make race issues central regardless of other things, are doing this country a great dis-service.

Is there racism in Australia, yes. Is racism in Australia bad by global standards, no. Is Australia a racist country, no.

Many years ago when I was co-editor of a university student newspaper, we deliberately ran two stories together in the one edition, one on racism in the Soviet Union, the second on racism in China. Our intent then was to redress what we saw as an unbalanced local debate.

The position today is no different. Should we fight against racism, yes. Should we recognise the errors and mistakes from our own past, yes. Should we so obsess with our sins that we forget the broader picture, no.

In a sad way, the worst culprits in all this are those in Australian society who feel most strongly about past injustices. In their desire to set things right, to stop things happening again, they are doing the country great harm.

Postscript

In a comment, rummuser said...

I came here by accident while surfing and felt that I should share my two bits for what they are worth. I have visited Australia and have had some wonderful experiences with Australians. I am an Indian and did not experience the slightest racism, overt or covert, that I did experience in some European countries and in the USA. I have close relatives who are Australian citizens who do not experience any racism and would not live any where else. I may be an exception, I do not know. My personal experiences however should give some support to your own conclusions.

Nice to hear from you, RM.

Australia's sad moral decline

Preamble

I wrote the following post in a fit of sarcastic whimsey.

I did wonder at the time if anyone would misinterpret me. My old mate Neil did, I think, in his comment on this post. Typically, he did not hoe in, but instead responded in his usual gentle fashion. Neil is not always gentle, some of his comments on Mr Howard could hardly be described as gentle, but he is always civilised in conversation.

I will comment further at the end of the post, but a little later because I have to cook tea for my wife and daughters. I would hardly describe my girls as examples of moral decline!

The Post

When I fired up the computer the first things that came up was one of those on-line polls on ninemsn. The question? Should all police be drug tested.

Of course, I voted no at once. I was fascinated to discover that following my vote, I was one of 1,581 people who had voted no as compared to 22,019 who had voted yes. Quite clearly, the problem of drug abuse including alcohol in the police force is far worse than I had realised.

Mind you, it's bad in sport too. There the problem has got so bad that the Australian Prime Minister feels that there is a moral, already in some cases a legal, obligation on sporting bodies to test not just for for performance enhancing but also recreational drugs. Mr Howard clearly feels that the problem of drugs in the community and the consequent moral decline has become so bad that something needs to be done.

The problem starts with the young. All Australian Governments have been forced to tighten up the laws about young people and crime, removing previous legal limitations about process and sentencing. This Australia wide problem of youth crime has to be dealt with.

Further, moral risk extends beyond crime. We have been forced to tighten laws dealing with underage drinking, with driving,

The problem is not limited to the young, nor can we blame them.

The problem of child abuse has become so bad that not only do we have rafts of new laws, restrictions, regulations and checks, but every person running for public office in NSW has to provide a statement that they are not a child abuser. In the last election, these were the only official pieces of information about candidates published on the Government web site. I was quite reassured.

This problem of moral decline is clearly not limited to the young. Apart from problems of child abuse, anecdotal and statistical evidence suggests that Australians at every level and over every age break more laws than ever before. A cynic might argue that this is simply a function of an increase in the quantity of laws and regulations. Yet the objective evidence shows a clear rise in the incidence of law breaking.

I won't go on. We live in an age when performance indicators are all. I deal with them often, putting them in tables so that performance can be measured. Some of these performance reports run for a hundred pages.

On just about every objective measurement that I can find linked in some ways to morals, our national performance has been declining. We face a moral crisis.

Postscript

The trigger for this post was indeed the question of compulsory drug testing for the police. I knew in voting no that I would be in a minority. I was, however, surprised at the size of the majority in favour of drug testing. The attempted irony in the post lay in in the linking of things together to present a picture.

An external observer, say an anthropologist from Mars, trying to interpret our society and working just from the media and from official statements could be forgiven for concluding that we were a society in moral decline. It would be hard for it - do they have gender on Mars? - to conclude otherwise. A simple textual analysis of the material covered in almost any of our major papers would force that conclusion.

The conclusion would be reinforced if the observer then took the last NSW election campaign as test case study and examined what was said. The case would become apparently overwhelming if the observer then looked at official statistics such as the rise in the prison population.

The problem for our Martian observer lies in the fact that the way events, activities and issues are presented, interpreted, discussed and responded to is a function of the social frame set by prevailing community attitudes, attitudes that can conflict.

Take any newspaper as an example. The paper selects and presents stories that it thinks will appeal to its particular readership. If it gets it right, then circulation goes up. But in so doing, it reinforces the views of its readers. Political leaders respond to the views of the paper and of its readers, creating another reinforcing interaction.

Community attitudes shift. As they do, so does the selection and interpretation of issues.
Take the role of women as an example.

I grew up at a time when the women's movement was just getting underway. I see the gains, but also the conflicts. My wife's generation comes from the movement's high water mark. Some of this generation wonder why and how their movement lost its impact. Our daughters have internalised the gains and in a sense just moved on.

Just at present, Australian society appears to be going through a deeply conservative and in some ways fearful phase marked by aversion to risk and a desire to enforce protective controls. This has its own in-built tensions and contradictions.

Take, as an example, our attitudes to law and regulation.

The desire to protect, to control, to punish, has led to an explosion in the volume of law. That is the reason why such a high proportion of the Australian population are, in fact, law breakers. It is very hard in daily life not to break some law or regulation, even if it is only the traffic regulations. So we have actually become selective in what we comply with.

The desire to protect, to control, has also led to concepts such as truth in sentencing and three strikes and you are out. In turn, all this has led to something approaching an explosion in the prison population.

This is where our martian observer would be mislead. I know of no evidence that the incidence of crime has actually increased. We are dealing with an outcome created by social attitudes.

In my view, we have now reached the point where our collective obsession with control and risk aversion is now imposing long term social and economic costs.

We have just had the first death because of Sydney's water restrictions. A sixty-six year old man was watering his front lawn with a hand-held hose. A passer by reprimanded him for breaking the water restrictions. In fact he was not and, losing his temper, he turned the hose on the passer by. The passer by then attacked the waterer, knocking him to the ground and apparently kicking him. The sixty-six year old died, and the other man has been charged with murder.

This is just a small symptom of a bigger problem.

Our jails are essentially post-graduate schools for crime. Further, the prison population is heavily weighted towards certain socio-economic groups.

In NSW if you do not or cannot pay a fine, your license is suspended, an action allowed by modern computer systems. If you drive while your license is suspended, you may end up in jail. You may also end up in jail for not paying the fine or fines.

Many Australians would say fair enough. The problem is that those in both groups tend to be people from already disadvantaged backgrounds, the social cohort that already contributes the majority of the prison population. In combination, these things are creating long term social problems that will impose costs over and beyond the immediate costs to the justice system.

These costs are already manifesting themselves in some Sydney suburbs.

We have always had disadvantaged areas. but, we have not (I think) ever before had such concentrations of disadvantage.

I could go on to trace the costs through other areas of life. At this stage I will simply conclude that my post was an ironic response to what I see as a major issue.

Mr Andrews, Racism and our Sudanese Refugees - put the man out of his misery

I was not going to comment further on this issue, I suppose because I felt that nothing that I could say would make any difference to what I saw as a twisted discussion. Then I got a comment from Dylan Nicholson.

Now the thing that I liked about Dylan's comment is that while he had strong views, he expressed them in a courteous fashion and did mount a case to support them. So I thought that I would pay Dylan the compliment of treating his comments very seriously as the entry point for a new post. In doing so, I was not going to attack his views. Rather, I wanted to use them to continue the process of disentangling issues.

I always try to check my facts. This time I looked at the later interview transcripts. I have now put a line through the entire post plus four hours careful work.

Both Mr Andrews and the media who started all this need to be taken up the back paddock and shot. The media for starting the trouble, Mr Andrews for mishandling it. I do not resile from my conclusions and will repeat them in a moment. But I have lost patience with Mr Andrews.

Again so that you can make your own judgements, you will find the various transcripts here. Look especially at the John Laws interview, by far the toughest of them all.

Looking at the material, I have no doubt that the original decision to alter the refugee mix, a decision taken some time ago, was based on sound or at least defensible public policy reasons. But the way Mr Andrews has handled this matter has given us all a huge black-eye.

Look, first, at the fact that the decision was taken some time ago. I wonder how many overseas people, or for that matter Australians, think that this was a decision (a racist decision) just taken in the context of the current controversy?

Now look at Mr Andrew's later words. He simply did not need to bring in some of the factors he did. When Mr Laws queried him on crime issues, he was forced back to reliance on unspecified reports. And this does not wash after the Haneef matter, if indeed it ever did.

So why did he mishandle it all so badly? I do not think that it had anything to do with the race card.

One of the things that has always puzzled me with some of the discussion on "the race card" is that I know of no evidence that racist views as such attract votes. With the exception of One Nation which tapped a deeper sense of alienation within certain groups in Australia, those groups with explicitly racist over-lays do not attract votes. Even Pauline Hanson and One Nation itself felt the need to back off the more explicitly racist comments of some of its supporters, to deny that it was a racist party, in its efforts to attract a broader vote.

Things become a little easier to understand if we put aside the racist tag for the moment and look instead at other threads in Australian political life that reflect the bundle of views held by many Australia voters.

I have long complained about the political obsession with "law and order". This is not new, it existed and made me very uncomfortable when I ran for preselection all those years ago. But it, has I think, got far worse in recent years.

This links to a second strong trend, aversion to risk, a desire for security, a belief that life can and should be controlled. We can see this way that Governments respond on issues, in the ever growing web of regulations and controls.

Then there is a third thread, xenophobia. Xenophobia is not racism, although it may manifest itself in this way. In simplest terms, it is fear of outsiders. In my view, and it is only an opinion that is subject to test, Australians do appear to have become more xenophobic, more inward looking, over the last thirty years.

The media plays to these concerns.

If we look at some of the reporting on the Sudanese issue we can see all these threads, the law and order focus, the emphasis on threats to personal security, the attribution of behaviour patterns to particular groups. Fear sells papers, increases ratings. In doing so, it plays to and reinforces, even creates, prejudices within the Australian community. Because in this case the target is an unidentifiable racial group, the reporting itself in my view becomes racist.

Mr Andrews was caught in all this and handled it very badly, getting defensive when he should have been in control. I also cannot rid myself of the feeling that Mr Andrew's response linked to the need to play to the law and order and security issues.

Now in all this I said that I had not altered my conclusions. Just to restate them.

First, the way we have to come to use the racist and racism epithets is not only outside the original definitions of the words, but is also twisting discussion because of the emotional content attached to the words themselves.

Secondly, we need to be far more sensitive about the way the rest of the world interprets domestic discussions on things such as racist and racism. They interpret it as confirming that all Australians are racist, when the opposite is closer to the reality.

Finally, the big losers out of this are the Sudanese along with the broader Australian community, both of whom have been vilified.

The winner? Our media who have gained circulation (viewers).

Kipling, the Mufti and the Clash of Values

Photo: Rudyard Kipling

Neil (Ninglun) had am interesting post triggered by the latest controversy around Sheikh Hilaly. I found myself agreeing and disagreeing with Neil. So, and consistent with Neil's point about the need for perspective, I thought that I would try to come at the points raised by Neil from a different perspective.

To begin with, I agree with Neil's key point about the need to keep a sense of perspective on Mr Hilaly's remarks. We can think of this at two levels, one of values, the second political process.

The comments that follow draw from previous posts. I will not have time this morning to insert the links, but will try to do so later.

Political process first, because this is in some ways the easier issue.

I have written a number of posts about the sometimes pernicious way in which the media, current dominant values and our politicians interact.

The Pauline Hanson phenomenon is an example. To a substantial degree One Nation was created by the interaction between media and politicians. This fed the Party's growth. We can also see this in the case of Tamworth and the refugees. There the Australian metro media turned a complicated local issue into a major international story to this country's detriment.

We can see something of the same process at work in the sometimes almost hysterical responses to the Mufti's words, especially in the broad sheets.

In the case of Tamworth, I pleaded for time and space to allow the local community to work the issues through. The same things holds for Australia's Muslim community, although things are more complicated here simply because the community is not really a community at all, but a number of very different communities linked in some way by a common religion that is itself not a single entity.

The danger for us all lies in the risk that the interactions between media and politics may create the very things we fear.

We can tease this out if we now look at values.

Freedom of speech is a if not the core value in a democracy, a core bulwark standing between us and oppression. Not surpisingly, as in Stalin's USSR, Hitler's Germany or more recently Sadam's Iraq or Mugabe's Zimbabwe, control over freedom of speech is central to the maintenance of totalitarian power.

So I think that if we are to maintain freedom of speech we have to start from the pre-supposition that Mr Hilaly is entitled to say what he likes even though some find his views repugnant. Now this is likely to draw an immediate response. Surely, people will argue, a society has a right to control views that are repugnant to and threaten that society?

Now this is where things get really slippery because it brings you to what has always been the core problem with free speech, where do you draw the line and when? Here Sheikh Hilaly has created an especial problem because he has managed to offend both those holding certain moral values (they find his comments repugnant) and those with concerns flowing from the perceived threat from Islamic extremists.

No one doubts that there are Islamic extremists. Equally, no one doubts that there are organised terrorist groups. Few would challenge the right of Governments to take action to protect their citizens. The problem for Governments is to define what they can and should do. The risks are that those actions may create or encourage the very thing they are intended to fight while also eroding the civil liberties of citizens.

Controlling or attempting to control what people say because their views are repugnant and conflict with other people's deeply held values is a very different issue. This an area where we have to be very careful indeed especially where, as in the case of Mr Hilaly, expressed views risk being interpreted through the prism created by concerns about Islamic extremism.

Let me be clear here. I am not talking about what Mr Hilaly said, just about the way in which people interpret or respond to what is being said. We can see this in the more extreme responses such as suggestions that he should be deported.

I am out of time on this post. I will post what I have written so far and then continue the discussion tonight.

Later

First, thanks to Neil for advising me that he has updated his post.

I was also very sorry to hear that Lord Malcolm has only a few days to go, glad to hear that the Department of Housing issue has been sorted out. I did not say so before but perhaps should now that I am presently doing some work in part of that Department. Knowing my colleagues if only for a short while, I was sure that it would be sorted.

One of the things that I really like about Neil's approach to blogging is not just the conversation, but the way he provides links so that his comments can be further evaluated.

Now here I want to extend my discussions on values and politics by taking the case of the Kashmiri Nomad, a site I found through Neil.

I should say up front that this is not one of my favourite sites because I find it a bit like a broken record with its emphasis on the wrongs of the West.

I should also say in fairness that Kasmiri Nomad has had a positive influence on my own writing by pointing to the difference between the Australian and European treatment of migration, thus triggering my migration matters series as well as my emphasis on the need for Australians to recognise the unique elements in their own experience (the Australian Way) instead of simply importing and applying overseas views and concepts.

Neil referred to a post by the Kashmiri Nomad reading in part:

Western civilization no longer defines itself for reasons of political correctness in terms of race but none the less views it as a collective duty upon itself to civilise those less fortunate than itself. The language in which imperial conquest is couched in may have changed but the effects are still the same. No longer is there mention of the White Man’s Burden or the Manifest Destiny but rather platitudes regarding globalisation, free markets and democracy are now the oft repeated mantras.

Rudyard Kipling was quoted as an example of the previous view.

The views expressed by Kashmiri Nomad are widespread. Here I came across an interesting example on Al Jazeera, a discussion forum on Zimbabwe.

Neil in his post referred, as he has done before, to Zimbabwe's problems. Under his influence I followed through on some of his links to view blogs on Zimbabwe.

One of my real difficulties has been to understand why Mugabe was still getting support given everything I could learn. Leaving aside the odd case of Iran paying for a jamming station, why was Angola prepared to send paramilitary police, why was there still support for him from at least some of the ANC leadership when South Africa itself was groaning under the strain of a reported 3 million refugees.

The Al Jazeera forum shows some of the reasons why, the presence of a very different world view. Willy from the Cameroon can be taken as an example. He wrote:

I would like you to understand that Zimbabwe and Africa do not want any involvement into Zimbabwe affairs by Europe, Europe's current actions in the world speaks for themselves; Europe has military bases all over the world into other peoples countries, for what? If Europe is the kind place you pretending it to be, just to name that example. Your version of facts about Zimbabwe is not true, Zimbabwe was all right until president Mugabe did justice by getting our brothers land back, then Europe started to destabilize Zimbabwe, again tell your governments and people to stay out of our business, that is not much asking. It has been scientifically proven that Europe is the cause of all our present and past problems, there is nothing Zimbabwe wants from Europe, just leave our brothers alone, then we can have a life too.

Willy's views are not very sensible, but in their expression have not dissimilar messages to those expressed by the Kashmiri Nomad. Both link back to the ending of the colonial period

I think that there is no doubt that western governments and their respective citizens are inclined to want to impose views and approaches that they believe are right, nor is this new. Further, many at least in Australia become very uncomfortable when they hear alternative views and especially faith based views that conflict with their own beliefs and values.

Here I feel, and this is an opinion, that Australians have become less accommodating of alternative views since the start of the seventies. I base this opinion on the combination of my own experiences with my analysis of changes in our society and culture. To the degree that this assertion is true, it does us no harm to be forced to recognise that many majority views in Australia are minority views elsewhere.

None of this means that we should move away from our views and values. The reverse is true. Linking back to my opening point, we need to protect our core values including tolerance and freedom of speech.

But I think that we need to go further than this. I think that we need to analyse, to properly understand, alternative views. To illustrate this, I want to finish with Rudyard Kipling.

In his post, Kashmiri Nomad quotes Kipling's White Mans Burden in full as an example of the previous racist attitudes now replaced by the modern imperialist equivalent. He says in part: Kipling wrote the poem entitled "The White Man's Burden" as way of rousing the American nation to civilise the native Filipinos, teach them western ways and allow them to join the community of civilised nations. In doing so, he completely misses the irony in the poem, an irony dating back in part to Kipling's still recent US experiences.

Born in India in 1865, dieing in England in 1936, Kipling lived at the height of the British Empire. He was, indeed, an Imperial writer. And what, indeed, is wrong with that? We all write within a prism set by the circumtsances of our time. But Kipling was no mere Imperial writer.

Published in 1899, Stalky & Co is a thinly disguised autobiographical account of his time at school in Devon. Kipling himself is the eggregious Beatle, bookish, overweight with glasses.

I loved that book. I was being bullied at the time and the book gave me hope. Yes, the Imperial element was there. But so was a keen eye to the world. The pompous politician who tried to set up a cadet corp but failed because the boys saw through his cant.

India and Empire were always there in Stalky & Co in part because the school trained boys for imperial service. But Kipling loved India, even though India today may not love him.

Published in 1901, Kim is a both a gripping spy story set in the midst of Great Power rivalries and a graphic picture of Indian life as Kim and his master travel along the great road in search of the mystic river. Sure the story is written from the perspective of the British spy service, but this was the Brittish Empire.

For a man of his time, Kiipling was remarkably free of either racial prejudice or religious intolerance. Kim deals pretty fairly, I think, with all ethnic groups and religions. They are just there, accepted.

Loyalty and service were also central to his writing. Officials and officers were there to serve the local people as well as the Empire. They did so in often thankless conditions, dieing in their tens of thousands far from home.

This is where the irony comes in in the poem. Kipling is telling the US that now they have become a colonial power, then they must be prepared to accept the burden of so doing. In this sense, Kashmiri Nomad completely misses the point.

Helen's UNSW Economic Development Course

I have just read the course outline of the first year intra-disciplinary economic development course that eldest is doing at the University of NSW. I roared with laughter. In fairness, there are some interesting items that should provide a basis for an interesting course. Still, I had to laugh.

Reason one is that Helen did not in fact know (I did not realise this) that in opting for development economics she was following a family tradition - no less than five of her immediate Belshaw relatives including her father have done some work in this area, all with a multidisciplinary focus.

Reason two was that the course was incredibly bogged in what I have rudely called on this blog the values of the previous "liberal" orthodoxy.

When I first did development economics all those years ago our core focus was simple. How do you increase the standard of living of the world's poorest? You could not do this without looking at cultural and anthropological issues, but beating poverty was the core.

Growing up in Armidale, then the location of the only Australian non-metro university, I had a privileged childhood in that most of the limited number of international academics and writers visiting Australia came to Armidale with many looked after by Dad.

One person I met was Gunnar Myrdal, the winner of the 1974 Nobel Prize for Economics. Myrdal had a remarkable career as academic, international civil servant, Government minister and writer. His 1944 book An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy is, I think, still an important book in the evolution of attitudes towards what was then called the Negro.

Now how does all this link? Myrdal's Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations and The Challenge of World Poverty. A World Anti-Poverty Program in Outline remains one of the most monumental attempts to bring a range of disciplines to bear on the question of economic development.

When I look at the reading lists there is no reference that I can see to any of the earlier work nor to the history of the subject. However, there is an entire long list of references to the Australian Aborigines.

I may be wrong in all this, I will go through the course in more detail later, but so far I find it all very interesting.

Musings - UAI offers, Tamworth and refugees

I have noticed a real spike in traffic on this blog in the last few days. When I look at the details, this has come from two topics.

The first is people doing searches on topics relating to the NSW Higher School Certificate or the UAI. I think that this simply reflects the fact that first round offers for NSW and ACT universities will become available from 9 oclock tonight.

Based on news reports, there are 3,000 more places being offered this year, but 10,000 students who want to go to university will still miss out on Government funded places. That's a fair size number. So parents are worried. This includes us, since Helen has applied for a new course at a new university. She would have got in last year with her then UAI ranking. This year who knows.

Looking at the pattern of searches, parents obviously remain confused. One of the difficulties here appears to be that there is no single site that supplies all the information in simple terms that concerned parents need. Certainly I have found this. Given that youngest (Clare) is doing the HSC this year, maybe one thing that I should do later in the year is to put up some straight information material with supporting links written from a parent perspective.

On youngest, Clare is not well today, spending the entire day lying down on the coach.

Tamworth and refugees is the second traffic spike. Part of this has come from search engines, part from redirects from Ninglun's site, and especially from his Jim Belshaw on Tamworth story. I have watched this post climb up the most visited rankings on Neil's site, again reflecting interest.

The fact that Tamworth Council has changed directions has now been well reported. I will comment, but I am also forming the view that we are missing the real story.

I like to provide a different perspective. When I began reporting on Tamworth, I tried to draw out some of the issues from both a Tamworth and process perspective. Yes, I was critical, but I also tried to avoid stereotypes.

Out of all this has come my view that we are missing a most remarkable story.

The Australian Government has been saying for some time that Australia remains a world leader in accepting refugees. Often, this claim is made in the context of debates over things like our detention policy, so the facts tend to get submerged. Further, the way we organise our statistics makes it difficult to get accurate numbers.

So let's put numbers aside and look at what we (I) learned from the Tamworth case.

1. Recognising that the official statistics are biased because of the way we classify refugees, in the last financial year we appear to have accepted around 17,000 refugees for permanent settlement, over half from trouble spots in Africa including Sudan.

2. The African refugees are very different from those we have accepted in the past. They look different, have less education and in many cases have been severely traumatised. This was one of the points made by Tamworth City Council.

3. We have an official program for settling these refugees in specific communities. This may have weaknesses, another Tamworth point, but dozens of communities (especially it seems in Regional Australia) have agreed to participate. For those who do not know Regional Australia, because most migrants go the capital cities the ethnic mix in Regional Australia is much less varied. So these communities are accepting people who are very different from those already living there.

4. When the Tamworth imbroglio broke, many of these communities who had accepted Sudanese refugees came to the defence of their people. I am not saying that things are perfect, simply that things seem to be working.

So why don't we promote the things that are working? This, or so it seems to me, is the real story.

Here I must admit to a prejudice that those who read my blogs can infer.

I know country Australia pretty well. I know that country people including those in the regional centres have prejudices. However, country people with their sense of community have something that I fear has been lost by many metro Australians. They can distinguish between their general prejudices and their responses to individuals.

A country person may be prejudiced against a specific group and may express those views in both private and public conversation in a way no longer acceptable in the more politically correct metro centres. But a country person also has the capacity to decide that a particular individual, family or group is okay because of their contribution to the community. This capacity, once and maybe still a mainstream Australian capacity, is the reason why Australia was able to accept so many migrants after the second world war.

Blogosphere Woes

I have just been on a journey across the blogosphere tonight, one that in some ways I wish I had never started, that left me feeling blogged out.

Normally I focus on a small number of blogs that I like, using the blog search engines from time to time to check particular topics for both personal and professional interest. I also follow particular links through finding many new things of interest.

For some reason tonight I ended up in a series of blog streams linked to the war on terror, to Islam and to Islam vs Christianity. Some were interesting, but boy oh boy some were awful.

I found blogs that satirised anti-semitism but in such a heavy handed way that at least some of their readers would have taken them seriously, blogs that were in fact anti-semitic but were really more satirical than the satirical. I found blogs that presented a Muslim view, blogs that presented a Christian view, in both cases in terms of opposing absolutes. I found right wing blogs and left wing blogs, individual and group, that made me blink at the distortions presented.

I read news reports about Australia that represented significant distortions. Not conscious distortions, or at least I don't think so, but distortions because the facts were forced into a different world view frame.

With one exception, I ended the whole process wishing that I had never started, blogged out.

The exception? Australia really is culturally different from most other countries, quite remarkably different. We don't see it unless forced to by the type of journey I have just taken. I will try to capture this in a post once I have recovered.