[LINK] perspective

[Birch, Jim]

Skeeve Stevens wrote:

> Do we just care a whole lot more because they are Australians?  We're
all people and we all have value... Here or there.

Well, this means you've been raised with liberal values.  The human
biological impulse is to support the clan - people with similar skin
colour, language, speech, clothes, social customs, etc - and not the odd
looking people across the valley.  This is part of our automatic
unconscious "visceral" systems that are tickled by people who want to
control our thinking, eg, politicians and advertisers.  See, for
example, SciAm on the dark side of oxytocin:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-love-hate-relationshi
p

In fairly recent human times, some new cultural systems have been
developed that regard all humans as fundamentally equal and attempt to
widen the "tribe" to the whole of humanity, or even to partly include
some other species.  Use of these systems requires education and the
activity of higher brain centres. Despite some significant attractions
of this new approach, for example, not having to kill or be killed by a
member of another clan, uptake has been patchy to say the least.  Also,
automatic systems tend to take over at times of stress, for example,
during natural disasters or when watching tv news shows.

However, it looks like they got you.

And me. :)

- Jim 


CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE AND DISCLAIMER

The information in this transmission may be confidential and/or protected by legal professional privilege, and is intended only for the person or persons to whom it is addressed. If you are not such a person, you are warned that any disclosure, copying or dissemination of the information is unauthorised. If you have received the transmission in error, please immediately contact this office by telephone, fax or email, to inform us of the error and to enable arrangements to be made for the destruction of the transmission, or its return at our cost. No liability is accepted for any unauthorised use of the information contained in this transmission. If the transmission contains advice, the advice is based on instructions in relation to, and is provided to the addressee in connection with, the matter mentioned above. Responsibility is not accepted for reliance upon it by any other person or for any other purpose.