The official BOS 'Pro-Constitutional Monarchy' thread (1 Viewer)

[Enteebee]

My point is that we should be able to generalise ethical principles. Actions should not be regarded as ethical or unethical because of the dominant cultural views of a particular period. Rather, there should be abstract principles that act as philosophical guidelines for the judgement of ethics. These principles can then be used to judge actions historically and cross-culturally.

While I think it's right for our generation to look back and say "It's wrong to disposess the lands of aboriginals" I think it's equally wrong to say they were unethical for doing so merely by the fact that they did. I think you have to look at the education someone was given/had access to before deciding whether they made the best ethical decision they could at the time.

For instance, I regularly eat meat... I do so because I don't think animals have the same cognative faculty to understand pain/their death quite as much as I do (though even then I still find it hard to justify), now if in the future we find a way to unlock the secrets of animal consciousness and it turns out what we've been doing is akin to a few millenia of holocaust-like activity... should I be judged by them as having been unethical? I think not.

I tend to believe the knowledge that aboriginals were equal human beigns on all accounts simply wasn't there.

 

[Enteebee]

Very poor analogy. In 1788, the British had all the information they needed to deduce that what they were doing was wrong. It was directly observable that they were harming the aboriginals and that the aboriginals behaved in ways that were human and were suffering when they were being dispossesed of their land and murdered. You don't need to be educated that slaughtering people is wrong. Its pretty fucking obvious. I dont know why people are so keen to make excuses for their behaviour.

I disagree, I think they thought they were less than human (in more than just a derogatory sense) and thus not to be afforded human rights.

 

[Silver Persian]

Ugh. You're providing us with a completely unrealistic hypothetical to work with. I cannot even begin to make it relevent because it's so completely unrealistic.

Use something current. Iraq is a perfect example. Sudan.

If most Aussies believed black women were witches who needed to be burnt, we'd obviously have undergone radical social and religious shifts, so if the majority of Australians believed this and if this hypothetical were taking place outside of our current reality, then who am I to decide whether it would be ethical for the time.

Ethical for us now? No
Ethical for mythical civilisation? Maybe?

aha you beat my post with a second post

I really don't agree with your position but I'm having a lot of trouble articulating why.

I look at ethics as a normative branch of philosophy. It provides us with logical arguments about human behaviour and its effects on others, which then provides us with a substantive basis for our actual actions. These arguments should be based on argument and reasoning - this is how the best set of ethical principles can be decided upon. This can then provide the basis upon which we establish our idea of a "good society".

If you are willing to relativse ethics, you're effectively saying that one society is as good as another ethically. This renders ethical philosophy irrelevant - as any culture, regardless of the pain and suffering that it inflicts through its social practices, can be seen as "ethical" as long as it wins social consensus.

 

[Silver Persian]

While I think it's right for our generation to look back and say "It's wrong to disposess the lands of aboriginals" I think it's equally wrong to say they were unethical for doing so merely by the fact that they did. I think you have to look at the education someone was given/had access to before deciding whether they made the best ethical decision they could at the time.

Yeah, I do agree with what you're saying. It may be unfair to blame someone for committing an action that they did not realise was unethical. However, I think it is still possible (as you suggest) to recognise that the action was unethical.

 

[Enteebee]

Maybe, but I really don't think it's beyond someone to come into contact with a 'primative' tribe and get the feeling they're a different 'species' of sorts. They don't appear (to the early european eye) to have any industry, farming techniques or permanent settlements... Sounds little more impressive than families of apes. This is in a time where there's little respect even for british human life, no respect for animal life and long before any sort of real civil rights movement.

I have no doubt that if in the future it turns out eating meat is viewed as something terrible that was done by human society we will all be judged as unethical monsters who should have been able to figure it out.

 

[katie_tully]

aha you beat my post with a second post

I really don't agree with your position but I'm having a lot of trouble articulating why.

I look at ethics as a normative branch of philosophy. It provides us with logical arguments about human behaviour and its effects on others, which then provides us with a substantive basis for our actual actions. These arguments should be based on argument and reasoning - this is how the best set of ethical principles can be decided upon. This can then provide the basis upon which we establish our idea of a "good society".

If you are willing to relativse ethics, you're effectively saying that one society is as good as another ethically. This renders ethical philosophy irrelevant - as any culture, regardless of the pain and suffering that it inflicts through its social practices, can be seen as "ethical" as long as it wins social consensus.

It's because I believe that ethics and values are social constructs. And I think they're something that the majority of a population adhere too. So as, if you say, the majority of Australians believed black women were witches and needed to be burnt, then I believe we cannot make relative their ethics, as it's obviously taking place in an Australia completely away from ours.

I'm doing an essay on ethics (not due till April) and it's such a blurry topic.

I don't agree that we can say one society is as good as another, I think it's easy to sit here and say that 18th Century Britain was shit. If I were in 18th Century Britain I'd probably think it were shit, but I also wouldn't know any different and thus I wouldn't consider anything being done in the name of Queen and Country as morally reprehensible.

 

[katie_tully]

Maybe, but I really don't think it's beyond someone to come into contact with a 'primative' tribe and get the feeling they're a different 'species' of sorts. They don't appear (to the early european eye) to have any industry, farming techniques or permanent settlements... Sounds little more impressive than families of apes. This is in a time where there's little respect even for british human life, no respect for animal life and long before any sort of real civil rights movement.

I have no doubt that if in the future it turns out eating meat is viewed as something terrible that was done by human society we will all be judged as unethical monsters who should have been able to figure it out.

We're talking about a time when slavery accounted for a massive percentage of Britains income. Of course they didn't value the lives of 'coloured tribal folk' and I don't think it's unrealistic to believe they thought of them as subhuman.

 

[katie_tully]

I think Dom, you answered your own question.

Even if the British believed the Aboriginals were sub-human, at the very least they were grossly negligent in not investigating the possibility that they might be human before taking their land and killing them.

All the evidence suggests that the British were taking whatever they want with total indifference to the harm it cause to other. I think at any stage in history, this sort of behaviour is universally immoral.

 

[Captain Gh3y]

This among other things is why we should get the world's greatest symbol of imperialism off our flag

 

[Enteebee]

All the evidence suggests that the British were taking whatever they want with total indifference to the harm it cause to other.

Well with regard to some collonies I think many probably felt a little conquering was for the ultimate good, i.e. they were 'freeing' the savages from the shackles of their primative world.

Furthermore, it is clearly contradictory to their own moral framework based on the Christain faith, ie. thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill.

Jesus was only talking about his chosen people i.e. thou shalt not kill other christians, thou shalt not steal from other christians (some people might even have gone further to think only of their sect of christianity). It's kinda like how now we wouldn't include animals in the steal/kill categories either.

Anyway, I'd like to know what's morally wrong about conquering land from another group of people... why should someone get to hold the land merely by virtue of being there before the other people?

 

[katie_tully]

Anyway, I'd like to know what's morally wrong about conquering land from another group of people... why should someone get to hold the land merely by virtue of being there before the other people?

British Explorer: Hello sir. I like your country. I'd please like to buy it off you, or trade you. I have pokemon cards?

Aborigine: No dice!

 

[Enteebee]

Yeah just like Hitler thought he was doing humanity a favour by exterminating the jews. Gosh Chadd, first rule of genocide, always have some half baked justification for your reprehensible behaviour.

But unlike Hitler I think I can point to positives which came out of British Occupation, there was no positive to killing the jews.

The British (by and large) accepted Christianity as guiding their morality. It was generally accepted, and enshrined in their law, that theft and murder were wrong.

I didn't disagree... The question is what does 'theft and murder' mean? I think for many people it means do not kill/steal from fellow believers of your church/community/whatever.

Im not seriously going to debate this with you.

Why not? I think the idea that a group of people 'own' the land merely because they're there first is quite silly. Property rights are all well and good, but I don't think it quite applies when no one's paid for the land and they've just recieved it by virtue of their ancestors happening to migrate to that part of the world.

 

[katie_tully]

If the British didn't colonise Australia somebody else would have.

If the French had colonised Australia I personally think it's safe to assume the Aborigines would be extinct.

 

[Captain Gh3y]

I think it's safe to say they'd be highly cultured, speaking French and probably wearing berets and sitting in cafes and such... it's the Spanish that did a job on indigenous peoples

 

[katie_tully]

I think it's safe to say they'd be highly cultured, speaking French and probably wearing berets and sitting in cafes and such... it's the Spanish that did a job on indigenous peoples

I dunno man, weren't the French pretty ruthless??

 

[Felix-x34]

START RANT

OMG, I cant believe our schooling system is this poor when I see people like you around.

There was absolutely NOTHING wrong whatsover with the British settling, colonising and industrializing Australia.

Aboriginies made this country what it was before we came.
We made it what it is TODAY.

There was no civilized or central rule of law, no institutions, no infrastructure and NO supreme government in Australia.

The Aboriginal people did not own the land, then lived off it. Since they diid NOT own the land, they would not mind if we came to live on it.
And thats what we did, we arrived and we claimed this land as ours and over the next 300 years we earnt the right to call it our own.

Yes, YES there were injustices commited by the Colonial govt against the Aboriginal populace. But there was NEVER a general policy to exterminate these people, ONLY to help them according to whatever 'Help' was considered at this period of time.

The fact that we are even discussing the legality of how our country came into being and WHETHER in fact it should even EXIST is absolutely disgusting, and its another example of the 'Black armband' view of history thats dictated by the Dept of Ed.

END RANT

START FLAME

 

[Shaking Paper]

Death to the queen!

 

[katie_tully]

START RANT

OMG, I cant believe our schooling system is this poor when I see people like you around.

There was absolutely NOTHING wrong whatsover with the British settling, colonising and industrializing Australia.

Aboriginies made this country what it was before we came.
We made it what it is TODAY.

There was no civilized or central rule of law, no institutions, no infrastructure and NO supreme government in Australia.

The Aboriginal people did not own the land, then lived off it. Since they diid NOT own the land, they would not mind if we came to live on it.
And thats what we did, we arrived and we claimed this land as ours and over the next 300 years we earnt the right to call it our own.

Yes, YES there were injustices commited by the Colonial govt against the Aboriginal populace. But there was NEVER a general policy to exterminate these people, ONLY to help them according to whatever 'Help' was considered at this period of time.

The fact that we are even discussing the legality of how our country came into being and WHETHER in fact it should even EXIST is absolutely disgusting, and its another example of the 'Black armband' view of history thats dictated by the Dept of Ed.

END RANT

START FLAME

I don't think anybody here employed any of the shit they learnt in Yr 9/10 Australian History, so settle down.

 

[bassistx]

Fuck off. I'm not going to wade through that bullshit and pick it apart because you're too thick to read it yourself.

Not too thick. More like;
1. I asked veloc1ty, not you
2. You offered and then took it back
3. I have better things to do, like dance
4. Could've been summarized into a paragraph (which is what I was searching for)

Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge, Katie. Appreciate it heaps. Next time, don't offer.

Sure the British "made" this country (lol @ whoever said "we", considering the fact that it's a million to one for them to be 100% British or have ancestors who were among the first settlers), but they also put into effect the White Australia Policy, etc. Segregation, blah blah blah, the stolen generation...

I think if the French had extinct the Aborigines, that might've been better than the suffering they went through* - they still struggle today. Because they aren't seen as "1st degree" citizens. They're treated like they have a disability or something (even people with disabilities don't have so many forms waving in their face to sign if they're of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Island origin). I seriously don't understand why they make such a big deal out of it.
Not to mention how the Australian art market is ripping off original authentic Aboriginal dot paintings. They pay them near nothing and sell them for x268947 more.

*In no way do I support euthanisia, but when you read their stories, you think "I would've been better off dead". In any case, I would hate to be speaking French today.

I'm sorta confused though. I don't know how we got from ditching the Queen to Aboriginal "rights". Are we still ditching the Queen?

 

[katie_tully]

Not too thick. More like;
1. I asked veloc1ty, not you
2. You offered and then took it back
3. I have better things to do, like dance
4. Could've been summarized into a paragraph (which is what I was searching for)

Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge, Katie. Appreciate it heaps. Next time, don't offer.

Sure the British "made" this country (lol @ whoever said "we", considering the fact that it's a million to one for them to be 100% British or have ancestors who were among the first settlers), but they also put into effect the White Australia Policy, etc. Segregation, blah blah blah, the stolen generation...

I think if the French had extinct the Aborigines, that might've been better than the suffering they went through* - they still struggle today. Because they aren't seen as "1st degree" citizens. They're treated like they have a disability or something (even people with disabilities don't have so many forms waving in their face to sign if they're of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Island origin). I seriously don't understand why they make such a big deal out of it.
Not to mention how the Australian art market is ripping off original authentic Aboriginal dot paintings. They pay them near nothing and sell them for x268947 more.

*In no way do I support euthanisia, but when you read their stories, you think "I would've been better off dead". In any case, I would hate to be speaking French today.

I'm sorta confused though. I don't know how we got from ditching the Queen to Aboriginal "rights". Are we still ditching the Queen?

1. It's a forum. Therefore everybody provides answers. Also I didn't offer my assistance. I provided you with a link so that you could educate yourself, instead of relying on mummy and daddy. You were the one who whinged about actually having to find something out for themself.
2. The British didn't implement the 'White Australia Policy'. That policy was introduced after Federation in 1901.
3. Most forms asking you to identify with Aboriginal/Torres Straight Islander heritage for purely for statistical purposes.
4. You're confused because you're an idiot.