Cultural Overdrive

Can culture effect our reason?  Ruminate on these two examples of cultural contamination.

Example 1.   If a couple of an aboriginal and white union have a child and their relationship breaks down, you then have a parent with aboriginal ancestry getting on cultural grounds a swag of advantages about rights to that child, and that child must be raised in that culture, etc. 

Example 2.   Recently, AFL Richmond defender, Bachar Houli, was suspended for two weeks ("a relatively light suspension"), for intentionally striking Carlton's Jed Lamb, in an off-ball incident.  "During the ninety minute [match review panel] hearing, Houli, a devout Muslim gave evidence that he had never - and would never - intentionally hit another person as he was a peaceful religious man."  I saw the "incident" on television.  Houli deliberately struck down Lamb with a swinging arm.  There was no contested play for the ball.  Thankfully and quickly, in social media, past AFL players complained about the leniency of the penalty.  In a quick response, the AFL appealed the decision and the more appropriate penalty of four weeks was imposed, for this unprovoked assault.

Change one word in this story - Muslim to Catholic.  Would there have been a need for an appeal?  Cardinal George Pell will need divine intervention, to save him from the cultural mind-set of a Victorian jury. 

Connie Bensley's poem - Coming To

                                                    Coming To
                                  
                                           The seconds between waking
                                and opening your eyes
                                may be revelatory. 
                                The adventurous traveller
                                tries to remember
                                where he is. 

                                            The philanderer                         
                                extends a cautious, investigating
                                foot. Is he alone?
                                Either answer has its pleasures.

                                
                                            The hungover poet wants
                                to hold on to the knock-out phrase
                                that just occurred to him. No chance.

   
                                            The patient feels his pain, but,
                                in his morphine-muddled way,
                                makes up his mind to live another day.

                              
                                                          

by Connie Bensley

published in 'The Spectator' (Australia) - 10 June 2017

Knowing, precise and often cheerfully acerbic, Connie Bensley’s poems revel in poking gentle fun at the self-deceptions and delusions of middle-class suburban life.  Connie Bensley was born in 1929, in south-west London, where she still lives. 

 

Gold - by Valerie Murray

                                        Gold


                         No knees-up, post staph,
                         Will this grey thread see me out,
                         or this blue one, or the red reel?
                         Will I see eye to eye with the needle?
                         Will I ever do more than mend,
                         fix, patch, meet a need?

                         Gone the days of designed, crafted clothes
                         for me and the family.

                         Gone the days of elaborate roasts,
                         layered torten with chocolate ganache,
                         even the goulash and tweaked salads
                         with crisp bacon pieces and dainty capers.
                         Healthy, sure, a balance of veg,
                         but half are prepared meals
                         easy to bake or nuke.

                        A handful of vitamins and supps daily,
                        in desperation to cling and maintain.                      
                        As the actress said,
                        "Old age ain't for sissies!"


                                                   Valerie Murray

     

                        

School

'Between Security and Insecurity' by Ivan Klíma (translated by Gerry Turner)

"I was once amazed to discover that the word school, which has the same root in most European languages, comes from the Greek skhole meaning 'time of leisure'.  In Ancient Greece that denoted the period that followed physical exercises and was devoted to the study of the arts.

It is hard to speak of any uniform style of schooling at the current time.  Only one thing can be said for certain: there aren't any schools that are places of leisure, and only rarely does one come across a school where children are given basic instruction in how to live, how to distinguish between values and pseudo-values, between the essential and the superfluous, where they can learn to understand themselves and other people and are given a grounding in the culture and civilization into which they were born."

Ivan Klíma was born in 1931 in Prague.  He spent over 3 years in a Nazi concentration camp as a child.  From 1970 he was blacklisted by the Communist regimes in Czechoslovakia, and could only publish abroad.  He was deeply involved in the Velvet Revolution of 1989 with other dissident writers such as Václav Havel.  His books and plays have been translated into 30 languages.