Fair warning, the link and contents are not for the faint hearted. It's not ayy lmao gorey xddddd or muh childrens but it's just flat out disturbing reading to see the kind of shit that goes on and more depressingly how long it has been going on for unabated.

A little while back Chally (I think, maybe door or mordo) posted a memey thread here about cultural relativity and it linked this screenshot extract from a paper on aboriginal 'killer mothers' and it was pretty unpleasant reading to say the least.

Being bored after work today prompted me to look for the source and I almost wish I hadn't, but it did bring up interesting points mixed in with the pages and pages of atrocities that are a part of indigenous life (In certain places, mostly Oceania from the looks of it, but Africa isn't exactly clean either).

http://psychohistory.com/books/the-origins-of-war-in-child-abuse/chapter-7-child-abuse-homicide-and-raids-in-tribes/

To give a short summary without the colourful descriptions of the abuse itself, the author suggests that part of the reason for the failure to transition beyond subsistence living is in part due to a failure (understatement) to form any sort of meaningful bonds within these tribes. Mothers abuse and murder their children, traumatising surviving siblings in the process who then go on to (shock horror) develop severe mental issues which are then replicated onto the next generation in a pretty much perfect example of abusive vampirism (transmitting abuse from one generation to the next by repeating the patterns of abuse they experienced). This leaves the tribe as a whole unable to rally behind a leader or chief as such, due to the rampant schizoid disorders induced in the tribal population (paranoid, delusional, psychotic, violent).

The general idea being that these tribes remain trapped in this sort of living hell where abuse is the norm to receive and perpetrate and because of the isolation and small initial populations it has become endemic. They haven't been able to progress far in the technology tree (Guns, Germs and Steel points aside) because these tribes are essentially just going through a groundhog day of horrors for the last 750,000 years.

If anyone feels like reading it, it's fairly long and utterly despicable but it's not just some memer slagging off tree dwellers for the sake of it. It's well cited and seems pretty considered. So yeah, bit of a change of pace from the usual
Brexit -> Trump -> Economics -> Russia -> Islam cycle of serious

Any thoughts on the paper?

Bonus question for consideration; making the assumption that the things described in this paper are accurate, do you think that it is right or wrong for a more developed culture to intervene in things to stop this cycle from repeating itself?
(Preferably in a better manner than blackbird hunting and reservations)

I'd rather not read that, but I can make a decently educated guess on what's going on.

I think we should try to teach them how to become a slightly more civilized society. If that fails, we should take their children at a very young age (infancy, ideally) and sterilize the remaining adults.

That would save some of them, but what about the slightly older children who have already been through hell?

It's possible to treat them for the trauma and possibly turn them into slightly less warped humans, but it's not a great chance given the level and form of abuse that goes on.

So basically it's totally calm that we colonised Australia.

Pretty much

Quote from: Mr. Psychologist on August 28, 2016, 07:19:45 AM

Quote from: challengerX on August 27, 2016, 05:27:58 PM

I'd rather not read that, but I can make a decently educated guess on what's going on.

I think we should try to teach them how to become a slightly more civilized society. If that fails, we should take their children at a very young age (infancy, ideally) and sterilize the remaining adults.

That would save some of them, but what about the slightly older children who have already been through hell?

It's possible to treat them for the trauma and possibly turn them into slightly less warped humans, but it's not a great chance given the level and form of abuse that goes on.

I wouldn't take the risk.

Which is fair enough looking at the bigger picture, but you then find yourself in the situation where you are leaving children (albeit damaged beyond repair*) in the hands of their abusers.

*Hypothetically speaking

Quote from: Mr. Psychologist on August 28, 2016, 09:01:50 AM

Quote from: challengerX on August 28, 2016, 08:44:39 AM

Quote from: Mr. Psychologist on August 28, 2016, 07:19:45 AM

Quote from: challengerX on August 27, 2016, 05:27:58 PM

I'd rather not read that, but I can make a decently educated guess on what's going on.

I think we should try to teach them how to become a slightly more civilized society. If that fails, we should take their children at a very young age (infancy, ideally) and sterilize the remaining adults.

That would save some of them, but what about the slightly older children who have already been through hell?

It's possible to treat them for the trauma and possibly turn them into slightly less warped humans, but it's not a great chance given the level and form of abuse that goes on.

I wouldn't take the risk.

Which is fair enough looking at the bigger picture, but you then find yourself in the situation where you are leaving children (albeit damaged beyond repair*) in the hands of their abusers.

*Hypothetically speaking

I'd probably just bomb them all if it was up to me. These people are beyond repair.

Ironically that might just be one of the more humane solutions to this

But then you end up committing actual genocide instead of just destroying a culture that makes worship of moloch seem like a parish council meeting.

The world would be a lot better if we'd just killed all the Aboriginals and Native Americans.

To be fair to them, the injuns weren't really all that bad.

Or maybe it's just comparison with the uncontacted people that makes them seem like civilised humans.