So I've started work. After all these years of school and uni I'm actually starting a career. The novelty of it hasn't worn off yet. For the most part though, "work" is just code for sitting around doing nothing. I'm still in the process of building up my own caseload of patients. So far seven unfortunate beings plus a class of hydrotherapy patients belong to me!
Anyway, onto yet another rant. I seem to be quite the angry person lately.
You know, I love being (pseudo) Australian. I wouldn't leave this country except maybe to live in Hawai'i. Retirement perhaps. But anyway, as much as we rock as a country and as a people, man, there are some tools out there. I base it on public comments left in Australian newpapers and forums online in relation to that explosion on the Japanese whaling ship, leaving one man missing. The general consensus as you'd probably gather is that the majority frown upon the practice of whaling. Fair enough. I'm in agreement. But some of the arguments, and moreso the emotional remarks are astounding. There's no compassion to the missing man with many even dismissing him saying he deserves it. Some of the comments are pretty racist as well. There aren't any direct swipes at the Japanese, but if you read between the lines you can see the implication plain and clear.
But the one thing that really pisses me off about it is how so many of us are sitting on this high-horse looking down on other countries/cultures with ignorant distaste and a narrow-minded belief of the superiority of the Australian way, or perhaps the Western culture in general. C'mon people, if you're going to say that killing the minke whales is wrong, give me arguments that aren't hypocritical or set double standards. How dare we call the Japanese "wrong" and label them all sorts of colourful adjectives when we go home and eat a souvlaki made of kangaroo, which for all intents and purposes has all the same rights as the minke whales. If the minke whales were endangered, ok that's a different thing altogether. But they are not. It'd be hilarious if the Japanese population had a soft spot for kangaroos and had a reciprocal dislike of our kangaroo hunting. It also parallels the Muslim people not eating pork. Many a typical Australian family sit at home eating a nice dinner of roast pork. Yet the Islamic community aren't up in arms tying themselves to pig-killing factories. Why? Because they respect our decision to kill the little oinkies. Contrary to belief, we are not the superior race. We are not the superior culture. We are just different. How dare we look upon this practice of whaling, when we use such flawed arguments and thought-processes that we don't even pass. And how sad it is that we use it as an avenue to mistakingly present our culture as the superior one.
For the record, I hope they do stop hunting the minke whales...because I reckon they're such cool, graceful dudes!!!!
