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Quintin J Watt

UNITED KINGDOM


Joined January 25th 2010

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Fashion
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The First Wonderful Peter Yang's Variety Blog
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Recent Comments

Comment by Quintin Watt
on Cocoa Flavonols Boost Brain Function

March 6th 2012 20:10
No worries katyzzz.

Jeff Watt.

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Comment by Quintin Watt
on Does Dark Chocolate on Valentine’s Day Help Your Heart?

March 6th 2012 20:07
PS: VERY IMPORTANT PS:-
Chocolate (like all sugar-rich foods, in fact) is VERY VERY bad for your teeth!! (duh!!)

Jeff Watt, Mental and Spiritual Healer.

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Comment by Quintin Watt
on Cocoa Flavonols Boost Brain Function

February 19th 2012 22:18
Katyzzz
I respond to this post (as to all your threads, I would hope) with due respect and courtesy and in a spirit of friendship.
I do not, of course, assume that just because you put a thread here on your blog you necessarily agree with the entire contents of every article that heads one. I assume your intention to be to encourage healthy debate - otherwise, I should say, why would you put up threads here at all inviting comments? I hope that I do continue, as is my intention, to contribute constructively to that. I am always grateful for the opportunity to do so, and am thus grateful now. Thank you. I think my posts generally are appreciated by those who subscribe to this blog?

I recall some many months back now - July 2010, in fact, - you put up a thread here headed 'Does Nicotine Paint a Complicated Picture?' which discussed the work of Verner Knott at Ottawa Mental Health Centre and how he seemed to have found certain mental, and even supposed psychological, benefits derived from this drug as imbibed by smokers. I posted on this thread and I think we both firmly agreed, did we not, that Knott's research notwithstanding, the very LAST thing in the world any of us want to do is to encourage people to smoke.

As in your thread preceding this one, 'Does Dark Chocolate on Valentine's Day Help Your Heart?', I note that the dangers, or at least the cautions (in this case, about eating chocolate), are here mentioned, once again, only as a concluding 'aside' - if at all, in fact. We must remember, of course, that these articles are being reported not by the actual researchers themselves giving their objective and more cautious findings (and, if these are neither objective nor cautiously stated then one doubts that they are even ethical science at all), but rather by reporters and journalists who, as we have said, (see, again, my post on the preceding thread), nearly always oversimplify and tend to introduce their own (subjective) interpretations and bias: call it their 'angle' if you wish.

I follow your blog with interest and have done so for more than two years now. I always find these threads interesting (some more so than others, of course) and try to read as many as I can. That I do not post on every one of them does not, of course, mean that these are not interesting to me.

In general, I tend to post only when I have a strong or clear view and/or have something informative to say. Such is my nature. I do not, of course, ever claim any special or professional expertise beyond that which I clearly state in my posts. But this does not prevent me from having an informed view. I would hope that this is what you seek from all posters on your threads.

I am not prone to 'go over the top' (with all due respect), katyzzz. However; dubious scientific findings - and just because these are carried out by qualified, or even respected, scientists does not, of course, ipso facto make them inviolate or inviolable - especially when such apparent findings are apt to become misleading or even dangerous ... as these might be in the hands or minds of the less well-informed or less factually discerning - yes, these do worry me always and I always make a point of sounding a note of caution in such cases.

"Chocolate is great (in all sorts of ways) - that's official" - so get as much as you can, or eat as much as you like !!. No; I know that is not what this article, or the preceding one, says (or what you have said, of course) but nevertheless - NO!! NO WAY!!

Neither, as you say, are the (equally controversial) alleged 'benefits' of drinking red wine a signal to go out and binge on red wine every night, or sink a bottle of it every night at home. But, as you rightly say, there are many who will always interpret such supposed scientific findings in such a crude way, and behave irresponsibly. You yourself, I note, urge caution here (in your above post). Absolutely! As I have also said in my post on the preceding thread ('Does Dark Chocolate on Valentine's Day Help Your Heart?'), there are also, of course, those who are already consuming such things to excess, or to an extent injurious to their health, who will take this merely as a 'green flag' to go on doing so, or even doing more so - and will even encourage others to do the same.

And far more worrying still, though, than even any of this is the danger that these apparent findings may well encourage, for example, diabetics (esp those with 'lifestyle-induced' diabetes - i.e. caused by many years of eating all the wrong things and to excess) to go on eating chocolate .. or that these apparent findings may similarly encourage the morbidly obese to do so.
THIS is why I say: Chocolate - to any excess at all - is BAD news ... and yes, it will eventually DO YOUR HEART IN (so far from being good for it!!!)

I think everyone knows, do they not, that chocolate (unless it be special diabetic chocolate - which is free, of course, from all the calorie-laden additives of conventional chocolate) is absolutely the LAST thing you should give to a diabetic (or to a morbidly obese person or one with a heart and blood pressure problem because of this) - these being the reason, in fact, why the vast majority of hypertension and cardiac problem sufferers in the Western world do so!! So far from 'helping your heart' these many calorie-laden additive-engorged chocolate confections, so especially in evidence on every confectioner's and supermarket shelf at Valentine's Day, Christmas time, Easter and other festive occasions are actually, for this reason, killers!

Yet I see that, astonishingly, these finds presume to suggest that chocolate is, in any way at all, actually GOOD for these things!! If so - then I'm a Martian!! (I would lay a wager that this research was funded by a big chocolate manufacturer) ...

Everyone knows too, of course, that more than a tiny daily trace of salt is bad for us. I myself do not know anyone (I doubt if you do either (!)) who would actually sit down to a little 'snack' or meal of, say, half a bowlful of salt. Yuk!! But many, I think, would actually be amazed to discover that many processed foods - in particular, such things as some brands of instant mashed potato, packet soups and, of course a great many breakfast cereals (most especially, in fact, some of the so-called 'high fibre' ones which therefore, falsely, purport to be 'healthy') - not to mention the many salty snacks which these days tend to fill a whole section on your local supermarket shelves - do, indeed, contain that much salt (or 'hidden' salt) in a single serving!!

And for sure there are people, and I have met some, who will happily munch their way through a bar or more of chocolate every day - or else the equivalent in chocolaty snacks, 'choccie' biscuits (or cookies), chocolate breakfast cereals (doubly bad news - for reasons stated above: double whammy - too much chocolate; too much salt (too much added sugar on top of all that as well!)) .. or else high calorie chocolaty drinks (plenty of those around today, of course). Oh dear!!

Actually, all these can very easily, too, become not only psychologically but, in fact, biochemically addictive - as I have also suggested in my post on the previous thread (which see). There is, as I have said, now considerable scientific evidence of this, and furthermore that the many (often 'hidden') additives now so liberally added to so many processed, even semi-processed, foods which are so very bad for us all are deliberately put there, not so much (as the manufacturers would have us all believe) to prolong shelf life or make products therefore cheaper, but in fact to get us 'hooked' ... to keep us coming back for more .... salt, sugars and all the wrong kinds of fats - most chocolate containing foods have plenty of these. The findings of that research, I doubt, would have been funded by the food manufacturers. They are the culprits! The deeply troubling rise of obesity in the Western world over the last few decades has now been firmly established, by quite a lot of the same research in fact, as being attributable, in main to this. Don't be fooled by the marketing labels which read 'healthy option', 'low fat' (but high sugar!), 'light' or 'natural' or 'this contributes to your five a day' - ignore all that: read instead THE ACTUAL CONTENTS!!!

I would know. I do, as I have said, have many clients come to me who really feel that they have become, literally, 'addicted' to this stuff - and ask for my help (I help many clients with what they may see as all kinds of addictive, compulsive or obsessive behaviours of which they want rid) ...

To this, and to the preceding, post my advice would be to all subscribers (call it my 'angle' if you like): -

LAY OFF the chocolate generally - especially if you are elderly (and I note that, astonishingly, many of the volunteers here were quite elderly) ... but everybody generally ... despite what these findings may seem to claim.. I don't think I can be any clearer than that.

As to drinking PURE UNSWEETENED cocoa (if you can stomach it like that) - and remember: this is the real source of the flavanols about which so much is claimed; remember, too, that the very dark chocolates are only so because they contain more of this dark cocoa bean essence - well, what of all that?
Ward off cancer and possible heart disease? I have my real doubts. Ward off the possible onset of dementia or Alzheimer's disease later in life, or even improve memory? What will next be claimed, I wonder, for this substance so unnecessary as it was to all our forbears? 'Discover the secret of eternal youth' maybe? Or of immortality? Not nearly enough proven I will say. Consider, would you, how tiny were the test populations in this supposed research and how short-term the experiments ...

Interestingly, cocoa (and in this form - as a drink and free from all the sweeteners and additives which eating or drinking chocolate in any form, light, dark or otherwise contains today) was actually brought to Europe in the seventeenth century - by the Dutch, I believe originally - before which it was unknown ... mainly because of its supposed soporific (sleep-inducing) properties. Now this, to me, sounds a lot more feasible. Even until well into the twentieth century, cocoa (as opposed to eating or drinking chocolate) was a popular bedtime drink or 'nightcap' for this reason. You can still get it, you know (if you look around a bit).

Again, with all due respect, katyzzz - and as to a friend (I hope we still can be, despite our differences over emphasis here?) I do not think that I go 'over the top' here at all. Whenever I see what I know to be irresponsible science (oh yes, there is such a thing) or irresponsible reporting of it (not by you, of course) - especially if I see potential real harm in it, or in how it may be interpreted ... yes, I will NEVER omit an opportunity to sound out a caution; just as I appreciate the opportunities which this forum, you blog, provides to post informatively and to seek to be constructive and helpful. Long may it remain so. Thank you.

Regards - Jeff Watt, Mental and Spiritual Healer








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Comment by Quintin Watt
on Feel Happier in 11 Steps

February 14th 2012 18:07
Hello katyzzz!
'Old friends never die - they simply fade away' - lol! Well, I haven' t actually faded away - been doing all sorts, really - and following your blog, as I can ...

Wouldn't disagree with very much of this at all - it's pretty much, give or take, what I would advise my clients ... as a recipe for day to day happiness or 'keeping cheerful' certainly. Add to the 'open air' thing, of course: regular sensible physical exercise (and more than just a stroll around the park or walking the dog). A 'couch potato' life, or even a 'desk potato' one is not, in the end, a happy one ... because unhealthy.

I would also very much agree with the bit about prayer and/or meditation. Life without some kind of spiritual dimension - whatever may be your beliefs or lack of them in this area - is simply unfulfilled living. Letting money be your only 'God' is NO sort of recipe for happiness, in my view. Neither, I agree, is just busying yourself in the workaday world enough - you need some other interest outside of all this, some 'me' time away from all the stresses and the strains, some 'fun time' (which can be with or without family - sometimes, one may even need the occasional 'breather' away from that too - esp if it is a stressful family!). But one should not, of course - as alas so many business people do today - have no time left for them at all - that, of course, can eventually cost you your marriage and your family itself ... and the price of that, as we know, is not happiness at all; it is dismal regret and loneliness (or often so).

I note, however, one ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL ingredient for real and meaningful happiness in life, which is hardly mentioned here at all: DREAMS, GOALS, ASPIRATIONS, AMBITIONS (call them what you will).

"Without goals to strive for, the attainment of human happiness is nearly impossible" (L. R. Hubbard (1911-1986) - whose work and teachings I have, along with that of many other practical philosophers, studied .. eclectically, of course - and no: I am NOT a scientologist!).

This highly controversial hack science fiction writer turned practical philosopher and founder of the most eccentric and infamous so-called 'Church of Scientology' (and whose private and public life I'll not discuss here!) was not right about everything by any means, but he was spot on, IMO, on this one!

Much of the work I do with many of my clients is, in fact, about helping them to recapture their lost dreams (oh yes, it CAN be done!). 'Be realistic' says the article ... but stresses that this does NOT mean 'compromise on your dreams' or even on your plans - hell no! It shouldn't mean that - you shouldn't!!! EVER!!

"I'm not telling you to be 'realistic' here" says one of the opening chapters of my self-help course called 'POWERLINES' (basically, that's about releasing your own inner 'powerlines'; the MASSIVE potential we all have inside of us - of which so many of us use only but a fraction) ...
"I'm not telling you here to be 'realistic' - I'm telling you to go into orbit!" (It is a metaphor, of course, a figure of speech).

Years ago, I read a self-help book by an American millionaire businessman (whose name I do not recall, alas) who, in one chapter, advised (I paraphrase here):-
"Having the ambition: 'I will fly through the air unassisted' - no; that is not what I call a 'realistic' goal . However; that which it is possible for a human being to achieve (however difficult, unprecedented, unconventional or untried): THAT is a 'realistic' goal!"

I note that your article advises (qualifying 'realistic') that we must not expect to always have an easy ride. Exactly so! Life is not like that, of course. Too often, far too often, people DO quit when 'the going gets tough'. We shouldn't. Hubbard's words could indeed be further qualified here by adding that the OVERCOMING of obstacles in order to achieve our dreams, goals, life hopes etc. is actually part of the game of life - and life, indeed, is a game (even if, sometimes, a dealy serious one).

Be obstinate and pig-headed for the sake of it, ignore all informed (as opposed to well-meaning but useless and non-constructive) advice, crush anyone or anything that gets in your way - NO!!! That is most emphatically not any part of a recipe for happiness. Quite the reverse, in fact; this can only ultimately lead to deep unhappiness, alienation and a bitter heart. But don't be talked out of' your dream, 'reasoned into' giving up on a real and worthwhile dream. NEVER!!

"Hold on tight to your dream
Hold on tight to your dream ..
When you get so sick of trying ...
When you feel your heart is breaking -
Hold on tight to your dream."
(J. Lynne; 'Hold On Tight (To Your Dream)'. Recorded by UK group ELO (aka The Electric Light Orchestra). From the concept album 'Time' (Jet (UK), 1981)).

And the advice omits one other most important factor here: BE CREATIVE! That includes not only making and doing things (apart from simply making money!) - so; be physically creative definitely. You don't have to be a Rembrandt or Tchaikovsky to do that, I assure you ... even some quality creative gardening, carpentry or metal-smithing work might do it for you, or maybe needlework or word-smithery is your thing; who knows? - we ALL have some creative talent you know! But also - and this is extremely important:-
THINK (and plan) CREATIVELY : It is the anatomy of thinking of every genius there has ever been .. and of everyone who has ever seriously achieved their goal!

Good luck!

Jeff Watt, Mental and Spiritual Healer

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Comment by Quintin J Watt
on Baroness Greenfield criticises 'Taliban-like' Stephen Hawking

September 20th 2010 00:56
Well, I HAVE to comment on this one! It strikes right at the very root of human belief itself!

Greenfield is way out of her tree in comparing Hawking to the Taliban - hey; don't we have (long and hard fought for) freedom of speech in this country (UNLIKE in Afghanistan under the Taliban!!)? The fact that she CAN criticise Hawking, and so assaninely, shows this! Greenfield is a scientist of great repute and I respect her work and her very deserved scientific reputation. So, why does she stoop to such infantile criticism (which she attempts later, in fact, rather unconvincingly, to UN-say!)? It is unworthy of her.

Hawking has the right to say what he believes to be scientific truth. He has the right, also, to spout total gibbersih about the place of philosophy (and yes, it IS a true science, in the view of not only myself but many many others too!), crassly ignorant, as he would seem to be - and that is surprising for a man of his intellect - that without philosophy there WOULD HAVE BEEN NO SCIENCE, and that, before the Renaissance in Europe, all that we now call science was, indeed, the LEGITIMATE PRESERVE of philosophy. The word itself (from the Greek 'philo': 'I love' and 'sophos': knowledge or learning) shows this.

Read any of even the pre-Socratic philosophers such as Anaximander or Parminedes, for two examples, to gain a fascinating insight into how, with a paucity of technology or anything remotely resembling scientific equipment - a paucity which would absolutely FLOOR and render utterly powerless ANY modern scientist (be they a physicist and comsologist like Hawking, a brain neuro-specialist like Greenfield or a bio-scientific specialist like Dawkins) - these ancient minds yet nevertheless established two and half millenia ago, by logical argument and deduction based on nothing more than simple naked eye observation and thought, the true shape of our world, nature of our sun, moon and planets and the likely true astronomical nature and composition of the stars.

Look further at the work of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle (not always right about everything at the time, of course - such is science!) and beyond even these; how they sought, much further, to explain the very nature of existence itself and the REASON for it all (not just 'how' it all happened but 'WHY'!) and you'll quickly see why, wihout such thinkers, there could have BEEN no scientists like Hawking and Greenfield, or Dawkins either, for that matter!

I don't agree with Hawking's argument that the physics alone can explain it all; as I've said, his science can explain most eloquently 'HOW' (and I am much convinced of the validity of his life work in this regard) but it can't explain 'WHY'. Maybe philosophers cannot either, but we can seek to. Just like scientists, we don't yet have all the answers (neither do Hawking or Greenfield or Dawkins actually, either, in their respective fields - if they are being HONEST scientists). We never will , in fact, any of us!

And that's the point! All we can do is seek to probe ever deeper, deeper, deeper - each new discovery or insight throwing up new questions and further, hitherto unseen, riddles and anomalies - which in their turn, beg to be investigated and explained. Thus it has been since the beginning of humankind. It will ALWAYS be so! Greenfiled, at any rate, is touching on correctness about that!

Were it not so ; were there ever to be a day when we could (arrogantly) claim to 'know it all', then all further science, scientists, research, ultimately even all further human learning and discovery and therefore teaching, study and education, would become unnecssary, redundant, worthless. I, for one, should HATE to live in such a world! Such a scenario will never be attained ... so long as human minds remain both inquisitive and less than infinite!

"I disapprove of what you say - but I will defend to the death your right to say it!" .. these words were actaully said by Hall, but are generally attributed to Voltaire.

As to whether it is possile to be both a scientist AND a Christian believer (as I am) , or even both a scientist and a serious and respected theologian ... well, let Hawking, or even Dawkins for that matter, one day go head to head with nuclear physicist and theologian John Polkinghorne. THEN we should see!!!

Jeff Watt, Mental and Spiritual Healer, Lay Preacher and Cultural Historian, Reading for an independent PhD in Philosophy of The Human Mind .

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Comment by Quintin J Watt
on Understanding Your Brain on Drugs: Dopamine and Addiction

September 19th 2010 00:22
WOW!! This is right up my street! As some of you may know (and you surely know by now, katyzzz!) ; I am a Mental and Spritual Healer ... and, in fact, though not a qaulified medical doctor or psychologist (but working independently on my own thesis for a PhD in Philosophy of the Human Mind), I am also doing my own theoretical research into this whole subject area. Part of the work I do is with helping people with EVERY kind of addictive and compulsive behaviour (not just drug addiction, but also things like gambling, compulsive eating, obsessions with body and body images, with their sexuality and sexual prowess and a lot more besides!).

I have, for some time, been developing my own theories about what I call 'the meta-dopamine effect'. This is not just about the brain biochemisty - which Volkow seems to have so interestingly researched here, and in the process provided some hard evidence supporting much of what I have long believed - but it is still more far-reaching than even mere brain biochemistry.

Fascinating, though, therefore, that Volkow also finds that this, what I shall call, 'meta-dopamine effect' (as it is surely, as I have said, more than just brain biochemistry) also plays a part in the gratification/motivation causation of sex and eating (and one can easily see from this how this can contribute to the 'over-eating', binging and 'insatiable SEX hunger' mechanisms can't one?). I believe that the 'metadopamine effect', though, goes much much deeper even still and even explains the strange charge that some get from actual extreme negation of normal bodily desires/ survival requirements which are, as Volkow implies, 'hard-wired' into us by evolution and instinct:
thus the extreme and compulsive dieter, the obsessive exerciser and, of course, related eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia - though other, much more complex factors are at play here, alas, and obviously so, also ...

The post-freudian psychologist Lacan, long ago (in the 1950's), did theoretical work on what he called the 'jouissance' mechanism. ONE aspect of this is the bizarre gratification which the human mind can actually derive from concepts of 'emptying', 'becoming nothing' and extreme self-denial, and I believe this 'jouissance' mechanism, which can also manifest in the OPPOSITE polarity of INSATIABLE EXCESS, to be connected to what I call the 'metadopamine' effect; the biochemistry of which Volkow researches well here.

What do others think about all this?

Jeff Watt, Mental and Spiritual Healer

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Comment by Quintin J. Watt
on Does nicotine paint a complicated picture?

July 12th 2010 01:52
Yes, this is all very well, but what Knott has signally failed to mention - and it is blindingly obvious, surely - are the carcinogenous TARS!! The nicotine is what gets you hooked, it may well also seem to calm or even increase alertness, and without a doubt it is what causes the most unpleasant withdrawal symptoms when the smoker tries to abstain. But it is the tars that will KILL you!

It is these tars which damage the smoker's lungs (and often other organs as well), nearly always weaken the heart and often cause bronchitis and empasemia, as well as other very nasty side effects indeed. I lost two grandparents and an uncle in this way. It can kill you, slowly in the end, and often in the most apalling wasting pain in the process. I have seen it.

ALL tobacco products contain these tars. Pipe and cigar smokers are just as much at risk, in fact more so as the tobacco is more concentrated, if they inhale. And, no, this is not a joke: by inhale, I mean, of course, actually breathe it - as opposed to merely suck it in and out of the mouth as I, as a former pipe smoker, used to do. Breathing other people's tars will have a similar, if usually less concentrated, effect.

I quit smoking a pipe over twenty years ago, when I had hepatitis and have never gone back to it. I was never a cigarette smoker; I found cigarettes tasteless and they did nothing for me. About this same time, I also gave up alcohol altogether - and I was never a big drinker either. I have never gone back to that.

The headaches and migraines stopped. I began sleeping better. The digestion improved. The mental and physical exhaustion lessened markedly and I began a fitter lifestyle. The voice improved - I do a lot of singing. There was no weight gain or irritability on my part; if anything quite the reverse. I was able, as I still am, to go to parties etc. and lose inhibitions and enjoy myself completely, without the need for either smokes or alcoholic drinks. I could go to pubs or bars or similar, as I still do, socially and with friends etc. and simply order or ask for soft drinks with no eyebrows raised whatever. And, of course, the hepatitis began to cure.

I once began to surprise my first wife, when we happened to be talking once about drugs and their dangers:

"There is one drug" I began, "which you can easily buy at any supermaket, and many sweet shops or candy stores and newsagents as well, any time you wish, across the counter and perfectly legally, so long as you are over eighteen. It is not at all expensive, though it is quite highly taxed in most Western countries - and it can kill you!"

"Really?" she exclaimed, astonished.
"It is called" I continued, "tobacco".

Enough said, I think.

Jeff Watt, Mental and Spiritual Healer.

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Comment by Quintin J Watt
on Does Money Buy Happiness ?

July 5th 2010 01:49
The problem with a question like that is: how do you define happiness? I note that the poll, as you present it anyway, was seeking to find how far people are 'satisfied' with their lives - that's not QUITE the same thing as being happy. It's all a matter of expectation - 'what exactly do you WANT from life?' is a question which wasn't asked? Also : 'okay, you are SATISFIED with your life - but could it be better?' ..was not asked either?

As to the money thing; as Lester Caudill, previous poster, very rightly says: rich may not equal happy - it very often doesn't - but as sure as hell poor = UNhappy ... if by poverty we mean literally worrying about how we're gonna make ends meet. He's dead right there; that causes every kind of stress known to humankind. Not only emotional and mental but, much evidence shows too, physical - including generally shorter life expectancies.

This will, of course, always be exacerbated by such things as poor housing, poor hygiene provision, chronic unemployment ... and even those who are better off but forced to live in such communities will tend to be more stressed and suffer all the above.

'Satisfied'? I take that to mean 'contented'. That is achieved economically, in a very uncomplicated way, by having 'enough': - sufficient income, adequate housing, sufficient savings or provision for the future, a stable home and family life, a secure job or livelihood. But true happiness runs deeper than that. It is more than just contentment. It is only really possibe if one has - to parapharse a very overused quote 'a dream'! Some busniess people ought to know this - if they ever heard of the 'Maslow pyramid'. Unfortunately, though, too many of them , if they know of this at all, think it doesn't apply to them; only their potential customers. But - hello? - its's ALL human beings [and you're one too, aren't you?]

So why aren't all the millionaires happy? Well, some are. Quite a few are not, though. If they, like so many business people these days, are working all the hours the good Lord made - no time for wife [or husband], kids, friends, not even any 'me' time to just have fun or even relax - well, yeah, OF COURSE they're not gonna be happy. Too many 'high fliers' I'm afraid, fit this description today. If they are spending all their time EARNING money- and never taking time out to enjoy the fruits of it - and, still worse, if they are spending all their time worrying about how to make still more; well, do you think they are ever gonna be happy?

And too many of them, alas, also get dragged into a lifestyle that they didn't choose - they do all kinds of things that are supposed to go with being rich, that rich people are 'supposed' to do ... and, often, if they didn't really CHOOSE this lifestyle, surpise surpise, again; they're not happy.

If, in addition, they feel they can only 'stay up there' by keeping everybody else down - oh dear; disaster, sooner or later .....
If the heart attack from stress and unhealthy lifestyle doesn't get them fiirst then - what ALWAYS happens to those who try to fly way too high [and think the wind of good fortune will carry them up there forever]? .....

you guessed it: they come crashing down when they fall, very very hard - and if they've made only enemies and rivals on the way, and neglected all their friends; guess what too - no-one's gonna catch them; nope, they'll all watch gleefully!

I wish I could remember who it was who said it,; someone in showbiz - which can be just as cutthroat as the business world for sure! ..

"Be kind to the people you meet on the way up ...... cos you meet the same people on the way down again... "


Jeff Watt, Mental and Spriritual Healer

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Comment by Quintin J Watt
on Aboriginal Art Australia

July 4th 2010 21:21
Dear katyzzz,

Thank you for your friendly reply, and please accept my aologies if I caused any offence either:-

a) By suggesting you might be American - many visitors to your blog, as many internet users generally, would be, I would think - and therefore may have found the comparison between the story of the Aborigines and that of the Native Americans useful or even, dare I suggest it, instructive?

b) By my (admittedly light-hearted) attempt at a little Australian slang.

c) By giving my own take as a cultural historian on Australian (including Aboriginal) history. I am always willing to be corrected by someone who knows more than I do about a subject - which you obviously do, in this case, as an Australian.

I understand (but obviously cannot experience first hand, as you do) the dichotomy and the frustration which many white Australians of good conscience like yourself (and I know there are many like you) must feel about the Aboriginal Australians, especially those who live in urban poverty - despite so much being done at state and national levels to try and help them.

I like white Australians. You are, in my experience, always friendly and welcoming people - not only in your own country but when you come here (to UK) either as visitors or more permanently. The story of the first white settlers ('convicts' and their descendants, if you wish) and their struggle to build a new homeland is a story which is seldom told and apt to be overlooked (everyone, by contrast, knows the story of 'how the west was won'!)

Modern Australians cannot be held responsible for the denuding of Aboriginal numbers in those early days or for such tragedies (and it was a real tragedy) as the elimination of the Tasmanians - any more than we modern Brits can be held accountable for the many many ethnic cleansing crimes against humanity of our old (imperial) ancestors - including our major and proactive role in the African slave trade.

Yet it seems hard for many Aborigines to forget (even though, as I've said, the decimation was mild compared to that of the Native Americans). It may take many more generaions for the wounds to heal on both sides. At least, though, modern white Australians have begun a real and honest dialogue about this. This is the best that can be expected as a beginning - for it is, after all, only five or six generations since.

You may not feel it, perhaps, but your country is young - much younger even than America, and much much younger than ours! 4th July is not your date, of course - but you need not be embarassed about your patriotic history either.

In time you and your Aboriginal neighbours could be reconciled - how long did it take for the Celtic (native) inhabitants of Britain to accept their Anglo-Saxon conquerors, for these to accept the (originally pagan) Norse raiders who came a couple of hundred years later, or for all of these to come to terms with their Norman rulers (who came a century and a half later yet again)? And then, what of the Scots and Irish? ... and I note you said you have some Irish/Scottish ancestry. Whole 'nother story there!
I rest my case.

To end on a very light-hearted note:

"The empire's bull weeder woven art; mirror calls take cupboard long go."

('The impossible we do overnight; miracles take a bit longer' - my slogan) ... is that a good strine translation????


Best wishes

Jeff

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Comment by Quintin J Watt
on Aboriginal Art Australia

July 4th 2010 07:54
Djirri-nyurra katyzzz!
(That's Djabugay Aboriginal for 'hello'!)

We meet to chat about something a bit different here - but still of great interest to me. And it has a link to the subject of your previous thread on which I posted recently. Why my interest?

A) I'm an (amateur) artist

B) I have ex-in-laws in Australia; Queensland to be precise. My wife was from the Philippines and most of her family have emigrated there now. The Djabugay tribe of Northern Queensland are a people (like so many full native Aborigines) whose language and authentic culture is in danger.

C) I'm also a cultural historian (that's what my degree is in) and VERY interested in Australian Aboriginal mythology (if 'mythology' is quite the right word!)

and D) There's a conceptual link to the last thread of yours on which I posted. You'll see what it is in a mo'.


The Australian Aborigines are to Australasia as the Native Americans are to your country (I assume you are an American?). Unlike the Native American tribes of what is now the United States, however, they have survived in rather better numbers, compared to the days when they had the whole country to themselves (i.e before the late eighteenth century - pretty much the time that the United States began to be heavily colonised by Europeans). The reason they survived, and their culture survived, rather better was twofold:

1) Most of the hinterland of Australia is very arrid, more or less desert and scrub ('the outpack' or 'the bush') and, unlike the North American hinterland, not highly desired by the European settlers. Almost all of the towns and cities (as any atlas will show) are around the coastal outline of Australia. Even the dense tropical rainforest interior of a state like Queensland was never much colonised by Europeans.

2) European settlers (mainly from Britain, but also some ethnic Chinese, Japanese and South-East Asian people) never came to Australia in the vast numbers that they did to the US (in that case, from all over Europe) during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As you probaly know, until around the 1970's, Australia was a very underpopulated country and many Brits were being offered assisted passages to encourage them to emigrate (not any more, though). Today the Australian government is highly selective in its immigartion policies.

Some people, in their stupidity and ignorance (including many Brits, I'm afraid), believe that all the white Australians are descended from 'convicts'. WRONG! This, of course, is because the early colonies, at Botany Bay and elsewhere were, for a time, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a place where deported 'convicts' were sent - mailnly, in fact, simply poor people, including familes i.e. women and children also (there was still then, of course, a HUGE divide in Britain between the rich and the poor) who were unfortunate enough to have been driven by their destitution to steal a loaf of bread ....

Today, in ANY white Australian community, you will probably find a majority who either emigrated there as young children, or are second, perhaps third, generation Brits (often with fond, even sometimes idealistic, memories of 'the mother country'. Hmmmm.)
Any white Australian who can authentically trace their ancestry back to the original 'convicts' is something of an 'aristo' (in what is still a pretty classless country).

As to the 'abos' - they were there SOOOOOO long before and, interestingly, unlike the Native Americans (who had Asian Mongoloid ancestry and crossed into The Americas via the Bering Sea - then narrower or possibly also a land bridge - in Neolithic times, circa 15,000 years ago), the Australian Aborigines, by contrast, are of the Indo-Aryan ethnic differentiation - which makes them distant cousins of the white Europeans.

And they, unlike the Native Americans, had been in Australasia for some 40,000 years before the white settlers came - long before Captain Cook discovered their remote island continent on the othe side of the world in the eighteenth century (and that was nearly three hundred years after Columbus chanced upon North America, or to be more precise the Carribean).

That would place the Aborigines' origins way back in Paeleolithic times, right on the heels of the disappearance of Neanderthals and around the time of the retreat of the last ice age (Australia was then linked by a narrow land bridge to South East Asia).

The numerous tribes have all still survived - albeit their numbers almost halved t (owing to slaughter, of course, by the early white setlers - but never on the scale that it happened to the Native Americans). Even today, that's a very touchy subject with most white Australians. It has taken them many decades to come to terms with the long Aboriginal history of their country. One whole group of people, the Tasmanians, were completely exterminated before anthropologists and ethnologists and philologists had even had the chance to study them (altough an attempt is being made to reconstruct the now extinct Tasmanian languages).

All these long long and distant pre-European times are recorded by the Aboriginal peoples not in writing (for, like the Native Americans of what is now the United States, they never had written languages) but by an oral tradition. They refer to these times as 'The Dreaming Time' or 'The Dream Time' - for it is as a kind of dream to them, shrouded in deep, distant (and, for them, almost magical, memories). So, in case you hadn't guessed it; that's the connection to the subject matter of your last thread! (Dreams!)

The shamans and medicine men, who often doubled as 'bards', 'priests' or their equivalent of 'holy men' and storytellers kept this tradition alive ....

And it still survives today in Aboriginal art, which many true full blooded Aborigines see as a vital link to THEIR past (when it was all theirs) and to their gods (same difference!). Most beautiful of all of these, without a doubt in my view, are the sand panitings (some lovely examples of which you posted here). It's important to remember that, for the true Aborigines, these, like the authentic didgeridoo players and tribal drummers, are not just a tourist attraction curiosity. For them it is as vital to their culture as would be, say, 4th July (TODAY!) for all (you) Americans.

Happy 4th July
G-dye ya y'all ...

Jeff Watt, Cultural Historian

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