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US man finds lost mother in an isolated Amazon tribe

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Re: US man finds lost mother in an isolated Amazon tribe

#71

Post by pessimizer »

DanBC wrote: post #39
mherkender wrote: post #10

Wow, his father sounds like a piece of work. He decides that culture is the only real reason he shouldn't marry someone who was "about 9 to 12" when he's 36. Then his long absences put her at risk of being brutally gang-raped, which happens. She ends up in the US, and eventually goes back without her kids. He tells his kids nothing about her, why she left, who she is, but still has his son beg her to come back in fro…

Old men marrying children is common in many parts of the world. http://www.unicef.org/protection/57929_58008.html http://tooyoungtowed.org/

So is slavery. If you are an anthropologist from a non-slave culture working in an area where people keep slaves, and you decide not only to keep a few, but to import them when you return...

Re: US man finds lost mother in an isolated Amazon tribe

#72

Post by facepalm »

phaus wrote: post #53
DanBC wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Old men marrying children is common in many parts of the world. http://www.unicef.org/protection/57929_58008.html http://tooyoungtowed.org/

>Old men marrying children is common in many parts of the world. There are quite a few shitty people in the world. As much as many of us hate to admit it, there are also quite a few shitty cultures. Any 36 year-old man, from any culture that has ever existed, that finds it acceptable to marry a 9-12 year old and then start raping her when she's 13 is a piece of shit. Any culture or individual that condones such behav…

Are you sure that is usually how the story plays out? I don't know, but I also don't trust the usual sources as they have their own agenda. Perhaps the percentage of rapists there is not higher than in the Western world?

I also think it is very difficult to judge from a different culture. For example, what if the girls are being killed if they can't be married? (Again, I have no idea about the real workings of those cultures, but there are certainly cultures where girls get killed because parents can't afford them - not saying that that is a good state of things, but the question is who is to blame?).

Re: US man finds lost mother in an isolated Amazon tribe

#73

Post by pessimizer »

cLeEOGPw wrote: post #61
w1ntermute wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He decides that culture is the only real reason he shouldn't marry someone who was "about 9 to 12" when he's 36. This is why I hate cultural relativists. They use it as an excuse to throw morals and common sense out the window.

This is why I hate overly touchy-feelies. They use their emotional sensitivity to throw analytic thinking out of the window and then persecute people who are not like them. Where do morals and common sense come from, eh? Culture. Common sense is literally a sense that is common to a certain group of people. Morals are also mutually accepted limitations to each other behavior. So yes, morals and common sense of your c…

Yes, if your morality is arbitrarily determined by what you can get away with, everything's moral that you can get away with.

Does the father in a particular family get to set the culture of that family? If so, I think that many child molesters may have the basis for a "common sense" appeal through your argument.

Re: US man finds lost mother in an isolated Amazon tribe

#74

Post by thevardanian »

w1ntermute wrote: post #55
mherkender wrote: post #10

Wow, his father sounds like a piece of work. He decides that culture is the only real reason he shouldn't marry someone who was "about 9 to 12" when he's 36. Then his long absences put her at risk of being brutally gang-raped, which happens. She ends up in the US, and eventually goes back without her kids. He tells his kids nothing about her, why she left, who she is, but still has his son beg her to come back in fro…

> He decides that culture is the only real reason he shouldn't marry someone who was "about 9 to 12" when he's 36. This is why I hate cultural relativists. They use it as an excuse to throw morals and common sense out the window.

What are you talking about? Common sense is literally a cultural POV, I mean it has the word COMMON in it, and therefore by definition dependent on that common thread of culture or human knowledge; it is a relative term that's developed through a common experience, which is transformed into a sense, but it's an acquired sense nonetheless.

As for morals, we are animals, and animalistic, thinking otherwise, or towards some fabricated ideal, is untruthful, and therefore amoral.

However for the functioning of a society it is necessary to establish both, morality, and inevitably common sense, and your adverse reaction to such other moralities, or POVs is a direct result of societal conditioning, which is good, because it creates stability in this society.

Re: US man finds lost mother in an isolated Amazon tribe

#75

Post by phaus »

facepalm wrote: post #72
phaus wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Old men marrying children is common in many parts of the world. There are quite a few shitty people in the world. As much as many of us hate to admit it, there are also quite a few shitty cultures. Any 36 year-old man, from any culture that has ever existed, that finds it acceptable to marry a 9-12 year old and then start raping her when she's 13 is a piece of shit. Any culture or individual that condones such behav…

Are you sure that is usually how the story plays out? I don't know, but I also don't trust the usual sources as they have their own agenda. Perhaps the percentage of rapists there is not higher than in the Western world? I also think it is very difficult to judge from a different culture. For example, what if the girls are being killed if they can't be married? (Again, I have no idea about the real workings of those…

>For example, what if the girls are being killed if they can't be married?

If this were the kind of culture that a person lived in, why not just marry them to save their lives and then not consummate the relationship?

>Are you sure that is usually how the story plays out?

In cultures that allow children to be married to adults, yes, this is usually how it plays out.

Also, I realize there is a possibility that this particular story is fabricated. I just responded to the oft-repeated claim that we should try to be more understanding of pedophiles if and only if they are from a different culture. I can't imagine a circumstance where people should be forgiving to any 36 year-old man that has a sexual relationship with a 12-year old.

Re: US man finds lost mother in an isolated Amazon tribe

#76

Post by PhasmaFelis »

deadslow wrote: post #23
dang wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please re-read the site guidelines. This story is appropriate for HN. It's not a close call. Let's not fall for a superficial definition of "intellectually interesting". The story is also brutal, dismaying, and provocative. Hopefully that won't render substantive discussion impossible, but if it does, we'll do what we usually do and weight the thread.

> Let's not fall for a superficial definition of "intellectually interesting". Sure. Can you provide some examples of what's allowed and not allowed then? Because "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" actually covers each and every topic in the world. When you exclude one topic, you're actually demeaning people who find that topic interesting.

Topics appropriate to HN include anything that gets enough votes to make the front page. That's it. If you want a purely objective, mathematically computable definition of "intellectually interesting," I wish you good luck in finding it, and I'm sure a lot of people will be very interested if you can manage it.

Phpnode is right: most of your posts seem to be complaining about what other people post. You're clearly getting very little value out of HN, so why are you still reading HN instead of a site that suits you better?

Re: US man finds lost mother in an isolated Amazon tribe

#77

Post by dang »

jacquesm wrote: post #64
dang wrote: post #44

All: The coincidence of an HN user being personally close to this story is so remarkable that we have put James' comment [1] at the top of the thread, using the same method we occasionally use for moderation announcements. This is very rare—I don't think we've ever done it before. It does occasionally happen that one commenter is uniquely close to a story, or knowledgeable about it, in an HN thread. I've thought for…

Except for one little detail, it's not the subject of the article that shows up but a close friend. If one of my close friends would show up in a thread about me and would start to distribute present-day details about my private life and about my family members that are not currently public I would be less than happy. Maybe jameswburke has full support of the subject(s) about these disclosures but for all we can see…

It doesn't have to be the subject or author of the article. Someone unusually close to or knowledgeable about a story (compared to the rest of us in the thread) also counts.

Perhaps I'm naive, but I give jameswburke the benefit of the doubt, and think the thread is much better with his contribution at the top. (The top comment otherwise would be https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7796987.)

You're right that the story is personal in a very messy and unpleasant way. It also seems obvious that it has historical and cultural significance. On the other hand, the thread (sadly) isn't exploring that, so we're going to demote it.

Re: US man finds lost mother in an isolated Amazon tribe

#78

Post by fallinghawks »

phaus wrote: post #53
DanBC wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Old men marrying children is common in many parts of the world. http://www.unicef.org/protection/57929_58008.html http://tooyoungtowed.org/

>Old men marrying children is common in many parts of the world. There are quite a few shitty people in the world. As much as many of us hate to admit it, there are also quite a few shitty cultures. Any 36 year-old man, from any culture that has ever existed, that finds it acceptable to marry a 9-12 year old and then start raping her when she's 13 is a piece of shit. Any culture or individual that condones such behav…

> Any 36 year-old man ... that finds it acceptable to marry a 9-12 year old and then start raping her when she's 13 is a piece of shit

I would assume she fully expected to have sex with her husband, 13 years old or not. To suggest this was rape, against her will, is a bit preposterous and an incorrect usage of the word. At the same time I find it reprehensible that a 36 year old American, whose culture says underage is below 18, would get involved with what we'd consider a child.

Re: US man finds lost mother in an isolated Amazon tribe

#79

Post by stefantalpalaru »

jacquesm wrote: post #62
stefantalpalaru wrote: post #33

Here's an interesting documentary about the whole affair: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrets_of_the_Tribe

FTLA: "Alice Dreger, an historian of medicine and science, and an outsider to the debate, concluded in a peer-reviewed publication that most of Tierney's claims (the movie is based on claims originally made by Tierney) were "baseless and sensationalistic charges".

See the documentary and judge for yourself.

Re: US man finds lost mother in an isolated Amazon tribe

#80

Post by loup-vaillant »

> Once admitted [to the hospital, Yarima] sprung herself out of bed and attempted to give birth by squatting in the corner of the hospital room.

That one was probably highlighted to emphasize the weirdness, or scandal, or ick factor, just like the first excerpt. But this is most probably one thing the Yanomami got right, as a simple matter of physiological fact.

I have recently learned from my manual therapist that lying in the back like we do in the west by default is the worst possible position for giving birth, for various reasons, the most obvious being that gravity doesn't work with you in that position. Apparently, this position is widespread in our countries because it is more convenient for the doctor.

Squatting on the other hand is one of the best positions, leading to less pain, much faster birth, less risks for both the baby and the mother… Even if you're a cold heart cynic, this would be one easy way to reduce health expenditures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childbirth_positions

http://www.givingbirthnaturally.com/birth-positions.html

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