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 front of a video camera. His son thinks she abandoned him and becomes an alcoholic by 14. The guy says “We weren’t a touchy-feely, talk-about-things kind of family".
(This is of course assuming that the article is accurate and fair. If the article is accurate, it's hard to defend the father's actions no matter how you look at them).
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 behavior shouldn't exist anymore.
This is why I hate cultural relativists. They use it as an excuse to throw morals and common sense out the window.
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 culture are out of the window when dealing with another culture. Just because you have a strong opinion doesn't mean you're right.
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.
He just left for Costa Rica on a service learning trip, but I'm happy to answer what I can.
David's relationship with his Dad is still strained from when he was young, there's no denying that (from my perspective). But as David's interest in Anthropology has grown, so has their ability to find common ground as individuals. I've seen him on the phone talking with Dad for hours, just like any other son.
Has this changed?
His younger brother is also at University studying.
It took David 25 years to take this project upon himself. As things grow, I would not be surprised to see his siblings take interest and get involved, but for the time being, traveling to the Amazon just isn't feasible for either of them.
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.
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.
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 some time that the HN software should support this somehow, because those moments (e.g. when Peter Norvig shows up to comment on his own work) are among the most valuable here. If we had that feature today, we'd certainly have applied it to James' comment.
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 here he does not.
The whole affair looks like a tragedy for all involved to me and I think it would be much better to just stick to the information already in the public eye (assuming we have to discuss this sort of thing at all) until all subjects involved (such as David's sister) indicate that they are on board with having this stuff divulged.
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.
This is the kind of thing that makes the article unambiguously Western-ethnocentric. They obviously know the concept of love. His mother wept tears of joy at the arrival of her son.
i dont think you know what this means
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.
Another reason is because they have received epidural anesthesia which stops them from being able to move around safely.
Even with the advent of lighter 'walking' epidurals, many hospitals (including the quite progressive one in SF where my daughter was born last year, with a doula in attendance) still insist on the mother staying in bed after receiving the epidural as a matter of policy (for liability reasons).
>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…
Well, 'less pain' except for the epidural thing. I have nothing but respect for women who choose 'natural childbirth', but I think it's a hard sell to many moms.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1647027/pdf/amjp...
and this quote is just sick: "If most women viewed pregnancy as a normal, natural event, then the surgeons' services would not be required. If, however, pregnancy was seen as an illness, then their presence might appear more appropriate. "
"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".
As I take this apart, however, I'm at a loss to where the story is. Is it wrong to study other cultures? No. Is it wrong to take a wife of 13? Perhaps in the western world, but not there, so I gotta go with "no" on that one. Should the kids have stayed in the Amazon? Once again, I think both parents made the safest choice for the children in the long term. I also think it's great the writer is getting re-connected with his mom.
If anything, I'm disturbed by the idea that the mother is just another cookie-cutter ignorant primitive. I see no indication that she was forced into a marriage. It appears she wanted things to happen as they did. She decided to move to the states and she decided to move back. In fact, the father's explanation that it was a divorce looks to me like a clearcut explanation of what happened. Older man marries younger woman, kids arrive, much heartache, story ends with grown man finding his mother. It's a great story, no doubt, but not a very unusual one. I'm not sure what the "Isolated Amazon Tribe" brings to the table that isn't already there. Just a gimmick to attract more readers?
I hope this guy continues reconnecting with his mother's side of the family. As he says, his story is just beginning. I bet it's going to be an interesting one. It's the interaction of cultures that's the interesting thing here, not the all-too-common tragedy of marriages gone bad.
Not that I didn't find her behaviour reprehensible, but in the interests of accuracy, she was "the wife of a very prominent anthropologist."
(the screenplays are different, but from a similar timeframe between '85 and '94)
