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| Silverfiddle Rant! |
Long before European colonizers settled in Australia, Indigenous groups have been setting their own lands ablaze as a fire management technique. They use carefully controlled low flames and the power of the wind to clear grasses and kindling, the materials that fuel more unpredictable blazes during fire season.
Many Indigenous people see their techniques as part of a solution for devastating blazes like the ones that have ravaged the country in recent months.They even throw in some strawman condescension from a noble aborigine...
"Western knowledge of fire is that they're afraid of it," Kylee Clubb, a fire practitioner from Queensland, told Business Insider Today. "Whereas traditional burning and Aboriginal knowledge is that we work with it."We “European colonizers” call the technique a “controlled burn.” We do it during the wetter parts of the year to keep it from getting out of control. Back in Mark Twain’s time, not only did they do controlled burns out west near settlements, they did not even attempt to fight forest fires. They were nature’s way of clearing dry underbrush and killing weak trees.
If attributing common sense forestry practices to Indigenous Peoples is all it takes to get city-dwelling progressive enviro-nuts to embrace controlled burns and fire breaks, I don’t mind a little “Stupid white man ignores the traditions of the ancient noble Indigeni” to get it moving. We all need to do our share...
Great article SF! Anything that exposes the twin fallacies of 'urban wisdom' and 'wokeness'.....needs to be blogged at great length.
ReplyDeleteHow about "CELEBRATING the VIRTUES of Foreign or Non-Traditional Ways of Thinking" instead of "Exposing the Fallacies?"
DeleteCouching ideas and opinions in positive terms is more apt to stimulate healthy curiosity and possible acceptance than dreary, off-putting examples of sneering pejoration.
How about......you just do you......
DeleteHow about YOU developing enough humility to A) express a little curiosity about what others think for a change, and B ) to take a course in Remedial English so we poor peasants might at least have a Chinaman's Chance to understand what you are driving at?
DeleteYour confused......I have plenty of curiosity for what other - interesting - people think. I have absolutely no interest In the rantings of pissy pants, simpering sycophants.
DeleteIs that clear enough for you?
Once again, I ask you both to avoid a blog war in these threads here at Always On Watch. Let's stick to the topic of the blog post.
DeleteThank you.
That's a little whitesplainy, Kurt :P
ReplyDeleteIt would be very helpful, Jez, if you'd condescend to address us in plain, clear English instead of recondite jargon or Code Lingo.
DeleteWhat you are doing here is tantamount to foreigners who make a deliberately rude habit of speaking in their native tongue in English-speaking societies in order to confound and discomfort their native hearers –– a practice frowned upon s long as I can remember.
I know that YOU are not really a rude fellow, Jez, but sometimes in your apparent eagerness to show that you enjoy a "Special Relationship" with SilverFiddle, you speak to him as though the rest of us were not here or simply don't count.
Please don't take this as a reprimand. It is intended merely a (hopefully astute and truthful) observation.
Jez,
DeleteThat's a little whitesplainy
Huh?
Please clarify.
Yeah. Mansplain it to them, jez! ;)
DeleteThorough explanation spoils the joke, but yes it was a play on "mansplain."
DeleteI've always been weary of that fashionable term, because imo the reluctance to share knowledge with each other is as costly an error as the widespread reluctance to recognise women as authoritative.
That explanation was soooo Eurocentric!
DeleteNo need to get micro-aggressive -- I'm through doing your emotional labour for you!
DeleteJez,
DeleteNow you've forced me to bring up I am around a quarter Scots-Iris, which is Celtic (i.e. an indigenous group oppressed by the English, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, etc) so I claim victim status!
;-)
Will I get in trouble if I say I got it?
DeleteI'm no dummy, I choose oppressor status! (like most of us, my heritage can be spun in either direction)
DeleteEd, you're not in trouble but I think in the context of intersectionality, you might need to check your sense of ironic privilege.
HORSE PUCKEY!
DeleteThe Dream of Mankind, since he rose from his early animal existence in the Bush, the Veld, and the Caves, has been to CONTROL NATURE to suit the Needs of Mankind and no one else..
ReplyDeletePut another way this remains a batant desire [and usually failed] attempt to "Play God."
Not that we haven't made tremendous strides towards living more comfortably, less strenuously, less dangerously and more productively. History proves we've accomplished a great deal.
What we have NOT been able to learn, however, is to RESPECT and BENEFIT from the DIFFERENCES among the many different human groups –– a tragic error of epic proportions.
Those few of us who think otherwise generally make the equally tragic error of militantly despising, downgrading, rejecting, and destroying themselves once they begin to realize that OTHERS notably unlike themselves have valuable , life-enancing knowledge to offer too.
That's why we got Communists, Sex, Drugs, Rock 'n Roll, HIPPIES, AIDS, and FemiNazis.
];^}>
Sometimes, as my father, both a farmer and an automotive mechanic, used to say: "The old ways are the best ways." And Dad was no Luddite!
ReplyDeleteI feel uch the same way, AOE, and I'm no "Luddite" either. I DO feel, however, thatasa spcies e need to learn ho to restrain our often inane eagerness to keep effecting merely for the sake of change. Also, we need to develop a PASSION for studying possible RAMIFICATIONS of things Science, Industry and Technology invent BEFORE they are inflicred on an innocent, basucally ignorant public.
DeleteThe techieal aspect of the way do business today seems willfully ignorant of moral, ethical and purely humanitarian considerations.
BIG MISTAKE!
Too late. Some mistakes cannot be recovered from. In order to use controlled fires, you have to set them when they can be controlled.
ReplyDeleteThe uncontrollability of fires today does not stem merely from the amount of fuel accumulated by bad management. It also is due to trees which have been weakened by competition of overcrowding - too many trees competing for resources because natural cycles have nor thinned them. As a result of said weakness, they have been ravaged by disease and insects, and when a fires starts everything burns.
In the past, smaller, cooler fires would leave the larger trees unharmed, but now even the fires are not bigger or hotter, those trees are weakened and less able to resist fire, and they go down too.
Well stated. I agree.
DeleteCarbon release... air... bad! Trap carbon, no RELEASE carbon! PLANT trees....
DeletePrevent forest fires, register matches!
Silver... in 2003, the massive Cedar Fire burned like crazy through Scripps Ranch in San Diego, CA. It also burned across the US/Mexico border around Tecate. I know because the worst day of the fire I was returning from Mexico, driving through darkness and ash. In the end, more than 2000 homes in the US were lost. The damage, from the same fire was minimal in Mexico.
ReplyDeleteThe fire smarty pants people at USC wondered why, the same fire, across the same geography, and blown by the same Santa Ana winds, did so much more damage in the US as opposed to Mexico.
Their conclusion?
US fire suppression policy.
In Mexico, for a lack of resources, fires like this are essentially left to burn. Thereby depriving future fires the fuel needed to grow to disastrous proportions.
But here in the US we believe we have some innate ability to control everything, including fire.
A very astute observation, Dave. GOOD FOR YOU!
DeleteAs I tried to indicate above, we in our damnable Control-Freak fashion, mess things up for ourselves too much of the time.
The tendency has always been there I'm sure. It seems endemic to our species, but I believe hubris rose to intolerable levels with the cming of the Machin Age and all that followed.
The tragedy of the TITANIC is a good czase in point.
We love to discover and invent things that APPEAR to make life "easier" and "better" for us, but in so doing we generally fall into a TRAP. Our cleverness, and passion for self-aggrandizement simply creates NEW snd WORSE problems and more dedly serious crises for us to deal with.
As a result life becomes more and more perplexing as our brilliant inventions make existence increasingly complex and demanding.
This mad desire alwsys to Be On Top and Ahead of the Curve –– or at least perceived as such –– all the time is evocative of the lesson we are supposed to learn from the story of the Tower of Babel. That is not as far-fetched a it may seem at first glance.
Nothing is isolated. Everything is inescapably interrelated.
Hello Silverfiddle, Dave and AOW. Good to hear from you all and more. Dave, I live in Scripps Ranch and have since 1984. The Cedar Fire was horrible. So was the Witch Creek Fire of 2007. When the winds blow down the canyons everyone is at risk, but especially those of us who live among the eucalyptus trees as we do (imported from Australia BTW). Their leaves are like gasoline or creosote. As well in a windy storm that topple as their roots are so superficial. There is little doubt that natural fuels (growth) must be managed. I didn't lose my home but hundreds of my neighbors did.
ReplyDeleteGood to hear from you, KP.
DeleteClue me in. Who is KP? Without breaching confidentiality, of course.
DeleteKP... I hope all is well. I'd love to connect on one of times pasing through SD...
DeleteAOW: KP is Kevin, great guy, personal trainer and a great example of how to maintain a great attitude and courtesy regardless of circumstances.
DeleteHe was a regular at Western Hero. Steve/Lester Libtard/whatever else he went by was extremely triggered by Kevin's comments. It is what forced me to convert comments to Disqus.
SF,
DeleteThank you for that information.
Perhaps KP will be a regular commenter here. I hope so!
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteAOW, I have been looking for you guys for awhile. I still check Western Hero now and then and have chatted with SF off line some. As well, look in on Dave Miller's missionary blog, Adventures in Life. I am also a chiropractor as well as an ultra endurance coach. At one time I thought we may have discussed some low back disc issues you had by e-mail or phone. I could be wrong. Best regards.
DeleteKP,
DeleteAt one time I thought we may have discussed some low back disc issues you had by e-mail or phone.
Aha! Now I remember you. That was quite a while ago.
Controlled burning creates pollution therefore it is frowned on by the environmentalists. It makes far more sense to have massive fires and get the pollution over all at once. The downside is millions of dollars in homes are destroyed and lives are put at risk but that is the price they are willing to pay.
ReplyDeleteGood to hear from you KP. I thought you escaped the US insane asylum and were on a beach in Tahiti.
Hi, Skud. Let's stop shilly shallying and call hem what they ARE:
DeleteENVIRONMENTALCASES.
"Not yet in Tahiti" was directed at skud (not AOW). Still learning the blog. Yes, I will read regularly AOW.
ReplyDelete