US man finds lost mother in an isolated Amazon tribe
nypost.com
nypost.com
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.
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".
He married her. It's really not the same thing.
This isn't something I've looked into, just something I saw on 20/20 or some similar show once, so you might be right that it only applies to those setting up tours or going on them rather than to conduct that happens overseas.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/jul/15/childprotection.so...
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.
" 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."
Actually there are a lot of eras that had a very low life expectancy in early times [1]. Giving birth at an age earlier than what our society finds acceptable would have been normal, if not the responsible thing to do, for those eras. Otherwise the parents would be living an unprepared 5 year old alone in the 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?).
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.
That's what I meant - perhaps it often works out that way, and only the rape cases are being reported to the western world for emotional effect.
"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've never heard that kind of story, but I admit that I don't read a lot about pedophiles.
But it seems normal that 12 year olds have sex. Perhaps criticizing the age difference has a lot of culture dependent aspects? For example the limit of 18 years to call somebody an adult seems somewhat arbitrary. In any case I don't think pedophilia can be attached to an age limit, only to body development?
Not to me.
If you left 12 year olds to their own devices without educating them that they shouldn't have sex, many of them will probably have sex. That is what I mean by "it is normal". Is it even illegal for 12 year olds to have sex?
Also, out of curiosity, how would you explain to kids that they shouldn't have sex? I think some reasons don't apply across all cultures.
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.
There are different kinds of rape. It doesn't really matter if a 13 year-old consents. How many 13 year-olds do you know that are mature enough to make such a decision?
Not that I'm condoning the behavior in this case....I'd think the intent of age of consent laws would be to protect those not yet able to protect themself with their own judgement - it should be obvious in this case, especially considering his age at the time, that taking a ~13 year old "wife" and proceeding to have sex with her when you had no intent to move there permanently was an incredibly wrong thing to do, by any moral compass.
I'm not sure I can think of a more obvious example of taking advantage than a almost middle-aged affluent man who marries a child from a group of people almost completely isolated from the outside world while he's supposed to be studying them.
Why is it in every thread online involving statutory rape is there some guy trying to shift the definitions or morality of it around? What are you trying to accomplish?
You're saying that the moral rules of your culture are the absolute correct ones that apply globally? What else might this apply to? There are cultures who lay out their dead for the vultures to eat; we don't do this, so do you have a problem with that too?
If I visit a country and they tell me I should hate homosexuals, knowing what I know about homosexuality means that doing it would make me an awful human being. Even if I respect their different opinions on the matter, it doesn't mean that they are being good, because we know that homosexuality isn't a choice more than they know it is a choice.
Vultures eating dead flesh is not inherently wrong, it's just distasteful to some. This very obvious example of child sexual abuse that actually harms someone who is alive is not even close, and it's weird that you're making that comparison. Do I really need to cite the negative effects of sexual abuse on children to justify my position here?
If you read my comment above in full, I did say what he was doing was reprehensible. Relative to our culture, he's molesting a child, and if it were happening in the US it would be considered rape because we consider people under 18 to be incapable of informed consent. And therein lies the uncertainty of definition, since she was informed and consented.
You and a terrorist would have so much to talk about.
(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).
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.
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.
Treat culture the same way you treat religion. Just as there are many religions, but none of them is the right religion, so there are many cultures, and none of them is the right culture.
As for your attempt to label the father as child molester in this case, you are wrong. Child molesters are people who not only are showing behavior, that is unacceptable in the culture they are in, but also they are doing it, at least in some cases, against the will of the partner. What the father in this case did was nor against the culture in which he did it, neither against the will of the partner.
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.
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.
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.
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. "
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.
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
Perhaps surprisingly there are places outside the US and Australia that have News Ltd-owned newspapers. I've heard there are a few in the UK for example..
Not that I didn't find her behaviour reprehensible, but in the interests of accuracy, she was "the wife of a very prominent anthropologist."
"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".
(the screenplays are different, but from a similar timeframe between '85 and '94)
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.
Not every story gratifies intellectual curiosity. Some (like celebrity gossip) gratify social curiosity. Others (like many political articles) gratify a desire for agitation, or victory. Others (like promotional pieces) are meant to gratify the author's desire for attention, or business.
It's true that people disagree about what meets the HN standard based on what they themselves find interesting, and it's impossible to give these terms a precise definition. On the other hand, they're not just arbitrary, either, the site has evolved some informal but pretty coherent standards over the years, and there are editors whose job it is to make judgment calls and who try hard to strike the right balance for the community.
What I hope is crystal-clear, though, is that HN is not just for articles about startups and technology. The curiosity we value here is polymathic.
To me it's about learning something new that I didn't know and maybe hadn't even thought about before. If it's about politics or economics or by Reason.org or Krugman, it's probably part of an argument, and not written for the sake of conveying an interesting fact.
What does "deeply interesting" mean? It means stuff that teaches you about the world. A story about a robbery, for example, would probably not be deeply interesting. But if this robbery was a sign of some bigger, underlying trend, then perhaps it could be.
The worst thing to post or upvote is something that's intensely but shallowly interesting. Gossip about famous people, funny or cute pictures or videos, partisan political articles, etc. If you let that sort of thing onto a news site, it will push aside the deeply interesting stuff, which tends to be quieter.
What I don't want to do is try to come up with some pseudo-precise definition that everybody (including me) would immediately find fault with. That said, if you or anyone wants to suggest an addition to [1] and [2] that would add substantial clarity, we'd love to hear it at hn@ycombinator.com.
p.s. But I don't really think it's definitional underspecification that leads people to post political hit pieces and so on to HN. I think those things are going to get posted regardless of how perfect the guidelines are; and other people will upvote them regardless; and other people—hopefully enough other people—will flag them. And moderators will do the rest. This tug-of-war between upvotes and flags is characteristic of HN's front page and goes on all the time. Some fluff is always going to sneak through temporarily.
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?
That's definitely not true, as the guidelines make clear. Otherwise the front page would consist of controversy, gossip, and fashion, probably in that order.
HN has always been a blend of community voting and moderation (also variously called "curation", "editing", "censorship", "manipulation", and my favorite, "thinly veiled aggression") based on the site's values.