Posts by Joe Wylie
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Hard News: Reputation and remuneration, in reply to 3410,
A fascinating read, if you're interested.
Very, much appreciated.
And that requirement to address problem gambling seems to be just too much of a problem. -
Hard News: War, now and then, in reply to Lilith __,
Wow. Nice to know what God's purposes are.
Now you sound like Janet Frame, tormenting her poor old Christadelphian mother :)
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I found this on Papers Past a while back. He was a very distant relative, now deceased. While he appears to abide by the Christian pacifist principles that he shared with the previous two generations of his family, he was much more inclined to render unto Caesar than most of the unfortunates described by Ian Hamilton. There were a few examples mentioned in that book though of country boys who, if they'd only been a little more articulate, could probably have satisfied both the Armed Forces Appeal Board and the pacifist principles of the religion they'd unquestioningly been born into:
Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 26, 30 July 1941, Page 10:
ONE ALLOWED
CONSCIENCE APPEAL
DECISIONS OF BOARD
Stating that he took no part in social life and did not exercise his right to vote, Jack James Morgan, a clerk employed in the Health Department, appealed before the Armed Forces Appeal Board yesterday afternoon for exemption from military service on the grounds of conscience. The appeal was allowed.
Appellant said he was a Christadelphian and was prepared to help his country under civil control. "We feel that England will win the war, but we do not feel that we have to take part in that side of the nation's activities," said appellant.
Mr. C. O. Bell (Crown representative): Would you pray for victory for our side?—I would pray that God's purpose should be fulfilled. As far as I understand it, it is his purpose that England should win. -
Hard News: War, now and then, in reply to Lilith __,
If it's not a rude question, when was this?
Not at all. I was born in 1948, so 1969 was my year. I think the Kirk Government abolished National Service. Unlike Australia there was no risk of being sent into combat. As a Commonwealth citizen resident in Oz, aged between 18 and 21, you could be conscripted and spend a significant part of your two years service in Vietnam. They still reputedly took a harsh line with conchies. I was keen to go to Australia, but I made damn sure I'd turned 21 first.
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Hard News: War, now and then, in reply to Lilith __,
I think it's regrettable that conchies were imprisoned during WW2. Whatever their individual faults may have been, they made a principled stand, and were prepared to suffer for it.
Naturally I agree. Again I feel that it's something of a luxury to pass judgement on the views of someone like Ian Hamilton, as his taking the line of greatest resistance probably went some way towards mitigating the treatment of prisoners of conscience in NZ. His account of how people's resolve was broken by an often stupidly brutal system, including his own failed hunger strikes, is a remarkable piece of NZ history.
BTW I'm old enough to have caught the tail end of having to register for national service. I still have my little conchie card. There was a one-legged WW1 veteran who would appear as a character witness if your number came up, and even though he didn't know me from Adam he assured me over the phone that he'd show up to "give the buggers hell". Fortunately he wasn't needed. While official data on such things as immigration records is embargoed for 99 years or thereabouts, you can freely access Department of Labour records about who registered as a conscientious objector at the Archway site.
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Hard News: War, now and then, in reply to Lilith __,
Long bow?
Extremely so. While I have the luxury of not necessarily agreeing with Hamilton's conclusions, I certainly respect his intelligence and experience. Long-term indefinite incarceration seems to foster a tendency to see things in rather broader terms than in everyday life. Hamilton identified the enemy of humanity as tyranny, whether it be an external fascist threat or simply of being incarcerated by your own government. To him all tyranny has its roots in ideology, including the ideologies, religious or not, of many of his fellow "conchies". As he noted about the supposedly gentle Jehovah's Witnesses, they may refuse to serve in an earthly army, but they eagerly anticipate taking part in a promised apocryphal battle against the forces of evil.
In a little while, said Tchekov's hopeless character to himself, wandering through the park, caught up in a labyrinth of internal and external misfortunes; in a little while a solution will be found, and then a new and splendid life will begin. But after you've been in the boob you give up even the thought of solutions and splendid lives. All you want is a direction. You have to have ideals, yes you have to. But they should be vague, taking the form of a shadowy guide, a third figure, a tradition; a substitute perhaps for the ancient function of the church. As soon as they become specific, as in Catholicism at the time of the Inquisition or in every other ism today, then all hell starts in their name. Once you say to someone, you do this and this and this, you finish up by saying, Or Else. Then come the law and the prisons and the concentration camps, the beatings, the tortures and the killings. To me, Or Else stinks; and that's the reason, above all others, I'm a pacifist. That little Or Else has swelled into an enormous octopus of terror, stretching its tentacles into the loneliest places on the earth, now that we know just what it can mean. Now that we know there's no limit to the degradation which human beings are prepared to inflict on their own kind. No limit and almost no shame. Only perhaps, after it's all over, a little specious justification.
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Hard News: War, now and then, in reply to Lilith __,
a good overview of conscientious objection to the war (WW2)
Thanks for that. I've known a few people whose parents were 'conchies', always for religious reasons. Recently I got to read Ian Hamilton's Till Human Voices Wake Us (thank you Ian Dalziel). Hamilton was a relative rarity in that his reasons for resisting military service were entirely political. I was surprised to discover the wide variety of 'types', as Hamilton classified them, of conscientious objector, including a pair of literally grass-eating vegetarians.
Hamilton's highly individual account of the often inept physical and psychological mistreatment he experienced and witnessed is probably as subversive today as when it was published in 1953. Instead of presenting conscientious objectors as an exceptional class of maligned innocents, he seems to conclude that the vast majority of prison inmates were equally victims of a needlessly punitive system.
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Capture: Roamin' Holiday, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
Hey Joe, if we could id this insect...
Sorry I only do katydids. They were common where I grew up, and according to my mother they were called green friends. I believe that was her way of discouraging us kids from killing them. Eventually I realised that I'd been deceived, so I asserted my independence by finding out their 'proper' name.
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Capture: Roamin' Holiday, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
Praying Mantis baby
Nice.
Hasn't grown wings yet, but I'd vote for What Katy Did.
They're responsible for that sleepy chirk-chirk sound around sunset. -
Southerly: Coming Up For Air, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
It's almost as if CERA's conducting a pogrom against any residual traces of architectural character in Chch.