That "native vegetation" you're talking about has been lost along the south-eastern coastline, for the most part. The cattle stations I'm referring to are in areas where the only clearing has been for the house block and a bit of an area for drenching etc, the rest is open country. I know, I've been on cattle musters where the only way to get to the stock is via helicopter as they're in the middle of the bush about a hundred kilometres from the station house. When you only look at statistics, it's hard to get a picture of the world -- but I'm lucky enough to have lived there and I know how much attention the decent graziers are giving to environmental impact, particularly to reversing the salination of the water table that resulted from the initial (ignorant) clearing of land. The biggest threat to Australia's environment is not agriculture, it's residential.
*I see you've included an article from "New Scientist" -- never the most credible source and quite well-known for printing highly speculative, non-peer-reviewed articles. By the way, why do these articles always mention hamburgers and not milk?
-- now we're way off topic, my apologies, it's 2:30am, I woke up and can't get back to sleep.
That's not what this thread is about -- I think it's important to draw a distinction that not all death is the result of violence, and not all physical contact is of a violent nature, no matter what some bleeding heart in the United Nations might try to dictate.
Choosing not to use physical punishment for your child does not make you a bad parent, you are perfectly right Phaedra. What worries me is that there is a certain "parent-type" who is all warm fuzzy on the outside but whose permissiveness can be detrimental to the child, particularly when it comes to that child having respect for authority figures. And of course it makes no difference what disciplinary techniques you use if you don't model appropriate behaviour yourself. Children mimic adults and behaviour patterns become ingrained from a very early age, whether it's violence, laziness, prejudices, whatever. Of course, they also mimic the positive.
As long as the child is aware that actions have consequences, and as long as those consequences are consistent and commensurate, I don't think it matters a damn what those consequences are.
The worrying thing about violence in society, in my opinion, is the disconnection from the real world. British films are not such a big culprit, but the sooner Hollywood stops making it seem as though you can break a chair over someone's head and the chair comes off second-best, or you can go through plate glass window and the worst that happens is a little scratch on your cheek (not deep enough to permanently damage your profile), the better.
*I see you've included an article from "New Scientist" -- never the most credible source and quite well-known for printing highly speculative, non-peer-reviewed articles. By the way, why do these articles always mention hamburgers and not milk?
-- now we're way off topic, my apologies, it's 2:30am, I woke up and can't get back to sleep.
That's not what this thread is about -- I think it's important to draw a distinction that not all death is the result of violence, and not all physical contact is of a violent nature, no matter what some bleeding heart in the United Nations might try to dictate.
Choosing not to use physical punishment for your child does not make you a bad parent, you are perfectly right Phaedra. What worries me is that there is a certain "parent-type" who is all warm fuzzy on the outside but whose permissiveness can be detrimental to the child, particularly when it comes to that child having respect for authority figures. And of course it makes no difference what disciplinary techniques you use if you don't model appropriate behaviour yourself. Children mimic adults and behaviour patterns become ingrained from a very early age, whether it's violence, laziness, prejudices, whatever. Of course, they also mimic the positive.
As long as the child is aware that actions have consequences, and as long as those consequences are consistent and commensurate, I don't think it matters a damn what those consequences are.
The worrying thing about violence in society, in my opinion, is the disconnection from the real world. British films are not such a big culprit, but the sooner Hollywood stops making it seem as though you can break a chair over someone's head and the chair comes off second-best, or you can go through plate glass window and the worst that happens is a little scratch on your cheek (not deep enough to permanently damage your profile), the better.
It could be worse