#this practice is widespread all over the world and seems very common with americans | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

howelljenkins · 4 years

Text

As a muslim Iraqi American with a significant tumblr following, I feel as though I should let it be known exactly where I stand when it comes to Riordan’s statement about Samirah. I have copied and pasted it down below and my reaction to it will be written down below. This will be the first time I have read it. If you want to engage with me or tell me that I’m wrong, I expect you to be a muslim, hijabi, Iraqi American, and from Baghdad. If you are not, I suggest you sit down and keep quiet because you are not the authority on the way I should be represented.

Like many of my characters, Samirah was inspired by former students of mine. Over the course of my middle school teaching career, I worked with dozens of Muslim students and their families, representing the expanse of the Muslim world and both Shia and Sunni traditions. One of my most poignant memories about the September 11, 2001, attack of the World Trade Center was when a Muslima student burst into tears when she heard the news – not just because it was horrific, but also because she knew what it meant for her, her family, her faith. She had unwillingly become an ambassador to everyone she knew who, would have questions about how this attack happened and why the perpetrators called themselves “Muslim.” Her life had just become exponentially more difficult because of factors completely beyond her control. It was not right. It was not fair. And I wasn’t sure how to comfort or support her.

Starting off your statement with one of the most traumatic events in history for muslim Americans is already one of the most predictably bad moves he could pull. By starting off this way, you are acknowledging the fact that a) this t*rrorist attack is still the first thing you think of when you think of muslims and b) that those muslim students who you had prior to 9/11 occupied so little space in your mind that it took a national disaster for you to start to even try to empathize with them.

During the following years, I tried to be especially attuned to the needs of my Muslim students. I dealt with 9/11 the same way I deal with most things: by reading and learning more. When I taught world religions in social studies, I would talk to my Muslim students about Islam to make sure I was representing their experience correctly. They taught me quite a bit, which eventually contributed to my depiction of Samirah al-Abbas. As always, though, where I have made mistakes in my understanding, those mistakes are wholly on me.

As always, you have chosen to use “I based this character off my students” in order to justify the way they are written. News flash: you taught middle school children. Children who are already scrutinized and alienated and desperate to fit in. Of course their words shouldn’t be enough for you to decide you are representing them correctly, because they are still coming to terms with their identities and they are doing this in an environment where they are desperate to find the approval of white Americans. I know that as a child I would often tweak the way I explained my culture and religion to my teachers in order to gain their approval and avoid ruffling any feathers. They told you what they thought you’d want to hear because you are their teacher and hold a position of power over them and they both want your approval and want to avoid saying the wrong thing and having that hang over their heads every time they enter your classroom.

What did I read for research? I have read five different English interpretations of the Qur’an. (I understand the message is inseparable from the original Arabic, so it cannot be considered ‘translated’). I have read the entirety of the Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim hadith collections. I’ve read three biographies of Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him) and well over a dozen books about the history of Islam and modern Islam. I took a six-week course in Arabic. (I was not very good at it, but I found it fascinating). I fasted the month of Ramadan in solidarity with my students. I even memorized some of the surahs in Arabic because I found the poetry beautiful. (They’re a little rusty now, I’ll admit, but I can still recite al-Fātihah from memory.) I also read some anti-Islamic screeds written in the aftermath of 9/11 so I would understand what those commenters were saying about the religion, and indirectly, about my students. I get mad when people attack my students.

And yet here you are actively avoiding the criticism from those of us who could very well have been the children sitting in your classroom.

The Quran is so deep and complex that its meanings are still being discovered to this day. Yes, reading these old scripts is a must for writing muslim characters, but you cannot claim to understand them without also holding active discussions with current scholars on how the Quran’s teachings apply today.

When preparing to write Samirah’s background, I drew on all of this, but also read many stories on Iraqi traditions and customs in particular and the experiences of immigrant families who came to the U.S. I figured out how Samirah’s history would intertwine with the Norse world through the medieval writer Ahmad ibn Fadhlan, her distant ancestor and one of the first outsiders to describe the Vikings in writing. I knew Samirah would be a ferocious brave fighter who always stood for what was right. She would be an excellent student who had dreams of being an aviator. She would have a complicated personal situation to wrestle with, in that she’s a practicing Muslim who finds out Valhalla is a real place. Odin and Thor and Loki are still around. How do you reconcile that with your faith? Not only that, but her mom had a romance with Loki, who is her dad. Yikes.

First of all, writing this paragraph in the same tone you use to emulate a 12 year old is already disrespectful. “Yikes” is correct. You have committed serious transgressions and can’t even commit to acting serious and writing like the almost 60 year old man that you are. Tone tells the reader a lot, and your tone is telling me that you are explaining your mistakes the same way you tell your little stories: childishly and jokingly.

Stories are not enough. They are not and never will be. Stories cannot even begin to pierce the rich culture and history and customs of Iraq. Iraq itself is not even homogenous enough for you to rely on these “Iraqi” stories. Someone’s story from Najaf is completely unique from someone from Baghdad or Nasriyyah or Basrah or Mosul. Add that to the fact that these stories are written with a certain audience in mind and you realize that there’s no way they can tell the whole story because at their core they are catering to a specific audience.

Yes, those are good, but they are meaningless without you consulting an actual Baghdadi and asking specific questions. You made conclusions and assumptions based on these stories when the obvious way to go was to consult someone from Baghdad every step of the writing process. Instead, you chose to trust the conclusions that you (a white man) drew from a handful of stories. Who are you to convey a muslim’s internal struggle when you did not even do the bare minimum and have an actual muslim read over your words?

Thankfully, the feedback from Muslim readers over the years to Samirah al-Abbas has been overwhelmingly positive. I have gotten so many letters and messages online from young fans, talking about how much it meant to them to see a hijabi character portrayed in a positive light in a ‘mainstream’ novel.

Yeah. Because we’re desperate, and half of them are children still developing their sense of self and critical reading skills. A starving man will thank you for moldy bread but that does not negate the mold.

Some readers had questions, sure! The big mistake I will totally own, and which I have apologized for many times, was my statement that during the fasting hours of Ramadan, bathing (i.e. total immersion in water) was to be avoided. This was advice I had read on a Shia website when I myself was preparing to fast Ramadan. It is advice I followed for the entire month. Whoops! The intent behind that advice, as I understood it, was that if you totally immersed yourself during daylight hours, you might inadvertently get some water between your lips and invalidate your fast. But, as I have since learned, that was simply one teacher’s personal opinion, not a widespread practice. We have corrected this detail (which involved the deletion of one line) in future editions, but as I mentioned in my last post, you will still find it in copies since the vast majority of books are from the first printing.

This is actually really embarrassing for you and speaks to your lack of research and reading comprehension. It is true that for shia, immersion breaks one’s fast. If you had bothered to actually ask questions and use common sense, you would realize that this is referring to actions like swimming, where one’s whole body is underwater, rather than bathing. Did you not question the fact that the same religion that encourages the cleansing of oneself five times a day banned bathing during the holiest month? Yes, it was one teacher’s opinion, but you literally did not even take the time to fully understand that opinion before chucking it into your book.

Another question was about Samirah’s wearing of the hijab. To some readers, she seemed cavalier about when she would take it off and how she would wear it. It’s not my place to be prescriptive about proper hijab-wearing. As any Muslim knows, the custom and practice varies greatly from one country to another, and from one individual to another. I can, however, describe what I have seen in the U.S., and Samirah’s wearing of the hijab reflects the practice of some of my own students, so it seemed to be within the realm of reason for a third-generation Iraqi-American Muslima. Samirah would wear hijab most of the time — in public, at school, at mosque. She would probably but not always wear it in Valhalla, as she views this as her home, and the fallen warriors as her own kin. This is described in the Magnus Chase books. I also admit I just loved the idea of a Muslima whose hijab is a magic item that can camouflage her in times of need.

Before I get into this paragraph, Samirah is second generation. Her grandparents immigrated from Iraq. Her mother was first gen.

Once again, you turn to what you have seen from your students, who are literal children. They are in middle school while Samirah is in high school, so they are very obviously at different stages of development, both emotional and religious. If you had bothered to talk to adults who had gone through these stages, you would understand that often times young girls have stages where they “practice” hijab or wear it “part time”, very often in middle school. However, both her age and the way in which you described Samirah lead the reader to believe that she is a “full timer,” so you playing willy nilly with her scarf as a white man is gross.

For someone who claims to have read all of these religious texts, it’s funny that you choose to overlook the fact that “kin” is very specifically described. Muslims do not go around deciding who they consider “kin” or “family” to take off their hijab in front of. There is no excuse for including this in her character, especially since you claim to have carefully read the Quran and ahadith.

You have no place to “just love” any magical extension of the hijab until you approach it with respect. Point blank period. Especially when you have ascribed it a magical property that justifies her taking it on and off like it’s no big deal, especially when current media portrayals of hijab almost always revolve around it being removed. You are adding to the harmful portrayal and using your “fun little magic camoflauge” to excuse it.

As for her betrothal to Amir Fadhlan, only recently have I gotten any questions about this. My understanding from my readings, and from what I have been told by Muslims I know, is that arranged marriages are still quite common in many Muslim countries (not just Muslim countries, of course) and that these matches are sometimes negotiated by the families when the bride-to-be and groom-to-be are quite young. Prior to writing Magnus Chase, one of the complaints I often heard or read from Muslims is how Westerners tend to judge this custom and look down on it because it does not accord with Western ideas. Of course, arranged marriages carry the potential for abuse, especially if there is an age differential or the woman is not consulted. Child marriages are a huge problem. The arrangement of betrothals years in advance of the marriage, however, is an ancient custom in many cultures, and those people I know who were married in this way have shared with me how glad they were to have done it and how they believe the practice is unfairly villainized. My idea with Samirah was to flip the stereotype of the terrible abusive arranged match on its head, and show how it was possible that two people who actually love each other dearly might find happiness through this traditional custom when they have families that listen to their concerns and honor their wishes, and want them to be happy. Amir and Samirah are very distant cousins, yes. This, too, is hardly unusual in many cultures. They will not actually marry until they are both adults. But they have been betrothed since childhood, and respect and love each other. If that were not the case, my sense is that Samirah would only have to say something to her grandparents, and the match would be cancelled. Again, most of the comments I have received from Muslim readers have been to thank me for presenting traditional customs in a positive rather than a negative light, not judging them by Western standards. In no way do I condone child marriage, and that (to my mind) is not anywhere implied in the Magnus Chase books.

I simply can’t even begin to explain everything that is wrong with this paragraph. Here is a good post about how her getting engaged at 12 is absolutely wrong religiously and would not happen. Add that on to the fact that Samirah herself is second-generation (although Riordan calls her third generation in this post) and this practice isn’t super common even in first generation people (and for those that it DOES apply to, it is when they are old enough to be married and not literal children).

As a white man you can’t flip the stereotype. You can’t. Even with tons of research you cannot assume the authority to “flip” a stereotype that does not affect you because you will never come close to truly understanding it inside and out. Instead of flipping a stereotype, Rick fed into it and provided more fodder to the flames and added on to it to make it even worse.

I would be uncomfortable with a white author writing about arranged marriages in brown tradition no matter the context, but for him to offhandedly include it in a children’s book where it is badly explained and barely touched on is inexcusable. Your target audience is children who will no doubt overlook your clumsy attempt at flipping stereotypes.

It does not matter what your mind thinks you are implying. Rick Riordan is not your target audience, children are. So you cannot brush this away by stating that you did not see the harm done by your writing. You are almost 60 years old. Maybe you can read in between your lines, but I guarantee your target audience largely cannot.

Finally, recently someone on Twitter decided to screenshot a passage out-of-context from Ship of the Deadwhere Magnus hears Samirah use the phrase “Allahu Akbar,” and the only context he has ever heard it in before was in news reports when some Western reporter would be talking about a terrorist attack. Here is the passage in full:

Samirah: “My dad may have power over me because he’s my dad. But he’s not the biggest power. Allahu akbar.”

I knew that term, but I’d never heard Sam use it before. I’ll admit it gave me an instinctive jolt in the gut. The news media loved to talk about how terrorists would say that right before they did something horrible and blew people up. I wasn’t going to mention that to Sam. I imagined she was painfully aware.

She couldn’t walk the streets of Boston in her hijab most days without somebody screaming at her to go home, and (if she was in a bad mood) she’d scream back, “I’m from Dorchester!”

“Yeah,” I said. “That means God is great, right?”

Sam shook her head. “That’s a slightly inaccurate translation. It means God is greater.”

“Than what?”

“Everything. The whole point of saying it is to remind yourself that God is greater than whatever you are facing—your fears, your problems, your thirst, your hunger, your anger.

337-338

To me, this is Samirah educating Magnus, and through him the readers, about what this phrase actually means and the religious significance it carries. I think the expression is beautiful and profound. However, like a lot of Americans, Magnus has grown up only hearing about it in a negative context from the news. For him to think: “I had never heard that phrase, and it carried absolutely no negative connotations!” would be silly and unrealistic. This is a teachable moment between two characters, two friends who respect each other despite how different they are. Magnus learns something beautiful and true about Samirah’s religion, and hopefully so do the readers. If that strikes you as Islamophobic in its full context, or if Samirah seems like a hurtful stereotype . . . all I can say is I strongly disagree.

I will give you some credit here in that I mostly agree with this scene. The phrase does carry negative connotations with many white people and I do not fault you for explaining it the way you did. However, don’t try to sneak in that last sentence like we won’t notice. You have no place to decide whether or not Samirah’s character as a whole is harmful and stereotypical.

It is 2 am and that is all I have the willpower to address. This is messy and this is long and this is not well worded, but this had to be addressed. I do not speak for every muslim, both world wide and within this online community, but these were my raw reactions to his statement. I have been working on and will continue to work on a masterpost of Samirah Al-Abbas as I work through the books, but for now, let it be known that Riordan has bastardized my identity and continues to excuse himself and profit off of enforcing harmful stereotypes. Good night.

#*#og #rr crit #samirah al abbas #rick riordan

3K notes · View notes

yamayuandadu · 3 years

Text

A hidden world that never was: witch cults, matriarchal prehistory and contemporary conspiracy theories

As regular readers of this blog might already know, a particular woe of my online activity over the course of the past year were constant reminders that discussion of history, mythology and religion online is often dominated by dubious, outdated or outright fraudulent claims. Worst of all, this is generally not the result of misguided theories which seemed sound when they were first formulated – there were plenty of these in the history of modern historiography after all, as eventually many research methods are replaced by even better ones (even these of 19th archaeologists whose ideals are not completely baffling to us often relied on excavation methods which would rightfully shock everyone if employed today), and more and more blanks in our understanding of the past are filled. For example, it used to be unclear to researchers if classical Maya predate the Olmec due to insufficient material, while the importance of the Hittite civilization in the ancient Middle East was severely underestimated due to scarcity of discoveries prior to the last 100 years or so. Even properly identifying all the trading partners of well known ancient civilizations with a large corpus of primary sources, such as Sumer or Egypt, can be described as a long, arduous and arguably still ongoing process, with many mistaken assumptions made in the past. The claims which I will attempt to describe here - the so-called witch cult hypothesis, as well as its close relatives, the claims about universal matriarchal religion (the “myth of matriarchal prehistory,” as Cynthia Eller called it) and the foundations of certain new religious movements – cannot be simply described as examples of these, though. As I will demonstrate, they're simply pseudohistory, firmly entrenched in a modern phenomenon which can be referred to as “conspirituality.”

Our journey through the world of historical misinformation begins in the 18th century. The age of enlightenment largely put an end to a fixture of earlier european history, the witch hunts, and historians started to present them as an abuse of power by the church and senseless, baseless violence, while the people who perished in them started to be rightfully seen as innocent victims claimed by what was essentially a historical equivalent of phenomena such as satanic panic, NWO/reptilian conspiracy theories or the sadly very politically relevant at the moment Qanon movement. Modern researchers, especially Norman Cohn, pointed out that there was also a strong antisemitic component to many witch trials, and even the terms used appear to often intentionally demonize or mock Judaism, and reports of the purported witches' activities often mirror the medieval blood libel, rather than any known descriptions of religions of antiquity. Cohn also notes that adapting the idea that witch hunts were linked to blood libel and similar accusations does make for a coherent chronology, while the various “witch cult” and “pagan survival” theories have a glaring issue – they seldom answer any questions about events taking place during the entire time period between the adoption of christianity and times in which witch hunts occurred, different for individual countries. 19th century sadly changed the approach to the history of witch hunts – as the new philosophical movements born in that era aimed to often undermine or subvert the age of reason and its accomplishments (flawed as they were, obviously), the consensus on the past witch hunts likewise started to be challenged. A number of figures regarded as very conservative back then, let alone by modern standards, like Karl Ernst Jarcke, a fanatical monarchist, started advancing the idea that witch hunts were a war waged by the church and its righteous supporters on a nefarious cult, similar to the secret societies common in conspiracy theories advanced by his peers. As the 19th century was also the time when nationalism in the modern sense was born, the theories of Jarcke and his followers had a notably xenophobic flair to them – the “witch cult” was introduced to Germany by slaves and other undesirables, who based it on the religion of ancient Greece, and especially Hecate worship (read: on medieval christian criticisms of it – I debunked some claims present here as well in my Hecate article from last year; also note the idea of Hecate being the goddess of a “pan-european witchcraft cult” remains popular with modern neopagans and wiccans, despite its nefarious origin and inaccuracy) and aimed to overthrow rightful authority of the monarchs and the Catholic church (this was also meant to serve as a rather blunt attack on their liberal contemporaries, presented as godless and anarchic). Similar claims were also advanced in England by Karl Pearson, a mathematician and eugenicist who for some reason decided to dabble in pseudohistory. His notable claim was that Joan of Arc was a priestess of a hidden, malevolent “matriarchal religion” - an accusation so outlandish it would likely even shock her earlier accusers, and one of the few pieces of pseudohistory discussed here I haven't seen adapted by any modern purveyors of it.

While Jarcke is the earliest figure I opted to bring up here, the one whom I'd actually consider worthy of being referred to a the father of the discussed network of puzzling hoaxes and misconceptions was Charles Godfrey Leland, a late 19th century American author. While seemingly a relatively progressive person for his time in some regards (he was an abolitionist – not a high bar, though), he had no real issue with altering, falsifying and entirely fabricating claims (or even artifacts) and publishing them as result of genuine fieldwork. His “impressive” accomplishments include altering a number of Algonquian tales he published as genuine oral tradition merely compiled and translated by him. His aim was seemingly to provide evidence for an outlandish theory that the beliefs and religious practices of the people forming the historical Wabanaki Confederation were derived from Vikings, an example of the ignoble tradition present in early American scholarship aiming to strip indigenous peoples of their history and accomplishments (its main legacy is the so-called “mound builder myth”). His another particularly harmful contribution was the fabrication known as “Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches,” which he presented as a genuine religious text shared with him by a purported informant in Italy, who was herself a witch. Needless to say neither the work itself nor even the informant appear to be real, and “Aradia” is quite clearly an attempt to sell similar lies as these formed by Jarcke and his ilk to a new audience. Leland wasn't the first to attempt that – famous French historian Jules Michelet tried to put a progressive spin on witch cult conspiracy theories over 30 years earlier (rather puzzling decision, considering he was the exact kind of person Jarcke reviled and equated with his made up satanic conspiracy – a lifelong secular and republican activist) – but he was the first to present his work as anything other than speculation, and the first whose work gained widespread attention (Michelet's witch-related ventures were treated as an oddity disconnected from the rest of his career). “Aradia” presents a fanciful account of a hidden society of witches venerating the eponymous “Aradia,” a daughter of Diana and Lucifer (sic). Leland claimed that the rituals described in the book probably are a remnant of Etruscan religion, at the time barely researched and still somewhat mysterious today; however the book also claims that Aradia was a medieval figure involved in the struggle between feudal peasants and local landowners – consistency is not its strongest suit. The author also chaotically speculated about his own claims, providing us with such smash hits as equating the biblical Herodias with largely extrabiblical Lilith. There are many well documented instances of religious syncretism in antiquity, some of them even involving historical or semi-historical figures, but none line particularly well with these made by Leland. Rather importantly, none of his claims line up particularly well with the medieval accounts related to purported witchcraft, or any confessions obtained during witch trials. None of them fit with archaeological records, either. They do line rather well with what one could expect from a 19th century hoax prepared by someone with only a vague sense of dedication to uncovering historical truth, though. To a a modern reader claims such as the existence of entire networks of “heathen villages” in Italy are easy to recognize as belonging to the 19th century tradition of “noble savage” literature. Similar ideas were further developed by Margaret Murray from the 1910s onward. Murray made history as the first woman to teach Egyptology professionally in Britain, and was an accomplished archaeologist, but her expertise in one field doesn't exactly balance the fact that ultimately most of her academic work was centered on pursuing increasingly puzzling lies and promoting them to the general public from a position of scholarly authority. Like some of the figures discussed in earlier sections of this article, she claimed that well known accounts of witch hunts were in fact the persecution of a “pan-european religion,” a claim which raises many red flags for anyone even vaguely familiar with history of ancient religions. A particularly heinous aspect of Murray's work was dismissing the fact that many aspects of witch-related texts, including the fact their gatherings were referred to as “sabbaths,” were simply rooted in antisemitism – it's virtually impossible to deny it, considering sometimes even the term “synagogue” was used as well. In her writing there was room for a large scale organized religion unknown to historians, but there was no room for even just attempting to address a very real legacy of religious intolerance. Instead, she created fanciful etymologies for terms blatantly intended to demonize Judaism to disconnect them from their very real legacy of still socially relevant hate. Note this is not something that was only noted in very recent times – Norman Cohn, who was the first author to write extensively about the similarities between religious persecution in ancient Rome, medieval witch hunts, blood libel and totalitarian purges was almost Murray's contemporary! A concept invented by Murray which gained particularly wide recognition among all sorts of fans of dubious claims was the idea of “horned god.” Using disconnected, inconclusive evidence, she claimed that every single horned male figure from every single system of beliefs – Pan, Amon, the Minotaur and other Minoan depictions of bulls, the “master of animals” seals recovered from various Indus Valley Civilization sites, Cerunnos and more – represent a single figure, which was also the central god of her made up witch religion. Naturally, the deities in mention aren't really connected with each other, and fulfilled very different roles in very different societies and time periods. It is possible to make some generalizations about different gods and point out certain archetypes do repeat quite often across mythologies – for example many middle eastern mythologies featured a warlike goddess often with femme fatale characteristics, there are examples of unruly storm gods fighting dragons in a wide variety of cultures, plague-repelling gods serving as afterlife officials are widespread in east Asia, and so on. However, any claims about universal deities worshiped all over the world from the neolithic to present times are nothing but hyperdiffusionism, a long discredited pseudohistorical theory seeking to find a common origin for a given aspect of many cultures. Murray's later followers for some reason ignore some notable aspects of her creed – the firm belief a race of fairies inhabited Britain and shared the faith of the witches, but eventually went extinct, the notion that some English kings died as ritual sacrifices, and the claim Joan of Arc was a witch and adherent of the religion she claimed to “research”. I feel like it's very important to underline that to Murray the existence of fairies and gnomes was more plausible than the existence of religious prejudice still widespread among her contemporaries, which tells you a lot about what sort of person she was. Due to limited interest in relevant topics among more credible historians, Murray's views went unchallenged, and she even managed to secure a spot for them on the pages of Encyclopedia Britannica – her confabulations were only removed in the 1960s, after the damage was done. Murray's baffling works inspired many further writers. Among them, a particularly notable example was Robert Graves – while his main interests and theories differed from Murray's, he was undeniably inspired by her idea of “forbidden” religious remnants and universal deities going back to the stone age. He also embraced the idea of a hidden witch cult existing in England in historical times, though unlike Murray he saw it as matriarchal. Graves was a poet and writer by trade, and for all intents and purposes pretty successful one at that – it's probably his writing style to which the lasting popularity of his works can be attributed. Sadly, their worth as texts about history of religion is dubious at best. The core idea behind Graves' writing was the existence of an universal goddess figure possessing three aspects, which he usually referred to as virgin, mother and crone, though he was not very consistent about it. This figure, in his mind, united the legacy of ancient Greece and Celts and their art (he did not address the much more significant similarities between the culture of ancient Greeks and their eastern neighbors, though – sorry, Carians, Phrygians, Phoenicians etc., you're not cool enough for mr. Graves). He further spread these ideas with his retellings of Greek myth published in the 1950s. A particularly prominent victim of Graves' theories was Hecate, whose modern popular perception was shaped largely by him and later writers who embraced him, and not by historical sources. It's worth noting that Graves' goddess theory was likely in part a way to essentially “mythologize” his encounters with his many lovers, and thus provide a religious justification for having multiple “muses” (some of them teenage) – at least one of them was appalled by this. He notably claimed that contacts with the “triple goddess” were the only source of “true” poetry, and thus she and her many guises were the ultimate muse. It's rather notable that there was pretty clearly no room for female artists in his vision, even though he claimed it to be a celebration of femininity – women were presumably meant to be inspiration, but not authors themselves. Graves' vision of the ideal world was so matriarchal it looped back into being grotesquely misogynistic. While I can think of a few positive things to say about Leland (committed union supporter and abolitionist), Murray (genuinely accomplished archaeologist before she sacrificed her career on the altar of pseudohistory) and even Graves (seemingly entertaining writer – if only he admitted basically all his works are fantasy perhaps he could be remembered as a Tolkien-like figure!), I fail to see a single positive thing about the next person whose legacy I will discuss, Gerald Gardener. His moral conduit was questionable at best, he claimed to possess degrees from universities which did not exist, and his work was nothing but layer upon layer of fiction. Gardener was even more of a disciple of Murray than Graves – indeed, he even knew her personally. He took her theories to the logical extreme, by basically making them into religious dogma – the new religious movement of wicca. While he claimed to merely present what he learned from a “surviving coven” of genuine witches, the inconsistent nature of his writing, his participation in fringe esoteric movements long before his “discovery” and the fact he relied mostly on sources like Murray's books, Leland's “Aradia” and the works of Aleister Crowley are evident, and make it easy to disregard all of his statements as pure fiction. It doesn't exactly help his case that he kept revealing new fragments of purportedly ancient doctrine as he saw fit merely to gain the upper hand in arguments between him and his fellow practitioners of invented religion, claiming them to be law. He adopted Murray's horned god, but elevated his consort to the rank of a full blown divinity, something not found in Murray's writing. His arguably most notable successor was Doreen Valiente. Her main contribution to wicca was forming a new version of the Charge of the Goddess, a prayer or hymn to the “great mother” - a composite wiccan entity similar to Graves' triple goddess (and outright conflated with the latter by some wiccans and other neopagans – as far as I can tell the first to do so was a contemporary of Gardener, Robert Cochrance, who claimed the term is “genuine” rather than an invention of a 20th century writer...). Both Gardener's and Valiente's versions of it and other, newer ones are responsible for spreading false information forcing various disconnected goddesses into the “great mother” or “mother earth” mold. Particularly grating examples include Hecate, who was described by Greeks as a virgin goddess and Inanna, Ishtar and Astarte who were at times associated with sensual love or even fertility (the extent of that has been sometimes overestimated in the past, though – a specific myth depicting a figure as seductive is not quite the same as an association with fertility in religious worship) but were not mother goddesses in any meaning of this term.

A notable episode from Valiente's life was her participation in a neonazi movement, specifically in the organizations National Front and Northern League. The association between nazism and conspirituality of the sort discussed here wasn't new – indeed, at least some nazi officials showed interest in investigating it in hopes of constructing a “truly aryan” religion, so it should come as no surprise that early wiccans likewise often had far right sympathies. Ultimately an argument can be made that the entire field is basically a hyper-conservative fantasy, which I will discuss more later. Sadly, despite her far right sympathies, Valiente remained a celebrated figure in certain circles focused on intentionally obscuring history for the rest of her life, and she can be arguably credited with making wicca into the global phenomenon it is now. It's also worth noting that while some contemporary neopagans sneer at followers of, say, ufo-oriented new age groups, Valiente and her peers embraced that as well, and Atlantis and ley lines feature prominently in her writing. Valiente was also well aware that much of Gardener's writing was completely made up (or plagiarized – for example from a Rudyard Kipling poem of all things), even his grimoire, “Book of Shadows” - instead of exposing it she aimed to “improve” his works and continue the hoax. As a side note, it should be said that some other pioneers of wicca were likewise people of dubious moral character – while not a neonazi, Alex Sanders stole from and defecated in a library, for example. However, the history of this specific brand of pseudohistory doesn't end here! While in the 1960s and 1970s the theories of Graves and Murray were debunked over and over again by credible, experienced scholars, a brand new type of pseudohistorical ideas arose, influenced in part by works like Graves' “White Goddess” - the so-called “goddess movement.” However, while it definitely has Graves' fingerprints all over it, it would be doing my readers a disservice not to introduce its other component – the philosophy devised by TERFs. Of course, everyone on this site is vaguely familiar with this movement – back when we were teenagers, all of us probably had the protective BYF scripture listing this acronym among groups meant to stay away somewhere on our blogs. However, few people fully comprehend how utterly incomprehensible to a normal person TERF beliefs are. Mary Daly, the original “TERF theologian” of sorts (a catholic theologian btw – in case if you're curious how come that you reasonably often hear about TERFs allying with religious fundies...), had a basically cult-like view of reality and society, akin to some sort of feminist extreme gnosticism – a false world existed, and a real world within had to be revealed. The “false” world, material reality, was referred to her as “necrophiliac” and the way to reveal the true world within required de facto genocide, or at the very least purchasing her book containing made up “rituals” meant to unlock secret potential within. Supposedly, this would restore some nonexistent primordial matriarchy, and give women back the ability to procreate through parthenogenesis (no, really). This is obviously similar to the doctrine of a millenarian cult, which I feel needs to be discussed more, though this is not the time and place for it. Being a TERF (arguably the original one), Daly naturally also had many charming things to say about trans people, for example comparing transition to the deeds of doctor Frankenstein and in a weird act of projection presenting transition as a cultic behavior. As a small digression I feel like it's worth noting that in sharp contrast with Daly, the inventor of sex reassignment surgery and arguably father of modern LGBT activism as a whole, Magnus Hirschfeld, was a kind, rational man, whose meticulously researched writing was centered on bringing up historical examples of LGBT people, as well as positive experiences of his patients achieved thanks to his revolutionary work, to argue for tolerance and equal treatment in society. Sadly he's just a forgotten piece of historical trivia, while the ravings of Daly and her followers and derivatives keep influencing generation upon generation of teenagers.. Anyway, back to the goddess movement – from incomprehensible spiritual ideals like these of Daly, mixed with the writing of Graves and with some wiccan influence, the idea of “primordial matriarchal religion” arose. As history likes to repeat itself, once again a formerly credible and accomplished archaeologist opted to sacrifice prominent position in a genuine field for study to instead pursue mirages – enter 1950s bronze age research superstar Marija Gimbutas. Gimbutas was undisputably a very talented archaeologist, and her findings greatly enhanced our knowledge about neolithic and bronze age Europe. However, her interpretation of own finds leaves much to be desired, and today is often honored more by neopagans and charlatans than by historians and archaeologists. She argued that Europe was once a realm of peaceful, matrilineal and economically just societies worshiping an universal mother goddess, whom she eventually started to describe in terms borrowed from Graves' books, adapting even his idea of three forms. She claimed this idyllic reality ended with the “Kurgan invasion” from the eurasian steppe, which “tainted” Europe with warfare, patriarchy and indo-european languages (based on archaeological finds it is hard to say if people speaking indo-european languages started appearing in Europe and the Middle East gradually or not and there's evidence of warfare long before the bronze age and the arrival of steppe-based nomads in Europe, and burials do not support the notion of an universal matriarchal – or as Gimbutas argued, “egalitarian” - society; it's also called into question if every archaic female statuette is a cult object). Today it is evident that at least some of her work was a severe case of seeing what she wanted to see in the past, rather than what actually was there. Personally I do not see Gimbutas as a malicious figure, unlike most of the other people I brought up in this article, though it is evident she responded to criticism and newer evidence not by revising her theories, but by turning them into what essentially constituted self-parody (despite claiming she merely believed the neolithic cultures of Europe were lacking hierarchy and thus perfectly equal, she basically embraced Graves' rhetoric, as I noted before), and as such much of her work aged poorly and is mostly lauded by people with questionable ideas today, as I already pointed out. Some of them allege that any criticism leveled at her amounts to a nefarious conspiracy. It's important to mention that while Gimbutas was for the most part simply a misguided scholar who took criticism poorly in her final years (not an uncommon sight), some offshots of the goddess movement have nothing to do with genuine study of the past, but stay more than true to their TERF legacy, especially the so-called “dianic wicca” of Zsuzsanna Budapest, characterised as such even by other wiccans, who usually defend even the most questionable aspects of their movement (such as, well, falsifying history). This is a feature, not a bug. The idea of the “myth of matriarchal prehistory” espoused by the goddess movement was thoroughly debunked in the early 2000s by Cynthia Eller in her book of the same title. She correctly presents the goddess movement as the product of dubious scholarship seeking to produce an all-encompassing philosophy, and notes that the goddess myth is at best an “ennobling lie” - a concept formed by the philosopher Kwame A. Appiah (probably my favorite contemporary writer) – essentially, a founding myth meant to provide some group with dignity or enforcing positive values. Appiah argues in favor of maintaing some ennobling lies on a case by case basis. Eller argues in favor of rejection of this specific ennobling lie, considering pseudohistory a burden to feminism, rendering its ideals easy to dismiss. She also notes many foundations of the goddess movement simply consistute poor research practises – veneration of female figures didn't necessarily translate to equal treatment of living women, while interpreting every ancient work of art as a cult object is an antiquated idea.

Sadly, Eller's publication is obscure (I only stumbled upon it myself because I saw it mentioned in relation to Appiah's ennobling lie concept), while another work influenced by the goddess movement appears to be held in high esteem by users of goodreads, amazon, and many other sites connected in some capacity to literature, and as a result influences online perception of history of religion to a considerable degree – Barbara G. Walker's “The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets.” Walker wrote about knitting before deciding the world needs her bizarre conspiratorial rehashing of basically all the bizarre ideas described in the previous sections of the article – she also added a plenty of weird ideas of her own. A particularly funny example of a misconception popular in the discussed circles and spread further by Walker are attempts to present the myth of Marduk and Tiamat as triumph of patriarchal forces over an earlier mother goddess – Enuma Elish was hardly an old myth by the standards of ancient Mesopotamia, and it was based on earlier tales, in which the equivalents of Tiamat – Yam, Illuyanka etc. - are male, and often act disrespectful towards both male and female authorities. It does tell us a lot about Babylon, of coure– as it morphed from city-state to an empire, Marduk absorbed traits of many gods, including the dragon-slaying ones; but there's no hidden matriarchy to uncover there, and Tiamat is absent from earlier texts and from any which are not derived from the Enuma Elish itself. Funnily enough this bizarre approach to Tiamat was also lauded by a person from a completely different ideological movement, online demagogue and self help guru Jordan Peterson. I actually tried to make it through Walker's book, and while it wasn't the most soul-crushing experience I can think of (out of the authors I mentioned here, Daly easily wins in that category), the bizarre stupidity of some entries almost made me wonder if it's a joke of some sort. Some choice tidbits to my knowledge unique to Walker's writing include describing sufism as “tantric goddess worship,” arguing Amaterasu's name contains a made up universal term for motherhood, claiming Japanese imperial house only became patrilineal in the Kamakura period, and asserting Ahriman was an actively worshiped deity from which the “power” of zoroastrian magi was derived. Walter also appears to have a peculiar obsession with describing mixing menstrual blood with wine and other beverages and consumption of such mixtures (that's her explanation for every mythical drink or potion...) – the frequency with which this motif shows up in her confabulations almost made me think of these deviantart galleries filled with poorly edited screencaps of cartoon characters engaging in some bizarrely specific uncanny activity. There's plenty of footnotes in “Woman's encyclopedia,” which might give it an air of authority, but it's easy to see many of the sources are themselves dubious (Graves, Murray and friends), or don't actually confirm what Walter claims they do. Where does this book's popularity come from, considering the fact it's blatantly wrong and it's not hard to notice if you have even just a passing interest in history of religion? Probably from the way it's advertised – this is sadly a problem with much pseudohistorical data: it's cynically sold to people as “exciting,” “forbidden knowledge,” “declassified secrets” and so on. This is partially why they became such a huge part of the modern world – lies often have great PR. How does all of this tie to the currently politically relevant extremist movements? This might not seem obvious at first, but the link is direct. Pseudohistory by design makes one more susceptible to other similarly shaky ideas, and the movements whose history I described here on top of that often appeal to, or even intentionally reach out to, demographics generally not fond of “conventional” conspiracy theories, associated with militias, nazis or christian fundamentalists – to lgbt teenagers, suburban essential oils enthusiast moms, instagram yoga instructors, tech startup hipsters et cetera. As the news demonstrated for the past few months, these demographics too are susceptible to certain aspects of present day doomsday conspiracy cults, eg. Qanon: the Wayfair conspiracy was spread largely by teenagers on tiktok; many Qanon marches, often with overt anti-vaccine messaging, attracted politically moderate stay at home suburban moms; extremism researcher Marc-André Argentino coined the term “pastel Qanon” to refer to this phenomenon. Generally speaking, many people who embrace Qanon were already believers in conspiracy theories before – nephilim, NESARA/GESARA, blood libel, Rothschild conspiracies, new chronology, ancient aliens and more; the demographics which only started to show up in spaces related to the aforementioned doomsday cults seemingly lack connections to such theories most of the time, barring maybe ancient aliens, but I propose that what makes it easy for Q ideas to reach them is widespread acceptance of various “hidden religion” pseudohistorical ideas in even rather progressive circles – this too is “conspirituality” which ultimately feeds the conspiracy monster. Note that the anti vax movement didn't spread just among extremist evangelicals, but also among adherents of various alternative spiritual paths – simply put, among wiccan hippies and similar demographics; and currently, based on research of conspiracy experts, anti-vaxers are almost synonymous with Q adherents. Many articles were also written about the spread of such conspiracies in various “wellness” or yoga communities, which often also feature elements drawn from authors I discussed in the earlier parts of this article. As a matter of fact, at least two people involved in violent incidents come from “wellness” or “alternative spirituality” circles: the “Q shaman” you most likely saw in photos from the recent assault on the American Capitol, and a less known extremist: Attila Hildmann, a German celebrity vegan chef, wellness guru... and also, as of late, neonazi, anti-vax activist and Qanon influencer. A few months ago, Hildmann, whose first name was arguably prophetic, called for destruction of a variety of artifacts held in Berlin's museums as connected to nefarious forces present in Q mythos – some 70 pieces, ranging from ancient Egyptian art to contemporary paintings were defaced, though thankfully no lasting damage was seemingly done. Worth noting that Hildmann appears to also be a believer in a certain prominent strain of pseudohistory centered on the Canaanite storm god Baal Hadad – I will discuss it in detail in my next longer post, stay tuned. What binds together all sorts of pseudohistory – both the genre of it I debunk here and the more “classic” sort – is the belief in a hidden, usually primordial, world to which the initiated few have access, which grants them superior understanding to that possessed by normies. The truths offered by this world are unchanging and an ancient relic, revealed long ago and preserved, rather than developed – therefore progress and modernity are an enemy, and so is the scientific method. This is naturally an atithesis of how cultures actually function – as demonstrated by Kwame Anthony Appiah, cultures consist out of change - therefore “conspirituality” is an anti-culture of sorts, actively pushing its adherents towards more and more false beliefs, and ultimately sometimes towards actual doomsday cults. A good example of this, outide of the aforementioned Qanon phenomena, is the fact that many adherents of ideas dicussed in this article gleefully embrace lies sourced from XIXth century extremist protestants, like the notion that Easter is derived from Ishtar, an etymologically incoherent argument advanced by fanatically anti-catholic pamphlet “The two Babylons.” I sadly see no easy solution to this problem. The rise of currently prominent version of conspirituality was in no small part spearheaded by social media algorithms and sensationalist tv shows like Ancient Aliens, and it's hard to offer an alternative to them to people who are simply interested in history and religion, as false ideas are often providing copious amounts of material for free, while genuine research is hidden behind paywalls difficult to afford even for some institutions, let alone individual private citizens. I am merely a hobbyist sharing what I find interesting myself to show that real history is always more fascinating than nefarious conspiracies aiming to replace it, but without coordinated large scale effort it seems impossible to emerge victorious in the battle against them. Naturally, that doesn't mean trying is pointless, and I plan to continue for the foreseeable future. Further reading:

Europe's Inner Demons: An Enquiry Inspired by the Great Witch-Hunt by Norman Cohn

The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why An Invented Past Will Not Give Women a Future by Cynthia Eller

Jason Colavito's blog

Conspiracy theories debunkers and extremist ideologies researchers on twitter: Mike Rothschild, Marc-André Argentino, Amarnath Amarasingam, Travis View, Mark Pitcavage

Coverage of the Berlin museum attacks: BBC, The Guardian, DW, Artnet News

#pseudohistory

278 notes · View notes

tlbodine · 3 years

Text

A Horror History of Werewolves

As far as horror icons are concerned, werewolves are among the oldest of all monsters. References to man-to-wolf transformations show up as early as the Epic of Gilgamesh, making them pretty much as old as storytelling itself. And, unlike many other movie monsters, werewolves trace their folkloric roots to a time when people truly believed in and feared these creatures.

But for a creature with such a storied past, the modern werewolf has quite the crisis of identity. Thanks to an absolute deluge of romance novels featuring sometimes-furry love interests, the contemporary idea of “werewolf” is decidedly de-fanged. So how did we get here? Where did they come from, where are they going, and can werewolves ever be terrifying again?

Werewolves in Folklore and Legend

Ancient Greece was full of werewolf stories. Herodotus wrote of a nomadic tribe from Scythia (part of modern-day Russia) who changed into wolves for a portion of the year. This was most likely a response to the Proto-Indo-European societies living in that region at the time -- a group whose warrior class would sometimes don animal pelts and were said to call on the spirit of animals to aid them in battle (the concept of the berserker has the same roots -- just bears rather than wolves).

In Arcadia, there was a local legend about King Lycaon, who was turned to a wolf as punishment for serving human meat to Zeus (exact details of the event vary between accounts, but cannibalism and crimes-against-the-gods are a common theme). Pliny the Elder wrote of werewolves as well, explaining that those who make a sacrifice to Zeus Lycaeus would be turned to wolves but could resume human form years later if they abstained from eating human meat in that time.

By the time we reach the Medieval period in Europe, werewolf stories were widespread and frequently associated with witchcraft. Lycanthropy could be either a curse laid upon someone or a transformation undergone by someone practicing witchcraft, but either way was bad news in the eyes of the church. For several centuries, witch-hunts would aggressively seek out anyone suspected of transforming into a wolf.

One particularly well-known werewolf trial was for Peter Stumpp in 1589. Stumpp, known as "The Werewolf of Bedburg," confessed to killing and eating fourteen children and two pregnant women while in the form of a wolf after donning a belt given to him by the Devil. Granted, this confession came on the tail-end of extensive public torture, so it may not be precisely reliable. His daughter and mistress were also executed in a public and brutal way during the same trial.

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

The thing you have to understand when studying folklore is that, for many centuries, wolves were the apex predator of Europe. While wolf attacks on humans have been exceedingly rare in North America, wolves in Europe have historically been much bolder -- or, at least, there are more numerous reports of man-eating wolves in those regions. Between 1362 and 1918, roughly 7,600 people were reportedly killed by wolves in France alone, which may have some bearing on the local werewolf tradition of the loup-garou.

For people living in rural areas, subsisting as farmers or hunters, wolves posed a genuine existential threat. Large, intelligent, utilizing teamwork and more than capable of outwitting the average human, wolves are a compelling villain. Which is probably why they show up so frequently in fairytales, from Little Red Riding Hood to Peter and the Wolf to The Three Little Pigs.

Early Werewolf Fiction

Vampires have Dracula and zombies have I Am Legend, but there really is no clear singular book to point to as the "First Great Werewolf Novel." Perhaps by the time the novel was really taking off as an artform, werewolves had lost some of their appeal. After all, widespread literacy and reading-for-pleasure went hand-in-hand with advancements in civilization. For city-dwellers in Victorian England, for example, the threat of a wolf eating you alive probably seemed quite remote.

Don't get me wrong -- there were some Gothic novels featuring werewolves, like Sutherland Menzies' Hugues, The Wer-Wolf, or G.W.M. Reynolds' Wagner the Wehr-Wolf, or even The Wolf Leader by Alexandre Dumas. But these are not books that have entered the popular conscience by any means. I doubt most people have ever heard of them, much less read them.

No -- I would argue that the closest thing we have, thematically, to a Great Werewolf Novel is in fact The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Written in 1886, the Gothic novella tells the story of a scientist who, wanting to engage in certain unnamed vices without detection, created a serum that would allow him to transform into another person. That alter-ego, Mr. Hyde, was selfish, violent, and ultimately uncontrollable -- and after taking over the body on its own terms and committing a murder or two, the only way to stop Hyde’s re-emergence was suicide.

Although not about werewolves, per se, Jekyll & Hyde touches on many themes that we'll see come up time and again in werewolf media up through the present day: toxic masculinity, the dual nature of man, leading a double life, and the ultimate tragedy of allowing one's base instincts/animal nature to run wild. Against a backdrop of Victorian sexual repression and a rapidly shifting concept of humanity's relationship to nature, it makes sense that these themes would resonate deeply (and find a new home in werewolf media).

It is also worth mentioning Guy Endore's The Werewolf of Paris, published in 1933. Set against the backdrop of the Franco-Prussian war and subsequent military battles, the book utilizes a werewolf as a plot device for exploring political turmoil. A #1 bestseller in its day, the book was a big influence on the sci-fi and mystery pulp scene of the 1940s and 50s, and is still considered one of the best werewolf novels of its ilk.

From Silver Bullets to Silver Screens

What werewolf representation lacks in novels, it makes up for in film. Werewolves have been a surprisingly enduring feature of film from its early days, due perhaps to just how much fun transformation sequences are to film. From camera tricks to makeup crews and animatronics design, werewolf movies create a lot of unique opportunities for special effects -- and for early film audiences especially (who were not yet jaded to movie magic), these on-screen metamorphoses must have elicited true awe.

The Wolf Man (1941) really kicked off the trend. Featuring Lon Chaney Jr. as the titular wolf-man, the film was cutting-edge for its time in the special effects department. The creature design is the most memorable thing about the film, which has an otherwise forgettable plot -- but it captured viewer attention enough to bring Chaney back many times over for sequels and Universal Monster mash-ups.

The Wolf Man and 1944's Cry of the Werewolf draw on that problematic Hollywood staple, "The Gypsy Curse(tm)" for their world-building. Fortunately, werewolf media would drift away from that trope pretty quickly; curses lost their appeal, but “bite as mode of transmission” would remain an essential part of werewolf mythos.

In 1957, I Was a Teenage Werewolf was released as a classic double-header drive-in flick that's nevertheless worth a watch for its parallels between werewolfism and male aggression (a theme we'll see come up again and again). Guy Endore's novel got the Hammer Film treatment for 1961's The Curse of the Werewolf, but it wasn't until the 1970s when werewolf media really exploded: The Beast Must Die, The Legend of the Wolf Woman, The Fury of the Wolfman, Scream of the Wolf, Werewolves on Wheels and many more besides.

Hmmm, werewolves exploding in popularity around the same time as women's liberation was dramatically redefining gender roles and threatening the cultural concept of masculinity? Nah, must be a coincidence.

The 1980s brought with it even more werewolf movies, including some of the best-known in the genre: The Howling (1981), Teen Wolf (1985), An American Werewolf in London (1981), and The Company of Wolves (1984). Differing widely in their tone and treatment of werewolf canon, the films would establish more of a spiderweb than a linear taxonomy.

That spilled over into the 1990s as well. The Howling franchise went deep, with at least seven films that I can think of. Wolf, a 1994 release starring Jack Nicholson is especially worth a watch for its themes of dark romantic horror.

By the 2000s, we get a proper grab-bag of werewolf options. There is of course the Underworld series, with its overwrought "vampires vs lycans" world-building. There's also Skin Walkers, which tries very hard to be Underworld (and fails miserably at even that low bar). But there's also Dog Soldiers and Ginger Snaps, arguably two of the finest werewolf movies of all time -- albeit in extremely different ways and for very different reasons.

Dog Soldiers is a straightforward monster movie pitting soldiers against ravenous werewolves. The wolves could just as easily have been subbed out with vampires or zombies -- there is nothing uniquely wolfish about them on a thematic level -- but the creature design is unique and the film itself is mastefully made and entertaining.

Ginger Snaps is the first werewolf movie I can think of that tackles lycanthropy from a female point of view. Although The Company of Wolves has a strong feminist angle, it is still very much a film about male sexuality and aggression. Ginger Snaps, on the other hand, likens werewolfism to female puberty -- a comparison that frankly makes a lot of sense.

The Werewolf as Sex Object

There are quite literally thousands of werewolf romance novels on the market, with more coming in each day. But the origins of this trend are a bit fuzzier to make out (no pun intended).

Everyone can mostly agree that Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire was the turning-point for sympathetic vampires -- and paranormal romance as a whole. But where do werewolves enter the mix? Possibly with Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter books, which feature the titular character in a relationship with a werewolf (and some vampires, and were-leopards, and...many other things). With the first book released in 1993, the Anita Blake series seems to pre-date similar books in its ilk.

Blood and Chocolate (1997) by Annette Curtis Klause delivers a YA-focused version of the classic “I’m a werewolf in high school crushing on a mortal boy”; that same year, Buffy the Vampire Slayer hit the small screen, and although the primary focus was vampires, there is a main werewolf character (and romancing him around the challenges of his wolfishness is a big plot point for the characters involved). And Buffy, of course, paved the way for Twilight in 2005. From there, werewolves were poised to become a staple of the ever-more-popular urban fantasy/paranormal romance genre.

“Sexy werewolf” as a trope may have its roots in other traditions like the beastly bridegroom (eg, Beauty and the Beast) and the demon lover (eg, Labyrinth), which we can talk about another time. But there’s one other ingredient in this recipe that needs to be discussed. And, oh yes, we’re going there.

youtube

Alpha/Beta/Omegaverse

By now you might be familiar with the concept of the Omegaverse thanks to the illuminating Lindsay Ellis video on the topic (and the current ongoing lawsuit). If not, well, just watch the video. It’ll be easier than trying to explain it all. (Warning for NSFW topics).

But the tl;dr is that A/B/O or Omegaverse is a genre of (generally erotic) romance utilizing the classical understanding of wolf pack hierarchy. Never mind that science has long since disproven the stratification of authority in wolf packs; the popular conscious is still intrigued by the concept of a society where some people are powerful alphas and some people are timid omegas and that’s just The Way Things Are.

What’s interesting about the Omegaverse in regards to werewolf fiction is that, as near as I’ve been able to discover, it’s actually a case of convergent evolution. A/B/O as a genre seems to trace its roots to Star Trek fanfiction in the 1960s, where Kirk/Spock couplings popularized ideas like heat cycles. From there, the trope seems to weave its way through various fandoms, exploding in popularity in the Supernatural fandom.

What seems to have happened is that the confluence of A/B/O kink dynamics merging with urban fantasy werewolf social structure set off a popular niche for werewolf romance to truly thrive.

It’s important to remember that, throughout folklore, werewolves were not viewed as being part of werewolf societies. Werewolves were humans who achieved wolf form through a curse or witchcraft, causing them to transform into murderous monsters -- but there was no “werewolf pack,” and certainly no social hierarchy involving werewolf alphas exerting their dominance over weaker pack members. That element is a purely modern one rooted as much in our misunderstanding of wolf pack dynamics as in our very human desire for power hierarchies.

So Where Do We Go From Here?

I don’t think sexy werewolf stories are going anywhere anytime soon. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no room left in horror for werewolves to resume their monstrous roots.

Thematically, werewolves have done a lot of heavy lifting over the centuries. They hold up a mirror to humanity to represent our own animal nature. They embody themes of toxic masculinity, aggression, primal sexuality, and the struggle of the id and ego. Werewolf attack as sexual violence is an obvious but powerful metaphor for trauma, leaving the victim transformed. Werewolves as predators hiding in plain sight among civilization have never been more relevant than in our #MeToo moment of history.

Can werewolves still be frightening? Absolutely.

As long as human nature remains conflicted, there will always be room at the table for man-beasts and horrifying transfigurations.

This blog topic was chosen by my Patreon supporters, who got to see it one week before it went live. If you too would enjoy early access to my blog posts, want to vote for next month’s topic, or just want to support the work I do, come be a patron at https://www.patreon.com/tlbodine

#horror history #werewolves #horror #werewolf #long post

51 notes · View notes

karlacri · 3 years

Note

27. favourite national celebrity? 16. which stereotype about your country you hate the most and which one you somewhat agree with?

oh, I didn't think they would ask me something so fast 😅 xDDD I don't know if this counts, but I think it's important to mention that although I live in Chile my parents are Peruvian, so the answers are probably mixed between the two countries xD

27) Favorite national celebrity: As I am not very aware of the entertainment world, I think that here the groups or people of whom I know 2-3 songs or something like that could enter 😅 and those would be:

*From Chile: The folkloric, Andean and Latin American rhythms groups

Los Jaivas, canción Mira Niñita song Look little girl sub english Todos Juntos song All together sub english Todos juntos full hd xd Sube a nacer conmigo hermano sub english

Inti Illimani, Samba Landó I did not find a video with the lyrics, but I did find a web page that translated it (I hope it is ok) Sirviñaco I did not find the lyrics in English, but in the comments it is in Spanish and it is about a young man proposing to a young woman that they marry Carnavalito de la Quebrada de Humahuaca (popular Argentine)

Illapu Paloma Ausente the lyrics are by Violeta Parra, but Illapu sings it xd Lejos del Amor Far away from love Surviving /Sobreviviendo lyrics in english "Vuelvo para vivir" (I'm coming back to stay) (I feel that this song needs context xd from 1973-1990 in Chile there was a dictatorship where these groups were exiled due to political differences and when the dictatorship ended and they were able to return, Illapu wrote this song. The song Sobreviviendo I think was not written by someone from the group, but it was written during the dictatorship)

and Violeta Parra (who is famous for collecting and disseminating Chilean folk music and representing things like that in hers songs) Run Run se fue pal norte lyrics in english La jardinera/ The gardener lyrics english Volver a los 17 Returning to seventeen sub english in youtube Rin del angelito/ Rin of the little angel (rin is a musical genre from an island in southern Chile. In the song Angelito is a child who has died very young, Violeta wrote the song when her baby died and in this video there are scenes from that moment in a movie about her life. I say it in case someone is affected )

Thanks to life Gracias a la Vida (is her most famous song and one of the last he wrote before her death)

As a curious fact, I can say that all of them were more or less contemporary during the time called New Chilean Song in the 60-70s that sought to recover folk music and was also combined with rhythms and instruments from other countries on the continent.

*From Peru: Group 5 which is a cumbia group, and I just discovered that it is practically the same age as my dad xd Motor y motivo/ my life’s mission song Que levante la mano

Yma Sumac who was a well-known soprano and has a star on the walk of fame. She was famous for her very high voice, she said that she had learned to sing like this by imitating birds singing as a child her duet with flute Interview

Gastón Acurio who is a chef and promoter of Peruvian gastronomy, as far as I know he is one of the greatest ambassadors of Peruvian gastronomy (I don't always pay attention to everything his recipes say, but I do take some advice xD)

Juan Diego Flores: He is a light tenor that according to the internet is one of the best tenors on the current scene Ojos Azules / Valicha

he singing the National Anthem

Juan Diego Flórez: What happens when an opera star goes onstage?

Apart from them, I need to make an honorable mention to Los Kjarkas (Saya San Andrés my favourite song xd saya is a bolivian dance), one of the most important groups in Andean music. The group is Bolivian, so technically I shouldn't mention them, but for me they are celebrities and they are the only group that I follow on facebook and of whom I have wanted to go to a concert xd

16) Stereotypes: I haven't seen this on my internet for so long that I probably mention outdated things, sorry From Chile: I remember there was a moment on Facebook where a couple of memes came out about how in Chile people were retarded and ate dogs. I do not know how widespread it was, I did not see much of it, but more than annoying me, it puzzled me because I did not know where that could have come from although a while ago I had a hypothesis about the matter of dogs. 🤔

meme on the matter and incidentally shows the myth that Peru eats pigeons

The best known among South Americans of all is that the accent and the way of speaking of Chileans is unintelligible to other Spanish speakers and that in Chile Spanish is spoken very badly xD Looking around, I saw that apparently so much is the case that in 2015 a Chilean linguist wrote a book about how Spanish was not badly spoken in Chile, it was only spoken differently xd According to me, the origin of this is that in Chile people tend to speak faster than everyone else, combined with the jargons that seem to be very different from those in other countries. I think I agree with this moderately, because there are people who speak quite fast, interrelated and / or it is difficult to understand the expressions they use, but it is not unintelligible as the meme says (in fact, I have a friend who speaks slowly, and even the Chileans themselves drew attention xd) and I can understand my teachers and classmates most of the time

meme about Spain laughing at France because most of their former territories don't speak their language, while the former territories of Spain learned their language ... or almost all of them xd And something I forgot to say, apparently it is quite distinctive that in Chile "asjkssjaskka" laughs while others laugh "jajaja" apparently xD

From Peru: I think the best known is still the one that Peruvians eat pigeons. As I read once years ago on Facebook (high scientific rigor xd 😅) the myth arose in Chile when in a certain place in the capital where many Peruvians came to live, the pigeons that had always been there began to disappear. From what I remember, sometimes the meme is shown as if the pigeon were the flag dish of Peru and that you cannot live without it, but it is a lie xd I know it is eaten, my mother at least ate pigeon with noodles and she told me that were raised to eat (and in fact he told me that it was possible that there really were people who had hunted in the plaza at some time 😅), and I also saw Gastón Acurio prepare pigeon ocopa (ocopa is like a cream and is eaten with rice, potato and lettuce). However, the case of Gastón Acurio was that he was preparing forgotten recipes from a 1950 cookbook, so I highly doubt that many people prepare it and it is definitely not very representative (there are much more widespread and famous dishes). About the noodles, it may be prepared, but it is much more common to see the chicken noodle. Anyway, it does not seem very serious considering that there are other places where you eat or ate pigeon cake xd

It is also that Peru claims everything as its own, but it is more because of a fight it has with Chile over whether the pisco sour (a drink with lemon) is Peruvian or Chilean and something similar happens with ceviche. Anyway it is exaggerated and I think that most people on both sides do not really care about the matter xD

Peru meme claiming things like yours

Chile and Peru fight for pisco sour. "wn" can mean from friend to idiot depending on the context and is one the best know chilean slang xd

Anyway, it is a meme that is almost always taken with humor (or at least I do) xd 😅

I guess that's it, I'm sorry I literally answered you almost a month later and I'm also very sorry for how long the answer is, at first it was hard for me to write something and suddenly I ended up with this xd 😅

#This question literally came a day after I published the ask set #on April 19 #I am very sorry for the delay #I'm not from the US #sorry it's too long I went from 0 to 100 xd #take care a lot xd

2 notes · View notes

dweemeister · 4 years

Photo

Tokyo Olympiad (1965, Japan)

Fifty-six years ago, the Olympic Games came to Asia for the first time.

For over two hundred years, the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan established a policy of strict isolationism. The policy, to overly simplify things, barred almost all foreigners from staying in Japan and Japanese people from traveling abroad. Japan’s isolationism ended in 1853 via the oxymoronic “gunboat diplomacy” of American Commodore Matthew C. Perry. Soon, the Meiji Restoration (1868-1912) sees Japan industrialize rapidly, adopt Western civics, and become the hegemon of the Asia-Pacific region. Acknowledgement for this progress led the European-heavy International Olympic Committee (IOC) to award the 1940 Summer Olympics to Tokyo. But due to the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 (which some consider the true beginning of World War II), Tokyo forfeited the Games to Helsinki, which also forfeited the Games due to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Finland. The Second World War was soon to engulf the world, a global trauma for combatants and bystanders alike.

The Olympics resumed in 1948, but Germany and Japan – both under Allied occupation – were banned from competition, still considered international pariahs. Japan’s post-War admission to the world stage in cultural, political, and sporting arenas would have to wait. Its cultural reintroduction came first. Japanese cinema in the 1950s flourished, with figures like Akira Kurosawa (1954′s Seven Samurai, 1958′s The Hidden Fortress); Kon Ichikawa (1956′s The Burmese Harp, 1959′s Fires on the Plain); and Ishirô Honda (the Godzilla series) garnering critical and popular acclaim worldwide. A pacified and economically booming Japan had a new Constitution declaring that, “the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right.” Japan was warmly admitted to the United Nations in 1956. The IOC awarded Tokyo the 1964 Summer Olympics, a spectacle awaited by Japanese for twenty-four years, seen by many as the completion of Japan’s reentry to the international order.

The Games of the XVIII Olympiad were the first held outside the West and, like their predecessors, were documented cinematically (the IOC considered this a priority since at least 1912, for posterity’s access). This Olympic film would be commissioned jointly by the IOC and the Japanese Olympic Committee (JOC). After Akira Kurosawa was released from the project due to his demands to control every aspect of production (including the Opening Ceremony), the task felt to Kon Ichikawa to direct Tokyo Olympiad.

Upon its release, Tokyo Olympiad resembled no other sports documentary of its type, let alone any previous entry in the select subgenre of Olympic documentaries. Though influenced heavily by Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia (1938; which covers the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin) in how the Olympic disciplines are shot, Tokyo Olympiad strays from its predecessors due to its tone. Riefenstahl concentrated on human bodies and sporting triumph, and Olympia’s influence has infused all successive sports films – sports filmmakers in the 1960s and today probably do not consciously recognize that influence – with echoes of her use of Nazi iconography.

For all the plaudits awarded the medalists, most Olympians never come close to the podium. Unlike Olympia, Ichikawa’s Tokyo Olympiad acknowledges that reality, as well as the physical pain that these athletes undergo to prepare and participate in the Olympics. The celebrations and medal ceremonies are as ubiquitous in this film as the agonized grimaces and the performances of also-rans – stories fancied nor celebrated by anyone other than the athletes themselves. Like the Summer Olympics films before it, Tokyo Olympiad spends lengthy stretches of its time in athletics (track and field)*. Following the Opening Ceremony, Ichikawa begins with the men’s 100-meter dash, the race to crown the fastest man in the world. As the athletes prepare themselves before the sound of the gun, Ichikawa leans on the film’s narration:

Nervousness is betrayed by the sad expressions on the face of athletes on the starting line. One wonders if the spectators can see these expressions. The time leading up to an event feels terribly long. Only the nailing of stakes can be heard.

Through a selective sound mix drowning out the crowd noise (this decision also has practical purposes, as Ichikawa and his crew could not anticipate the loud noise made by high-speed cameras), we hear only the public address announcer going over the names of the finalists and the runners hammering their starting blocks in place. The restricted audio concocts an intensely personal atmosphere for much of the film. The camera lingers over the deeply focused, but visibly nervous dispositions of the runners. When adrenaline is mentioned in a film review, it usually refers to action and thriller films in their most exciting sequences. Here, the adrenaline is equally depicted for scenes of action and stillness. Like Riefenstahl’s Olympia, the liberal use of slow-motion allows the audience to notice the miniscule muscular movements that one might not see in full flow on a live broadcast. It also serves to emphasize the diversity of body shapes that compete across different sports across the Games.

The film employed somewhere between 68 to 164 camera operators – the exact number is heavily disputed, but even if the lower estimate is true, this would imply hundreds of technicians worked on this film during and after the Olympics. Where Ichikawa and principal cinematographers Shigeo Hayashida and Kazuo Miyagawa (1950’s Rashômon, 1959’s Floating Weeds) see fit, they will have the film concentrate on a part of the human body rather than the entire figure. During footage of the men’s shot put, one of the featured shot putters is Nikolay Karasyov of the Soviet Union. Karasyov has a peculiar routine as he steps into the shot put circle. He plays with the shot between his two hands, adjusts his bib, and puts right hand to mouth in a lengthy, elaborate ritual before he even attempts the toss. The audio here – once again omitting the crowd noise – allows the audience to hear things that perhaps only Karasyov himself can here while preparing his toss. These moments of individual preparation may be mundane to some, but they are just as much a part of an Olympian’s performance as anything else.

After athletics has run its course in the film’s opening hour, editor Yoshio Ebara pushes through various other sports – each one presented differently than the other. Gymnastics, accompanied by composer Toshiro Mayuzumi’s score (1956’s Street of Shame, 1960’s The Warped Ones) rather than the musical selections chosen by the athletes, seems to exist in a world of its own, as if the gymnasts are performing in a formless void with just enough lighting to witness their gravity-defying skills. Weightlifting, in which a very specific technique must be performed to execute a lift correctly, is almost entirely shot from the same low angle – capturing the heaving chests of the athletes, in success and failure. Wrestling, where so much of its action occurs at floor level, sees the camera placed at mat level with nary any cuts. The desperation etched on the faces of the losing wrestler attempting to wriggle themselves out of a pin is as visceral as the triumphant expression of the one controlling the match. In an era before widespread use of helmets, the men’s individual road race in cycling is accompanied by a jazz ensemble piece by Mayuzumi, as if reflecting the free-flowing, seemingly anarchic (and potentially dangerous) nature of road cycling.

Every Olympic sport that comprised the 1964 Summer Olympics is featured, typically accompanied by musical cues from Mayuzumi’s diverse score that reflect certain aspects of the sport. But most of these sports only have brief cameos in respect to what Japanese and international audiences would most be interested in. For example, soccer and basketball only appear for about a minute each. Due to conflicts with FIFA and soccer’s regional governing bodies, Olympic men’s soccer has never been the focus of much attention. Basketball, though making its sixth appearance at an Olympics, did not enjoy the international popularity and recognition outside of the United States and Canada as it does today. Yet, one need not know the details about equestrian or judo to enjoy the athleticism and skill on display.

Midway through Tokyo Olympiad, there is a vignette on Chadian runner Ahmed Issa. These scenes capture his Olympic experience from the moment he arrives in Tokyo to practice to his semifinal appearance in the 800 meters (Issa has no time and perhaps little money for sightseeing). Chad declared independence in 1960, making the Tokyo Games – to which it sent a two-athlete delegation and named Issa its Opening Ceremony flagbearer – its first Olympics. Issa is bewildered by the asphyxiating press coverage, Japan’s modernity, and the scope of the Games. He is often framed as a lonely figure, speaking to and eating with no one (the Olympic Village’s cafeteria bustles with activity, and no one seems to pay any attention to him eating what must be cuisine he has never seen). Nevertheless, Issa is in Tokyo for a single purpose. Ichikawa tailors this story to have the viewer, no matter our nation’s Olympic history or our emotional connection to the idea of the Olympics, feel Issa’s isolation from his fellow athletes. His presence at the Olympics will not be given much thought, other than to himself, his loved ones, and Chadians. But Issa, the narrator assures the audience, does not mind – his goal to represent himself and his nation at the Olympics is the fulfillment of his dream. It is a pedestrian Olympic story, inelegantly placed into Tokyo Olympiad’s structure, but it is a tale far more common than those of world record breakers and gold medalists.

By tradition, the marathon is one of the final events of the Summer Olympics. Ichikawa dedicates almost a half-hour to the event – featuring Ethiopian marathoner Abebe Bikala’s world record finish, a surprise in Kôkichi Tsuburaya’s bronze medal effort, the numerous marathoners that could not finish, and Chanom Sirirangsri of Thailand as the final person to cross the finish line. The marathon is the culmination of Ichikawa’s approach to Tokyo Olympiad: balancing the thrill of victory with the agony of defeat. Shot using a 16:9 screen aspect ratio (as opposed to the 4:3 ratio that Ichikawa was accustomed to), the marathon scenes capture the throngs of spectators lining Tokyo’s streets for the free spectacle unfolding before their eyes. In a film curiously silent about the modernization of Tokyo itself, Ichikawa finally allows some semblance of the city’s identity to appear in the film. The crowd, no longer muted by the sound mixing, urges the runners forward regardless of nationality and placement. Tokyo Olympiad’s subjective and omnipresent narrator remarks on the narratively and visually epic struggle of the runners, the pain that must be coursing through each marathoner’s body. The men’s marathon is undoubtedly the film’s dramatic highlight, with Ichikawa’s humanistic approach present in compelling fashion.

Ichikawa and editor Ebara whittled over seventy hours of footage down to 169 minutes including an intermission. The enormous final print came under fire from the IOC and JOC. The IOC expressed frustration at what they perceived to be a cynical film that did not focus on the winners; the JOC decried Ichikawa’s artistic (and occasionally abstract) depiction the Tokyo Olympics. The Japanese far-right denounced Tokyo Olympiad as not patriotic enough; the far-left assailed Ichikawa for the film’s jingoism (rising sun imagery is used for dramatic effect, signifying the elevation of post-Imperial Japan). After the JOC demanded that Ichikawa reconfigure Tokyo Olympiad, the director quipped that almost all the cast had already left Japan. Bickering aside, Tokyo Olympiad – if using the metric of box office admissions – became the highest-grossing film in Japanese history, a distinction it shares with only Spirited Away (2001).

This review is based on the original Japanese theatrical print that I was able to access via the Olympic Channel’s website for free. That print does not include the intermission and may be region-locked elsewhere. For those wanting to experience Tokyo Olympiad in its entirety, I do not recommend viewing the 125-minute cut currently on the Olympics’ official YouTube page and beware the 93-minute cut released by American International Pictures for the original U.S. theatrical release.

There are no commentaries of historical imprint or Olympic legacy in Tokyo Olympiad. This certainly angered the IOC and JOC – both of whom requested, for their own agendas, that Ichikawa make grand statements about how Japan had rejoined the world with the 1964 Summer Olympics. Ichikawa, whose greatest films are suffused in empathy, could not be any less suitable for such objectives. Tokyo Olympiad provides Ichikawa the most sprawling canvas and cast of characters he ever had. In the hands of Ichikawa and his crew, narration is unnecessary to understand that any Olympic Games reflects a host city and nation at a given time. Tokyo Olympiad shows a nation where the West’s recent influence exists – in conflict and in tandem – with centuries-old traditions. The film, like these 1964 Games, portrays a city ready to welcome the world in ways unimaginable a few decades, let alone a century, prior. Tokyo Olympiad triumphs as a document of humanity, as well as contributing to the mythology of the modern Olympics.

As this review is being written, the global COVID-19 pandemic has postponed the Games of the XXXII Olympiad and the XVI Paralympic Games. The 2020 Summer Olympics, to be held in Tokyo, is scheduled to begin July 23, 2021 – if the Games cannot commence at this date, Tokyo will forfeit the Summer Olympics for the second time as well as the Paralympics. If the world’s athletes can assemble in Tokyo less than a year from now, they – and whoever is chosen to document the Games – will find a city and a nation just as uncertain of their place in the world as they were in 1964. The city and nation of Tokyo Olympiad were strangers in need of introduction. Today, no such formalities are required.

My rating: 9.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

* Though the Summer Olympics present each sport as one among many, athletics was long considered the only showpiece sport. Since 1964, it has since been joined by gymnastics and, at the turn of the millennium, swimming.

#Tokyo Olympiad #Kon Ichikawa #Olympics #1964 Summer Olympics #Tokyo #Japan #Ichiro Mikuni #Shigeo Hayashida #Kazuo Miyagawa #Yoshio Ebara #My Movie Odyssey

3 notes · View notes

whocalledhimannux · 4 years

Text

TBATD Chapter 10 note

Most of the differences between the mythology in this chapter and the mythology in canon are deliberate. As a general note, I think the show, for the most part, tried to avoid portraying “religion” in favor of a milder, more secular philosophy, with the Spirit World being seen more as nature/magic than something sacred. Which is, yknow, not surprising for a Nickelodeon show. But I did want to take a bit of a closer look at religion in this fic, which is one reason why the idea of dragons and blackfish (and wolves and badger moles and air bison, for that matter) as sacred is more prominent in my writing than in canon.

Also, it seems as though the true origins of bending in the series are not actually that widespread. Not only does Roku have no idea that the koi in the spirit oasis are Tui and La, but he directs Aang to the oldest spirit he can think of rather than one connected to the Water Tribe, which suggests to me that knowledge of Tui and La has likewise been erased from their cultural memory. The Fire Nation strayed a lot from the original Sun Warrior culture. Knowledge of the lionturtles and energybending was lost.

So while the viewers know a lot about the origins of FN and WT culture (and about bending/the Avatar in general--although I haven’t seen LoK, so I personally don’t know as much about that), there’s a vacuum for the ordinary people, and it’s only natural for the vacuum to be filled with things that are not quite... well, right, for lack of a better term.

Side note: I think my feelings on this are influenced by my own Jewish background: Judaism distinguishes between halacha (law, which is mandated by the Torah and the Talmud) and minhag (custom, which develops out of other practices). There is a tremendous respect for minhag, to the point where sometimes a minhag becomes so respect that it has the force of halacha even if there is no “real” biblical basis for it. For example, wearing a kippah or a yarmulke was once minhag, but is now considered almost a universal rule for Jewish men. So that’s why I’m hesitant distinguishing between “real” and “fake”--I think cultural practices developed by people over time are just as true, in a way, as things handed directly to them by a higher power. So... the spirit stuff we get in canon is halacha, but in-universe for my fic, much of what plays out in this story is minhag that is just as important.

Anyway. I think this Fire Nation myth is pretty compliant with what comes out in canon, with one exception: the “Sunset Cliffs” in the current capital city are seen as the location of the first fire, rather than the Sun Warrior ruins. Zuko straight-up had no idea that the first fire was still burning, and the current Fire Nation doesn’t seem to see itself as direct descendants of the Sun Warriors--Zuko talks about them with some distance, their ruins aren’t a common pilgrimage spot or anything, and they’re said to have “died out” rather than just being subsumed into Fire Nation history, so I see this as being an old, old shift in the legend. If the Sun Warrior culture has been “gone” for a thousand years, it makes perfect sense for the legend to just naturally drift from their home to the current cultural center.

The dragon antagonism, on the other hand, I see as being relatively recent--added by Sozin as a way to justify the hunting of dragons. I mean damn, the dragons gave the Fire Nation their fire and show up a LOT as a cultural motif, so imo it would take some pretty strong propaganda to overcome that. The “prove you’re a strong firebender by fighting a dragon” argument is the secular propaganda, and the “btw dragons have always been pretty dangerous so we don’t owe them gratitude” is the religious propaganda.

As for the Southern Water Tribe, I really think they’re just begging for a better spiritual tradition. I can accept that the North would make the oasis their spiritual center and be content with that, because they can actually feel the peaceful aura or whatever, but I don’t think the SWT, on the other end of the world, would be emotionally sustained by “there’s this one place that’s really holy, but we can’t explain why, there are no stories about it, there are no rituals for you to participate in, and that’s literally all you get.” It’s just way too abstract.

And yes, I recognize the irony of saying this as a Jew, but diaspora Judaism was/is HEAVILY ritual-based for a reason. Plus, historically it was very common for Jews with strong attachments to their diasporic homeland to bestow with spiritual significance by calling it a “New Promised Land” or the “Garden of Eden,” which both reaffirmed the religious importance of the Land of Israel and allowed them to find holiness in whatever land they happened to be living. So the myth that Katara tells does something similar--it starts at the spirit oasis, acknowledges its significance, provides a strong basis for the link between the two Water Tribes, and then gives the South its own culture, equally as important.

Related: I think it’s a little odd to have the moon as the only “teacher” of waterbending, when the other sources are all animals that actually bend and the moon just kind of hangs out there? Learning to push the tides, sure, fine. But it also seems like the South uses animal motifs more than the North--Sokka’s war paint, the wolf helmets, Bato’s ceremonial headdress. Those things don’t show up in the North, so again, I think it’s fitting to have the North be more content with their abstract, place-based religion and the South turn more towards the natural world and storytelling. As I mentioned in an earlier chapter, I was inspired by a different fic for the choice of orcas as waterbending teachers/sacred animals, but their distinctive coloring was also a big reason I settled on them. I sort of imagine that, in an earlier time when the identity of the koi fish was known, some waterbenders looked at some orcas and thought “clearly these giant fish are the messengers/students/what-have-you of our two patron spirits.”

So those are my thoughts on Avatar/The Blackfish and the Dragon mythology. And for the record, all of the parallels to Judaism were 100% subconscious, and I didn’t notice them/mean to talk about them until I was writing this note and couldn’t find an easier way to explain what I meant. This post isn’t meant to be some kind of proselytizing/my beliefs are better than anyone else’s deal, and the actual content of the myths is inspired more by a variety of Indigenous American and Polynesian origin stories that I read for research... just filtered through a Jewish lens cuz that’s how my brain works.

Oof, this is a long note. If you made it to the end, you have my warmest thanks.

#tbatd

30 notes · View notes

doctormike · 4 years

Text

Thoughts on the Reopening of Schools

Hello, friends and families…! In this blog post I will NOT tell you if it is OK for your child to return to school for remote, in-person, or hybrid learning. Any article that gives you specific advice about this may be well intentioned, but will rarely apply to your individual situation, and will be based on information that is going to be out of date by the time you read it.

I AM, however, going to review some important points to keep in mind when you juggle the pros and cons of any individual decision that you make for your family, and I think that will be helpful. Just like deciding about surgery, it will ALWAYS come down to weighing the risks and benefits of any given path. When I’m helping parents decide about an operation, I often hear “we just want what’s best for our child”. But it’s very rare that a situation is clear enough so that there is only one reasonable choice. The decision almost always comes down to balancing personal risk tolerance and a wide range of intangibles. That’s why it’s not usually my job to tell my families WHAT to do, but to help them understand the tradeoffs so that they can make those decisions themselves. With that said, here are some things to keep in mind when you are making a decision about school in the era of COVID-19. 1) I probably don’t have to tell you this, but any official recommendation, government regulation or organizational decision about school reopening is NOT only considering the medical aspects of the situation. Economic, political, parenting, regional and developmental concerns are always going to be a big part of what you are told, and that’s reasonable. From a purely medical point of view, the “safest” thing to do would for everyone to stay in full lockdown until a vaccine arrives, but virtually no one is seriously recommending that. So don’t discount those factors, but be aware of their impact and relative importance. 2) Most people making these decisions are working in good faith, and trying to get the best possible outcome. It’s easy to vilify school administrators and other parents by assuming the worst underlying motives. But the majority of people who actually have the responsibility of making community decisions are trying to strike the right balance. Give them the benefit of the doubt, hear them out and consider the tradeoffs that they are dealing with before forming your own opinions. Be open to new strategies to minimize school risks. For example, one such idea is pooled saliva testing which is to be used by the SUNY system. This is much cheaper and less invasive than traditional testing methods, and it will allow schools to rapidly shut down new outbreaks before they spread widely in the community.

3) There are a large number of controls - administrative, infrastructure / engineering, epidemiological and personal - that can be incorporated into an in-person reopening plan. It’s beyond the scope of this email to discuss them all, but here is a good summary. Not every school needs to adopt every possible control, but this should give you an idea about the kind of things that you might be asked to consider. Try to understand the goals that are reasonable for your child's particular situation, taking into account the time, place and current community infection rates. Keep this passage in mind:

“Given the uncertainty, reliance on an effective vaccine to solve the return-to-school problem is unrealistic, and other strategies that may at first glance seem too difficult or too expensive must be developed and implemented. If the position adopted by society is: ‘not until it is completely safe,’ then we have to recognize that the kindergarteners who left their elementary schools in March of 2020 may never see the inside of those buildings again. This is not feasible. Thus, we really need to shift the conversation from ‘perfectly safe’ and ‘only if there is vaccine’ to ‘how can we do this as safely as possible?’ and ‘what resources do we need in order to achieve this common goal?’“

4) The people who know more about COVID-19 than anyone else in the world never heard of it 8 months ago. This is a new virus, and we are learning about it daily. Beware of anyone who is absolutely certain, who doesn’t qualify their advice with words like “as best as we know right now”, or who makes definitive statements about the long term effects of infection. Watch out for people trying to score cheap political points by comparing someone’s prior and current statements, and claiming “hypocrisy” or “flip-flopping”. For something new like this, it is always important to follow current developments and continually refine policy and practices. Don’t be like the guy that Stephen Colbert was describing when he said: "He believes the same thing Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happened on Tuesday.” 5) Having accurate, current data about the number of local infections is CRUCIAL in running any sort of school plan, and that has to be monitored regularly. Plans for in-person education can change overnight - you can see that with the early opening and reclosing of several college campuses. As schools open, we are getting new data about the rate of infection in children, which must be watched closely as this process continues. Some recent information suggests that infection rates are actually rising faster in children than in adults. However, this data set covers all patients under ager 18. There is other evidence that toddlers have exceptionally low infection rates, despite being - as this article describes them - "mask licking germ bombs". 6) The American Academy of Pediatrics has a document outlining its recommendation for school reopening. In general, they recognize that there are serious downsides to remote learning including the challenges of effective teaching, the loss of the social aspects of school, and the inherent inequality of online classes, especially for underserved communities. So if in-person education can be done safely, that's better for kids. But they also stress the point that there is no one single answer for all times and places. Increasing evidence that children can be asymptomatic for weeks and spread the virus has to be incorporated into any school plan. While the AAP’s initial recommendations strongly advocated for in-person classes, these recommendations have been revised as it has become clear that more study is needed. This passage is from these guidelines:

“To be able to open schools safely, it is vitally important that communities take all necessary measures to limit the spread of the SARS-CoV-2. School policies must be flexible and nimble in responding to new information, and administrators must be willing to refine approaches when specific policies are not working…the AAP strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school. Unfortunately, in many parts of the United States, there is currently uncontrolled spread of SARS-CoV-2. Although the AAP strongly advocates for in-person learning for the coming school year, the current widespread circulation of the virus will not permit in-person learning to be safely accomplished in many jurisdictions.”

7) As parents, we are used to meticulously planning our children's lives far into the future. COVID-19 has shown us again and again that this is not always possible. Of course, we still need to anticipate challenges and make decisions, but we need to be much more comfortable with contingencies and accept the fact that things can change rapidly due to forces beyond our control. As the old joke goes: "How do you make God laugh? Tell him your plans." 8) The mitigation practices that have helped us get the virus under control in New York City over the past few months are vital, and need to be continued, especially as schools reopen and socialization outside of school increases. Masks work. Hand hygiene works. Social distancing works. Our overall rate of positive test results has recently stayed around or below 1%. Unfortunately, there is no book that will tell you exactly what to do in every situation - we all use judgement in deciding what to do when. Masks work, but most people don't wear them inside with their immediate family members who are taking precautions when away from home, or when eating at an outdoor restaurant with adequate separation from other tables. On the other hand, for example, we might wear them when outside with a more distant family member who has been traveling from areas with a higher infection rate. Even if your family remains vigilant, if your child spends a significant amount of time indoors and/or without masks with someone from another family who isn’t so careful, you can reverse all of those hard won gains. Ideally, your child's social life will be built around families that share your concerns and attitudes, so that you can safely maintain the socialization that is so vital for healthy cognitive and emotional development. As infection rates have fallen, so has our attention to detail. The virus isn’t gone, and the cold weather will probably make transmission more likely. Stay strong, watch the numbers, listen with an open mind, and take care of each other. And as always, I’m happy to chat or email with any of you about your individual concerns. Best, Mike Rothschild

1 note · View note

giffordubaldo · 4 years

Text

STUDENT ACTIVITY SHEET NO. 5

(Group Task)

Subject: Media and Information Literacy

Topic: The Evolution of Traditional to New Media

Group #: Group 4

Date Given: 08/24/2020

Due Date: 08/25/2020

Learning Competencies:

1. Editorialize the roles and functions of media in democratic society

Group Members:

Walter M. Ortega Jr.

Karen Kizha Dayaganon

Gifford Jhon B. Ubaldo

Rey U. Epan Jr.

Jeff Darrell Cranzo

Instructions:

1. Sketch a political cartoon that depicts how the Philippine media performs its roles and functions in the Philippines.

2. Compose an editorial based on the editorial cartoon. (See mechanics below )

3. Post your political cartoon and editorial on your e-portfolio (Tumblr account).

Mechanics:

1. The blog must consist of 2 paragraphs.

2. Each paragraph must have 150 words.

3. Follow standard format: Font Style/Size- Arial Narrow 12

Activity 1: Political Cartooning

“Media and Government: A Love-Hate Relationship”

Answer: The Media, and the government. These are the two most powerful institutions in the world. The media and the government has the power to manipulate people and to change how people think on certain topics going around our world today. Both of these institutions are made for us, of the people. Without media, we wouldn’t be able to be notified or alerted about what’s happening today in our world, and without our government, who would be there to discipline us and lead us to the right path? At some points, the media and the government tends to conflict each other. People are saying that some news that are reported are biased, yet the government is saying that it’s not. Some journalists oppose what the government is saying. Because of this the government releases statements that will then oppose the media.

As a result, the people are manipulated. Many netizens post their own statements and opinions on what is happening around them. Because of these people become divided. They have the power to change people’s perspectives. But despite that, let us never forget without media, there would be no transparency in the government. The media serves as our guide and our watchdogs to notify us whatever’s happening now in our world. Even if they conflict at times, without them, life would become harder for us. The government can’t single-handedly lead the people to the right path, for they need a helping hand, and that helping hand is the media.

Instructions:

1. Provide the most logical explanation to each question.

Activity 2: Critical Thinking Questions

1. Differentiate the salient similarities and differences of traditional media and the new media. Cite sources of where your answers are based.

Answer: Traditional media allows businesses to target a broad target audience through billboards, print advertising, television commercials, and more. In comparison, new media allows companies to target a narrow target audience through social media, paid online ads, and search results. Price-wise, traditional media tends to cost more than new media due to its broad targeting and advertising channels. Traditional media includes mostly non-digital advertising and marketing methods.

Traditional media is:

Television advertisements

Radio advertising

Print advertising

Direct mail advertisements

Billboards and off-site signs

Cold calling

Door-to-door sales

Banner ads

Companies have used these methods for many years to reach consumers and motivate them to make purchases. Up until very recently, these marketing and advertising styles were very effective, and helped businesses just like yours make a profit. However, as the needs and expectations of consumers evolve, marketing has no choice but to evolve as well. This is what has led to the rise of new media and digital marketing methods and the decrease in popularity of some traditional methods you know well. It’s also led to the debate between traditional vs. digital media.

Many of these methods have been around for several years, but have only gained prominence recently. Best practices for these methods are currently dependent on their sources, as opposed to depending on the attitudes of consumers. But over time, we may see another shift as consumer feelings change toward these methods. Your business relies on a variety of marketing and advertising methods to reach potential customers and leads. Over time, the marketing methods you use have likely evolved, changed, or even been retired and replaced with new ones. In comparison, new media allows companies to target a narrow target audience through social media, paid online ads, and search results. Price-wise, traditional media tends to cost more than new media due to its broad targeting and advertising channels. Sam Selders discusses the advantages and disadvantages of new media and traditional media. Traditional media includes mostly non-digital advertising and marketing methods. However, as the needs and expectations of consumers evolve, marketing has no choice but to evolve as well.

2. Describe the way media has evolved. Do you think the changes brought by time on these concepts have helped humanity in the access of information? Cite studies that would support your claim.

Answer: Effective communication and teamwork is essential for the delivery of high quality, safe patient care. Communication failures are an extremely common cause of inadvertent patient harm. The complexity of medical care, coupled with the inherent limitations of human performance, make it critically important that clinicians have standardised communication tools, create an environment in which individuals can speak up and express concerns, and share common “critical language” to alert team members to unsafe situations. All too frequently, effective communication is situation or personality dependent. Other high reliability domains, such as commercial aviation, have shown that the adoption of standardised tools and behaviours is a very effective strategy in enhancing teamwork and reducing risk. We describe our ongoing patient safety implementation using this approach within Kaiser Permanente, a non-profit American healthcare system providing care for 8.3 million patients.

To do this book review I was given a bound galley copy as it was not printed yet. I had it with me at a seminar. People noticed the book and asked me about it.“ Is this the next FieldbookV” How did you get this?“ Suddenly, I found myself connecting with people beyond the surface pleasantries. I was experiencing change because of this book. In our work improving performance we initiate change. We identify gaps, analyze causes and recommend a wide array of interventions. These interventions are designed to create change that will be beneficial and long lasting to the organization. But as Senge points out in the beginning of this book, most change efforts fail because they do not produce the hoped-for results. It is important for us to be skilled at initiating and sustaining change. We have to help our clients deal with the challenges of change so they don’t become discouraged and revert to the original systems and behaviors that caused their performance gap.

3. Do you think traditional media is still relevant these days?

Answer: Media Economics, Applying Economics to New and Traditional Media differs from ordinary media economic texts by taking a conceptual approach to economic issues. As the book progresses through economic principles, authors Colin Hoskins, Stuart McFadyen, and Adam Finn use cases and examples to demonstrate how these principles can be used to analyze media issues and problems. Media Economics emphasizes economic concepts that have distinct application within media industries, including corporate media strategies and mergers, public policy within media industries, how industry structure and changing technologies affect the conduct and performance of media industries, and why the United States dominates trade in information and entertainment.

Media Economics emphasizes economic concepts that have distinct application within media industries, including corporate media strategies and mergers, public policy within media industries, how industry structure and changing technologies affect the conduct and performance of media industries, and why the United States dominates trade in information and entertainment. The growing popularity of the World Wide Web as a source of news raises questions about the future of traditional news media. Is the Web likely to become a supplement to newspapers and television news, or a substitute for these media? Among people who have access to newspapers, television, and the World Wide Web, why do some prefer to use the Web as a source of news, while others prefer traditional news media? Drawing from a survey of 520 undergraduate students at a large public university where Internet use is woven into the fabric of daily life, this study suggests that use of the Web as a news source is positively related with reading newspapers but has no relationship with viewing television news. Members of this community use the Web mainly as a source of entertainment. Patterns of Web and traditional media exposure are examined in light of computer anxiety, desire for control, and political knowledge. This study suggests that even when computer skills and Internet access become more widespread in the general population, use of the World Wide Web as a news source seems unlikely to diminish substantially use of traditional news media.

1 note · View note

walter-1 · 4 years

Text

STUDENT ACTIVITY SHEET NO. 5

(Group Task)

Subject: Media and Information Literacy

Topic: The Evolution of Traditional to New Media

Group #: Group 4

Date Given: 08/24/2020

Due Date: 08/25/2020

Learning Competencies:

1. Editorialize the roles and functions of media in democratic society

Group Members:

Walter M. Ortega Jr.

Karen Kizha Dayaganon

Gifford Jhon B. Ubaldo

Rey U. Epan Jr.

Jeff Darrell Cranzo

Instructions:

1. Sketch a political cartoon that depicts how the Philippine media performs its roles and functions in the Philippines.

2. Compose an editorial based on the editorial cartoon. (See mechanics below )

3. Post your political cartoon and editorial on your e-portfolio (Tumblr account).

Mechanics:

1. The blog must consist of 2 paragraphs.

2. Each paragraph must have 150 words.

3. Follow standard format: Font Style/Size- Arial Narrow 12

Activity 1: Political Cartooning

“Media and Government: A Love-Hate Relationship”

Instructions:

1. Provide the most logical explanation to each question.

Activity 2: Critical Thinking Questions

1. Differentiate the salient similarities and differences of traditional media and the new media. Cite sources of where your answers are based.

Traditional media is:

Television advertisements

Radio advertising

Print advertising

Direct mail advertisements

Billboards and off-site signs

Cold calling

Door-to-door sales

Banner ads

Companies have used these methods for many years to reach consumers and motivate them to make purchases. Up until very recently, these marketing and advertising styles were very effective, and helped businesses just like yours make a profit. However, as the needs and expectations of consumers evolve, marketing has no choice but to evolve as well. This is what has led to the rise of new media and digital marketing methods and the decrease in popularity of some traditional methods you know well. It's also led to the debate between traditional vs. digital media.

2. Describe the way media has evolved. Do you think the changes brought by time on these concepts have helped humanity in the access of information? Cite studies that would support your claim.

To do this book review I was given a bound galley copy as it was not printed yet. I had it with me at a seminar. People noticed the book and asked me about it." Is this the next FieldbookV" How did you get this?" Suddenly, I found myself connecting with people beyond the surface pleasantries. I was experiencing change because of this book. In our work improving performance we initiate change. We identify gaps, analyze causes and recommend a wide array of interventions. These interventions are designed to create change that will be beneficial and long lasting to the organization. But as Senge points out in the beginning of this book, most change efforts fail because they do not produce the hoped-for results. It is important for us to be skilled at initiating and sustaining change. We have to help our clients deal with the challenges of change so they don't become discouraged and revert to the original systems and behaviors that caused their performance gap.

3. Do you think traditional media is still relevant these days?

1 note · View note

lovelilijazunde · 4 years

Text

60 follower special

well well well, somehow i went a whole day without registering that I hit 60 followers, and then 61, and thusly should celebrate for it!

I decided to give you: a country I created! There is other stuff for it too, but I didn’t get images of them :(

Warning: it’s long

Enjoy!

FACTS:

Create-A-Country

Note: all English spellings of the places and names have been implemented for the ease of the reader. We fully understand that Americans find it difficult to understand our written language, so we have translated into English as best we could.

Uzplauxvil (oose-PLOW-ville). The citizens are called Uzplauv. It was based off a mixture of the Latvian word for “flourishing”, uzplaukums, and the French word for town, “ville” because some of the first settlers of this area were French and Latvian, as well as English, Scandinavian, and German. The pronunciation is French-based.

Founded in 1790 on what is now the Canada/Minnesota border, it replaces the state of Minnesota and most of Ontario, as well as Wisconsin, half each of Illinois and Indiana, and shavings of Manitoba. It contains all five Great Lakes and the Headwaters of the Mississippi. North to South, it stretches from a point equal to the tip of Kentucky to Hudson Bay. East to West, it stretches from the Easternmost edge of Manitoba to the Western border of Quebec.

Uzplauxvil is landlocked, though there are many lakes contained inside of it, and it adjoins Hudson Bay. It contains a boreal shield in the North, with the Great Lakes-Lawrence forest region in the center, as well as prairie in the Southwest, coniferous forest in the Mideast, tallgrass aspen parkland in the Midwest, and deciduous forest in the Southeast. At the very Northmost stretch, there is a section of Hudson Plain. There are no mountains, only forests and plains.

The weather is cold and snowy in the winter, and warm in the summer. It gets colder the further north you go, and rainier the further East you go. It also rains a lot near the larger bodies of water. Those areas are also prone to thick fog in the fall and spring, as well as early mornings in the summer.

Most people in the Minnesosk region live around lakes, since there are so many of them there. People in Wixing, Bayside, and Dallirt tend to gravitate towards the central Great Lakes, just as Ryokin and Shlavto people tend to gravitate towards Hudson Bay. And of course, in all districts the people also center around the capitals of each district. Other than that, the population is pretty evenly distributed, with plenty of farm settlements and old logging settlements that turned into towns and cities spread across the districts.

In Uzplauxvil, there is a wide variety of work done, but a lot of it is centered around healthy logging and mining processes, as well as a booming trade in fishing. Since Uzplauxvil has so many lakes, and so many of them large, even though they are a landlocked country they still are a lead in quality fishing industry. Uzpluaxvil is very nature-based, and though this is a product mostly of the main religion, Quatrysm, it is truly a part of everyday life in Uzplauxvil. As a result of this, Uzplauxvil is regarded as the most eco-friendly developed country. They revolutionized hydroelectric power, and found a healthy substitute for coal and oil to fuel their wonderful system of elevated train tracks. They are amazingly quiet, as to disturb as little wildlife as possible. Uzplauvs have made many environmental-protection laws as a result of their belief that all creatures are equally important. Uzplauxvil has only one language. It is unique in the way that it is written. To the ear, they are speaking English, perhaps with a slight French accent in the North and West areas. But, written down, it is a mystifying alphabet of 37 letters. However, it a phonetic alphabet, with each letter having a specific sound, so it is simpler in that manner. Uzplauxvil is also unique in their numerical system, with completely different symbols than the traditional. Thus, the signs are completely indecipherable to someone who has not learned the language, and it would seem even more confusing that the inhabitants do not speak in gibberish, and instead in perfectly normal-sounding English. The alphabet is easy enough to learn. The numerical system is quite a bit harder, especially if you start out as a non-Uzplauv. There are definitely some challenges to living in Uzplauv, mostly concerning the nature-based society. Lots of people think that Uzpluaxvil should focus less on the environment and more on technology. Unfortunately, this is in opposition to their eco-friendly approach to life and religion, so thankfully this is not a generally popular idea.

There is one major religion in Uzplauxvil, even though there is freedom of religion. Since it is the religion practiced by the royal family and most government officials, is is naturally the most popular and widespread. The major religion is called Quatrysm, with the practitioners called Quatrysts. It is unique to Uzplauxvil, and is the worship of four goddesses, the Quatrys: the goddess of animals, Nkumn; the goddess of families, Calmangh; the goddess of weather, Shavook; and the goddess of plants (such as harvest or lumber), Korytir. They make up the major four aspects of life. There is also a host of smaller gods and goddesses who serve the Quatrys. They are the gods and goddesses of more everyday things such as apple trees, blacksmithing, and clouds. This belief system influences the people to be more considerate towards nature and the world around us. It has also affected our modern technology, limiting the use of pollutant-creating transport systems and factories. There are four smaller important groups: the such as the Arts: gods and goddesses of the theater, music, writing, and tactile art. The religion has no food restrictions, but you must say a blessing over every meal you are presented with, because something had to die to gift you with the bounty. Many Quatrysts are vegetarians or vegans as a result of this, and, like Europe, they eat far less meats than vegetables as opposed to the U.S.A.

The other religions include the beliefs of the Anishinaabe and Dakota native americans who originally lived in the area, as well as different sects of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.

My country is governed by a Queen, a Council, and a Cabinet.

The Council is made up of elected overall heads of each district. Their job is to address issues in the Queendom and provide laws and solutions to be approved by the Queen. They focus on making sure the needs of each district are met.

The Queen position is hereditary, with the former Queen handpicking the most worthy of her female relatives as the new Queen. The qualities that a good Queen possesses must include a sense of justice, compassion, wisdom, a cool head under stress, common sense, and a sense of equality. She may choose any relative younger than her, including sisters (Marquess), aunts (Baroness), cousins (Duchess), nieces (Earless), daughters (Princess), granddaughters (Queenling), and grandnieces (Lady). These positions pre-Queen are mostly title only. They still have to work to put themselves in positions of power and to become landowners. This is to create a sense of humility and equality with the common people, and to create a system where anyone can advance.

It is possible that if a suitable female candidate cannot be found, that a male would ascend the throne, but it has only happened once, after the reign of Queen Judith the Progressive in 1890. There were fewer girls born into the royal family at this time, and most of them were spoiled and deceitful. Thus, faced with limited female options, Queen Judith appointed her nephew, Earl William, to the throne. He became known as King William the Just, and was a wise and fair ruler.

Any candidate must have passed the Maturity Test before she can ascend the throne, and often she takes it before beginning her training.

Common people are appointed to the Cabinet and Council, and the idea is that any future Queen should rule for the people, not the power and politics. Before becoming the Queen, the Queen Candidate must undergo vigorous training and tutoring by the Queen and the Queen’s advisors. She must be able to run a country as soon as she is crowned, so this training process takes years. Knowing this, the Queen usually begins to train a candidate as soon as possible. If the Queen dies without having handed over her throne, the paperwork would be horrendous, and the Cabinet and Council would have far more than their fair share of work. In the case of an unstable or unfit Queen, the Council and Cabinet will vote to impeach her. The Queen can pose or veto laws, and has the final say in any and all High Court cases, though she is reigned in by the judge and jury.

The Queen may marry whomever she wishes to, though it is traditional to marry an Uzplauv.

The Cabinet is appointed by the Queen and approved by the Council. The Cabinet is made up of the heads of particular parts of the government such as Treasurer, Strategist, Armorer, Judge, Cook, etc., each of them representing their entire profession as well as leading them.

Since Uzplauxvil is split up into several districts, there are smaller Cabinets and Councils within each district. In each district, the council members are made up of the Heads of each town, with the cabinet members being the same positions as the Cabinet members, just at a local level, and deferring to the Cabinet members.

There are no political parties in Uzplauxvil. Every district is focused inwards, so that is as close as they come. This is based on the Uzplauv government looking at what happens to countries with political parties, and strongly discouraging that type of behavior there.

ALPHABET AND NUMERICAL SYSTEM:

NATIONAL ANTHEM:

#follower celebration #60 follower celebration #uzplauxvil #idk if you could tell but there was hecka gay in that government #also i made the idea for this last year so some of it might be outdated-y #long post

1 note · View note

ayearinlanguage · 5 years

Photo

A Year in Language, Day 336: Musing: On drinking games, memes, and dialects. People who drink with me know that I like to make everything into a game. In general, the aspects of drinking culture I enjoy are the ones that involve ritual and camaraderie. My favorite drinking game is known to me as "King's Cup". I say "known to me" because I have come to learn that this game goes by many different names and even more variations on the rules. One of my favorite things when introducing the game to new people is learning the local variation they are familiar with. The game is always recognizable: you have a deck of cards, normally spread in a ring. You take turns drawing cards, each number assigning a different effect to determine who drinks that round. What those effects are, the specific layout of the cards, inclusion of jokers, pre-game rules, and additional items (like a cup in the middle of the ring) are all quite flexible. This is interesting, because it's definitely not how most games work. Sit down for a game of poker, speed, old maid, etc. and chances are the rules will be the same anywhere you go, at least as long as you're within the same country. Chess, checkers, go, etc, are likewise going to have common rules, even though no single organization has exclusive rights to these games or their rules. And, it should be noted, my King's Cup isn't alone in its variability; most drinking games I know of have similar patterns of intense variation. So what gives, and how is this coming back to languages? I think to get a good perspective on where I'm going with this, it's time for a brief talk about memes. When I say "meme" here I don't just mean fun pictures shared on the internet, though those are included. I am using it in its "original" sense, the idea of a cultural gene i.e. some molecular aspect of culture that, like genes, can be spread, can mutate and evolve, and can die out. The concept of the "knock knock joke" is a meme. Dabbing is a meme. Taking your hat off in respect is a meme. And so on. The important thing to remember about memes is that their existence is dependent on being spread from one person to the next. The more widely shared an experience, the more potent the meme. Standard card and board games are, well, standard. We all know them. Many of them have international games that demand some kind of regulation. Mutations in the meme, e.x. a particular chess clubs wacky pastime variant or a version of poker your learned once at summer camp, must compete with the preexisting one if they hope to pass on. For memes as established and universal as chess, this is a tall order. But what if chess did not have international tournaments. What if different companies printed card decks a little differently (one prints pages instead of Jacks, donuts instead of clovers, used a different color for each suit, etc.). The meme then may be less strong and a popular mutation could better overtake the preexisting standard. This is how drinking games work: there are no standards, no regulatory bodies, and they are played in very casual environments. If you learned your version of King's Cup from your friend Chad in college, then you'll know it only exactly as he told you, or, more precisely, exactly as you remember him telling you. If you bring the game to another group no one is going to fact check you. Why would they even? There are no stakes, it's just a pastime. So popular drinking game memes are able to replicate themselves well enough, passing from group to group by virtue of the good times they enabled, but they don't self regulate at all, so mutation is high. This is a post in a language series, right? Right. I find Americans have a strange view of language. We generally assume that most of the world works like we do; you have countries, and in each country there is a language with a single standard that everyone speaks. Obviously Americans are aware its not that simple, even our own country doesn't function like that, but that idea, as an underlying principle that reality is simply a bit messier than the ideal, is not just inaccurate, it's artificial and directly counter to reality. Part of this view comes from the fact that most Americans are monolingual and speak an imported language. When I first went to England, from which our American English is imported, I knew there would be many different English accents, but even I was shocked by just how many, and how different, and how many I would hear regularly just in one town on an island many times smaller than my native Texas, which has about 2-3 distinctive native accents, most of which are more similar to each other than the average pair of accents I would hear in England. We may be tempted to think of language as being more like chess than kings cup, but this is an affect of modernity and strengthened in colonial nations where the dialects of mother tongues have bottle-necked. With dictionaries, mass media, widespread literacy, and literal standards our language can seem very universal and lacking in variety, but this was not the case for most of history. For much of history, depending on what part of the world you came from, language was something only a certain class of scholars or aristocrats cared to think to hard about. For everyone else... it was just how you spoke, no need to assess further. If a popular figure in your town coins a phrase, it may spread to everyone in your town and persist across generations, but its possible no one the town over knows what y'all are on about. Maybe on your island certain words have become taboo due to events in that islands specific history, but your cousins on the next island follow no such tradition. For much of history language was unregulated, sparsely written, and influenced only by as much as it needed to be to do its job and enable humans to communicate. And while standards and writing have leveled the field a bit, for much of the world the impact of this history is still very apparent. And I'm not just talking about such linguistic hot spots like India or Papua New Guinea. Try to find good resources on Norwegian and you'll quickly find that there are a lot of Nowegians to choose from. Standard High German is very practical, but may still find you lost in northern Low German speaking regions or down south in Bavaria. Modern mediums for meme transference are still young, and their lasting impact on language is yet to be truly known.

#A Year in Language #Drinking games #AYIL #language #linguistics #day 336

35 notes · View notes

rockofeye · 6 years

Note

How do you know if an offering for the ancestors is enough? Does knowing names and having a family tree give an advantage? What do you do with the food you make for ancestors? Throw it out? Give it to friends/living family? How do you stop feeling insecure about your connection with the ancestors and how you try to heal that? What do you do when you live in a colonised country and information on your people and their practices are scarce?

How do you know if an offering for the ancestors is enough?

That’s something you have to learn over time as you get to learn and listen to your ancestors. They communicate what they want and need, and if what you are giving them fits that. Generally, my guide is to give the best that I can offer at that time and let them know that this is the best I can offer, particularly if it is not what I usually give them.

Does knowing names and having a family tree give an advantage?

It can, if you want to speak to specific ancestors or call specific ancestors to work for you. It’s not necessary for ancestor work, though; a lot of people do not have an extensive family trees and have powerful ancestor practices.

What do you do with the food you make for ancestors? Throw it out? Give it to friends/living family?

I think that depends on the ancestors, the tradition a person is working from, and what the purpose of the feeding is for. Sometimes ancestral food can be eaten by living descendants after a period of time, sometimes the food for the dead should remain only for the dead, and sometimes consuming the food of the dead could be detrimental the general living-ness of the person eating it. Some food should be disposed of outside, or buried, or burned, or simply wrapped and placed in the trash. It all depends on your ancestors, the tradition you are working within, and your ancestors themselves.

How do you stop feeling insecure about your connection with the ancestors and how you try to heal that?

That’s kind of a fake it ‘til you make it thing. The only way to build confidence and connection is to just do it–build the practice, refine it so that it works for your and your ancestors, and do the work. Ancestral healing and healing in general is an active process, so it comes as a byproduct of getting your hands in the dirt, as it were, and doing it.

For someone who is feeling insecure about their ancestral connection, I would suggest giving where that insecurity is coming from some deep thought. Is it because they feel they are not doing enough? Does it seem like their ancestral practice is not as effective or deep as they judge someone else’s to be? Whatever the cause, the ancestor-descendant relationship is between those two parties only–ancestors and their descendant–so those are the only parties that matter. If someone feels they are not doing enough, maybe do something different. I tell clients and students often that comparison is the thief of joy, so if someone is using what other people are doing as a yardstick, they will always feel less than.

What do you do when you live in a colonised country and information on your people and their practices are scarce?

This is a complex question that I read in two different ways, so I’m going to answer both ‘translations’ of how I read it. If I am missing the point, please let me know.

If we are living on colonized territory (which, if we live in the US or in Canada, we are) and are looking for information on our ancestors who were colonizers (in one way or another) of the land we live on and their religious beliefs, there are things we can do to both to acknowledge the deep abuses committed by our ancestors and move forward as ethical ancestral practitioners on colonized territory.

I am grateful to have been taught to use land acknowledgement as part of centering Indigenous American history, voices, and land presence, and I utilize that in my ancestral practice to acknowledge how my ancestors benefited from the colonization of indigenous property and how I continue to benefit from living on colonized land. I don’t honor Indigenous Americans as part of ancestral practice since that is not my ancestral reality and I am not Indigenous, but I name the land my ancestors and I have benefited from because I would not be here if not for my ancestral presence there.

I firmly believe that being an ethical ancestral practitioner on colonized territory means working to address the trauma caused by ancestors, which means doing hands-on reparative work with our ancestors to interrupt the cycle of ancestral trauma continuing to repeat itself (ie, history repeating). That’s a long and committed process which is deserving of it’s own post, but it is something folks with any European ancestry should really be looking at.

If we are living on colonized territory and we are individuals who have had our cultural identities and practices compromised or suppressed by colonization, it must feel very frustrating and isolating not to have good sources of information or to be able to find connections to our ancestral cultures.

From here, answers sort of converge in terms of seeking out information on ancestors and their religious practices. While the advice can vary wildly based on individual situations, there are some very basic general stepping stones to finding information on ancestral practices and cultures:

Look for reading lists. Might sound obvious, but googling up ‘welch history reading list’ can give you places to start and books/articles with bibliographies to explore. Similarly, you can google specifically for decolonized resources on your ancestral culture or tradition. There’s a solid basic booklist for decolonized Indigenous American history here, and an expansive reading list on a decolonized look at African politics and political history, just for example.

Read critically. Utilize bibliographies and reading notes, and go to those publications and see if what the author wrote reflects/matches and what additional info is there. The wealth of information I have found from chasing down sources is HUGE.

Search for ‘folklore’. An immense amount of actual practice is persevered under the heading of folklore, which makes it more palatable and less threatening for majority culture. For example, dancing in Haitian Vodou is vital and central to ceremony, and ceremonial/temple dancing is classed as Haitian folkloric dance in the mainstream world. Lots of folklore illustrates about practices ancestors may have engaged in and reflects actual stuff that can be used as puzzle pieces.

Contact cultural centers and culture bearers. Even if there is no local surviving cultural group for your ancestral practice, someone somewhere knows something and they in turn will have their own network. Many Indigenous communities have connections across widespread areas, or have historical archives that can be accessed with permission. Cultural centers often have elders on staff or as contacts, and even areas that have tourist presence can refer back to the actual culture. Many cultural practices are tied to place or to specific Diaspora, and so reach out to those physical places and Diaspora centers for assistance.

These might be challenging conversations to have: ‘hi, my family is from Place and I don’t know anything about that, who could I talk to’ might be hard, *but* fruitful.

Learn the language the culture does ‘business’ in. While colonization insists the common language be English, most information about specific cultural practices will be in the majority language of the culture. Outsiders coming in to Haitian Vodou often complain that there is so little authentic material available to them, and yet they have not learned Haitian Kreyol or French, which is the majority language of Haiti and Haitians and the language that 95% of the materials written about the religion are written in. If we are looking for our ancestors and ancestral practices, learning the language they spoke and the language they spoke with their spirits can open a LOT of doors.

Look for culturally relevant events. Keep an eye on museum events, library talks, dance festivals, cultural festivals, etc. If you live near any big city, you are probably close to religious centers that serve specific cultural groups–many cultural groups who attend mainstream denomination churches also maintain cultural practices alongside their attendance, and you may meet folks there who are connected with ancestral things. These are places where you can meet culture bearers or folks who can connect you to actual culture bearers. My spiritual mother is an example of this–she travels and teaches extensively at universities in the US and internationally about Haitian Vodou and Vodou culture, and she is not the only culture bearer that does.

Ask your ancestors for guidance. The very first step in ancestral veneration is to welcome your ancestors home, and when you do so you are inviting their presence and influence into your life. You can ask them to open the way for you to reconnect with culture as they lived it and to put your feet on the right path to do so. They will answer in their time, which can be slow or can be fast. They are the key to learning about where you come from and who you are in that framework so, above all, lean on them.

I hope this answers your questions and is helpful. If I have misunderstood what you’re asking and you’re up for clarifying, I am happy to revise what I have offered to fit.

#ancestors #ancestral worship #Ancestral Veneration #cultural religion

27 notes · View notes

lostdreamsdeafscreams · 2 years

Text

Astrology In America Along with other Areas of The World

It's intriguing to remember that while only more or less thirty one % of adults in the United States think in astrology, research studies indicate that fifty two % of Europeans think about astrology being a science.

The primary types of astrology that are predominantly in existing practice are Indian astrology, Chinese astrology, and Western astrology. In the United States, Western astrology is regarded as the common. The most known aspect of Western astrology is the zodiac sign; according to the belt of constellations, each one of that had been interpreted as similar to different figures, the zodiac signs (or, also called the astrological signs) are named Aries (the ram), Taurus (the bull), Gemini (the twins), Cancer (the crab), Leo (the lion), Virgo (the virgin), Libra (the scales), Scorpio (the scorpion), Sagittarius (the archer), Capricorn (the goat), Aquarius (the water bearer), Pisces (the fishes).

Horoscopes, and those are the most elementary interpretations, are based upon what sign was in effect every time an individual came into this world; and whether someone came into this world on the "cusp," which suggests the really beginning or even very end of the specific sign. Along with using an indication to figure out life events and foresee one 's long term, an indication can also be considered applicable to studying particular qualities of one 's style as well as predisposition toward different possible health issues, as one 's sign is thought to govern specific regions of one 's body. Strange as it might seem, many who have meticulously analyzed this information type found it to be rather accurate. For instance, while each Virgo isn't "practical," "fastidious,tarotista en Madrid" and "strong minded," this particular trait is really a typical factor among many people who had been born under this particular sign; and while most who were born under the sign of Virgo don't have stomach, intestinal, or maybe reproductive difficulties, many Virgos are really more vulnerable to these issues compared to many other individuals.

Yet another kind of astrology is Indian astrology, and that is called Jyotisa, or maybe Vedic astrology. The foundation of its will be the opinion of relationship between the microcosm as well as the macrocosm the smaller parts as well as the universal. Even though interest in Vedic astrology is prevalent, as it's presently practiced in India it's a tremendous component of the culture of theirs, as individuals depend on it for every one of the key decisions in the lives of theirs, from small business to marriage.

Of the final several years, Indian astrology is now internationally popular, though it's been a component of India's way of life for hundreds of years. Vedic astrology is believed to have initially been revealed over 7000 years back. Consequently, what's believed to have originated with the Brahma has spread in recognition to such places as Arizona, and that is the house of the American College of Vedic Astrology, presently offering internet classes for all those keen on finding out how to be licensed astrologers. Many astrologers providing Vedic astrology readings, nonetheless, are situated in India.

Chinese astrology is dependent on the calendar cycle, instead of on constellations. In this particular type of astrology, the zodiac signs are named after animals the rat, dog, rooster, monkey, sheep, horse, snake, dragon, rabbit, tiger, ox, then pig. Living by the Chinese calendar, each one of these creatures are given to the lunar months. The animals may also be given to the time of morning during that the unique person was born.

Besides the creatures, you will find 5 elements wood, metal, earth, fire, water that are thought to change the qualities of the animals signs. One of the primary functions and purposes is achieving balance, and in order to affect whatever changes are essential to be able to achieve that balance. Chinese astrology, also, has started to achieve widespread recognition in America.

More: https://youtu.be/TstYlNsaI88

0 notes

ruminativerabbi · 3 years

Text

Birds

The ancients understood the concept of evolution, but they took it as a political concept rather than as an ecological or geological one. The biblical Book of Daniel, for example, returns in three different chapters (twice explicitly and once allusively) to the notion that nations rise and fall, that the super-powers of any given generations are almost by definition the successor-states to earlier powers that ran their course and then, after a period of decline, either disappeared entirely or else turned back into being “just” one among the many other nations of the world. The version of that vision in the seventh chapter of the book is particularly stirring in that it depicts each successive nation as a fantastic beast emerging from the sea and taking its predecessor’s place on the shore. First, a lion with eagle’s wings steps onto the beach only to be forced to stand erect on its back legs while its wings are ripped off and its leonine heart replaced with a puny human one. And then it is replaced on that same beach by a man-eating bear that has also stepped out of the sea and which briefly takes its turn dominating the scene…until being itself replaced by a terrifying four-headed winged leopard that takes over when “dominion is given unto it.” But even that doesn’t last, because, soon enough, the winged leopard is replaced by a new beast, a true monster “dreadful and terrible and exceedingly strong” possessed of teeth made of iron and crowned with ten different horns sprouting from its giant head, which stomps whatever remains of its predecessors into dust.

It’s a long, weird vision and there’s been endless speculation among scholars regarding identities of the specific nations the author of Daniel had in mind. But the key point is that the concept that nation-states rise and fall—and that the world as we know it is specifically not as it was a century, or a dozen centuries, ago—was well known to the ancients. Nor was this all solely about the succession of super-powers: for the Greeks, the notion of successor states on earth nicely mirrored the history of the gods on high—Hesiod’s Theogony is all about how the Olympian deities eventually succeeded the different generations of gods that preceded them and came to rule the world. And there were similar ideas afoot across the ancient Near East as well.

But those were all political ideas and the notion that the physical world, the world we see all about us along with its fauna and its flora—the notion that what appears to be true of nation-states could also be true with respect to the environment, that appears not to have been known to the ancients. As a result, they imagined the world they saw all around them to be precisely as the world was when the Creator created it, both unchanged and—more to the point, unchangeable. Indeed, the story of creation in the first chapter of the Bible, less nuanced than the retelling in Genesis 2 but really just as stirring to consider, imagines God creating the physical world, then using the irresistible force of divine speech to fill the seas with fish and the skies with birds, and to create at once the animals of the world in all their diversity and also a world full of human beings, male and female, “to control the environment and to subdue it” when it for some reason seems unresponsive to human needs or wants.

All this by way of introducing my topic this week, one I first read about a few weeks ago but which has been weighing on me particularly just lately in the wake of all the Earth Day essays and articles I’ve been reading, and also in light of Steve Goldstein’s pre-Shabbat presentation last Friday about (among other things) the first Earth Day held back in 1970 when I was a senior in high school and could practically feel the earth moving under my feet as the age of Aquarius dawned and the new rushed in to sweep away the old. (That that perception was completely, or almost completely, false only became clear to me years later. But that’s not what I want to write about today.)

Here I want to write about birds and discuss one of the most shocking pieces of scientific writing I’ve seen in a long time, possibly ever. According to an essay published just before the pandemic in the journal Science, there has been an almost unfathomable decline of about 2.9 billion in the bird population of North America in the last fifty years—a decline that started precisely with the year in which the first Earth Day was observed. In other words, there are almost 30% fewer birds in North America today than there were when I was a senior in high school, an almost unimaginable decline.

What has caused this remains a matter of debate, but all the scientists whose works I’ve consulted seem to agree that the destruction of traditional bird habitats and the widespread use of toxic pesticides are major factors, as also is—albeit in a more subtle, less easy explainable way—climate change itself. Also of interest is the fact that, of the 2.9 billion birds that have vanished, about 90% belong to just about a dozen avian families, including finches, swallows, warblers, and sparrows. But there are losses across the board that affect every region of the continent and almost every species. (It is true that some species have come back almost from the brink of extinction, which list famously—or semi-famously—includes the American bald eagle, the Trumpeter Swan, and the Peregrine Falcon. But those success stories are all rooted in the massive efforts of scientists and environmentalists to pull a specific species back from the brink of extinction; as far as I know, no almost-extinct species has ever turned back from the precipice all on its own.) Forest birds alone account for almost one billion of the losses, but grassland birds have declined by about 700 million—which number leaves us now with about half the original population. No matter how you work the statistics, something terrible has happened to the world while more or less no one was looking…and those few who were looking were unable to fathom the scope of the debacle. Until now.

It’s easy not to care. So there are 862 million fewer sparrows in the world, so what? I mean…in the end, I didn’t know how many sparrows there were in the first place, they play no specific role in my life, I have been—at best—vaguely aware of their existence over the years of my own lifetime…so how does any of this affect me? That’s the question most will ask when confronting the number of missing sparrows…or the loss of 182 million larks or 618 million warblers. After all, the Passenger Pigeon went extinct and the world endured! (The Passenger Pigeon was once the most abundant bird in North America with a population before their decline set in of somewhere between 3 and 5 billion. And then, once deforestation destroyed most of its natural habitat, the decline began and ended only when the sole remaining Passenger Pigeon in the world died on September 1, 1914 at the Cincinnati Zoo. For a very interesting NPR podcast about the demise of the Passenger Pigeon, click here.) Like I said, it would be easy not to care. Or to care a little, but not quite enough to respond meaningfully to the news that so many of the most familiar birds are in danger of having no North American presence at all. But the reality is that this is one, large, interconnected biosystem we occupy…and we are not its sole residents. Birds, including the most common ones, control pests, pollinate flowers, spread seeds, regenerate forests, and are vital, productive members of the ecosystem in dozens of other ways as well. What will happen if they vanish in serious enough numbers to leave those vital tasks unaddressed, no one knows. But we’re about to find out. To read more, click here, here, here, here, or here. Pouring a whiskey before you start reading would probably be an excellent idea.

I admit that my first response, like most people’s I’m sure, was to turn the page and worry about something else. But then, when I returned to the topic over the last few weeks and started reading and rereading the many, many published essays responding to the original article in Science (the first of the “click here’s” at the end of the preceding paragraph), I began to understand how serious we all need to take this. We age mostly imperceptibly…and then, one day, the universe forces us to take stock of where we are and how we are or aren’t watching over our own best interests. This is more like that, I think: something that happens imperceptibly, but which has the capacity eventually to alter the course of human history. Yes, we will survive the decline of the Redwing Blackbird population (down from 270 million to a mere 160 million in just fifty years). But, taken all together, a picture begins to form…and it is not one we dare look away from. As we live our lives, and as society develops along its way, we are bringing about irreversible changes to the biosystem and, at least eventually, to the planet itself. What shape those changes will take, who can say? But to imagine that these issues are unimportant because they don’t all affect the way we live on a daily basis…that seems to me the definition of narrowminded folly. For better or for worse, we’re all in this together—us and the grackles and, yes, the sparrows.

0 notes

lubbuthedigitalnomad · 3 years

Text

IT IS WEIRD TO BE “RICH”

Hello from Kathmandu, Nepal! I hope you are happy and healthy.

The following is from the new book-in-progress.

Some folks have accused my writing of occasionally being “too real.” That is very understandable. Many of us have been steered away from real all of our lives by the wool that is constantly being pulled over our eyes — so not everyone is able to recognize, much less deal with, real. Sometimes real really hurts. That doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

Other folks think I have been too upbeat and happy during this whole past year of disease, political manipulation of economics, and other assorted disasters. They think I have not been real enough. This little piece will likely put an end to those complaints. I hope you enjoy it anyway.

Be well. Love, Tenzin

And, to those of my friends that worry about folks with wavering emotions, please don’t. I will be back to cheery by next week. I promise.

p.s. If you find the reading at all enjoyable, please — it literally takes only seconds — click one or more or all of the highlighted backlinks following this paragraph. This simple process is completely without risk, cost, or difficulty. All it does is bring you to the site that is highlighted. Each click is a big help in pushing Fearless Puppy up in the Google rankings. Whether you browse the sites or close the windows immediately, your help has been delivered. Thank you!

FEARLESS PUPPY WEBSITE BLOG

FEARLESS PUPPY ON AMERICAN ROAD/AMAZON PAGE

REINCARNATION THROUGH COMMON SENSE/AMAZON PAGE

FEARLESS WEBSITE

IT IS WEIRD TO BE “RICH”

I spent several teen years begging on the streets for survival and much of my adult life working for causes that didn’t return appreciable, if any, paychecks. I’m not complaining! Much of it was fun and all of it was educational. There were decades of adulthood spent sleeping on other people’s floors or spare mattresses. I often drank the beer, ate the food, and smoked the weed of benevolent friends — and was always the poorest person in any town that I entered. My work, as well as my life, has been more “dependent upon the kindness of strangers” than was Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire. Friends were always happy to be part of the work that was getting done. I was always grateful for the help that allowed me to do the work.

Of all the culture shock that I should be feeling here on the opposite side of the world from my homeland, the part that jars my system the most is being a rich guy. Of course, it’s altogether relative. With $445 a month of so-called Social Security income (and just a bit of savings), I would be living well below poverty level back in America. And, although I am a rich guy among some people here, I certainly am not one as compared with the Tibetan community that occupies much of this neighborhood.

Tibetans make up a good portion of this Boudha Stupa area but less than nine percent of the population of Nepal. Much of the remaining ninety-plus percent of indigenous Nepali people, and even more so the non-Tibetan and non-Nepali immigrant groups, are not as financially fortunate as the Tibetans seem to be.

This is certainly true for the labor force that works within but lives outside the Stupa area. They work in restaurants, shops, construction, and have carts in the streets from which they sell fruit or vegetables or kitchen utensils or Q-tips or anything else that can make them a few rupees profit.

Many people came to Nepal from India to enjoy greater opportunities. They became well respected members of the community. Many others came because begging and other street hustling rackets are more productive here. These folks are the most annoying and aggressive operators. They train their children to be very cute, pitiable, and profitable. They are raising career beggars. These street and tin shack people are a large financial step below the local workers. In America, the street people and I would be in a very similar financial situation. Here, I am considered wealthy.

Oddly enough, the amount of money I have is not what immediately influences their decision. They have not seen my bank balance. What they have seen is my skin color.

During pre-corona-scare years, the street people got used to having many tourists from Europe and America visit Nepal for a week or two. They have seen so many foreign vacation dollars fly by and around them that many locals think everyone white is rich! Relatively speaking, they have a point. Anyone that can afford the price of the plane ticket to get here actually is rich, compared with the folks on the street that are trying to live off of what trickles down from the visitors.

Many street people are polite — but some beggars (and street merchants) can be rudely aggressive in their efforts to widen that trickle. The hardcore beggars ask and don’t stop asking if you say “no.” They keep talking to you and often tug on your sleeve as they follow you up the street. Some bark “Money! Money! Money!” in your ear for a length of two or three blocks. Others very loudly interrupt while you are in mid-conversation with friends. They continuously caw in your ear like a crow on crack. Their hope is that you will give them some money so they will just shut up and go away. These folks have, what we would call in Brooklyn, a “crawling up your ass” modus operandi. In most of Brooklyn, these people would get the shit beaten out of them very quickly.

Myself, and the fellow beggars I have known in America, always realized that once a prospective contributor says “no,” our time is more productively spent moving on to a new and hopefully more receptive target. The Indian/Nepali beggar hasn’t yet figured out this little point of practicality — and shows no concern for any points of street etiquette.

As a guy who, besides personal panhandling experiences, spent four decades begging money for environmental groups and assorted charities, it is extremely bizarre and unsettling for me to be hit on a dozen times a day by folks that are trying to shine my sneakers, or extort money in exchange for them just leaving me alone. An invasive and aggressive persistence is only an asset in rare situations and occupations. Begging is not one of those — and even legitimate, dedicated, altruistic soliciting for a very worthy cause has its limits.

And there are certain variations of aggressive persistence that need to be ended immediately. The perpetrators need to be punished (if you believe in that sort of thing) and mandated into rehabilitation facilities.

Most locals that give to street beggars contribute five or ten rupees. During my first four months in Kathmandu, I would give a twenty rupee note to everyone that asked. I’d pocket fifty of them at a time, hand them out until they were gone, and then go get some more. I like being helpful, twenty rupees is only about eighteen cents, and it kept me in a friendly state of mind on the street. Some of these street folks looked like they were doing fine. Others were obviously missing parts of their body or mind. Others were alcoholics. Whatever their story, it seemed that if they were out there asking, they needed to be helped. Many homeless people worldwide suffer as much from the inequities of economic systems as they suffer from personal bad luck, bad habits, or bad decisions. There is a big difference between a humanely based war on poverty and a government instituted war on poor people that is based in a cold, perverse economic policy.

I like, respect and often defend my fellow street peeps. Some are more fun to be around than others, but they all remind me of just how slim and temporary that line is between material wealth and material poverty. Street experience taught me a long time ago that plumbers, carpenters, single mothers, innocent orphans, even doctors and professors, can end up sleeping in an alley right alongside junkies and alcoholics. Half the world is only one bad break or decision away from being street people.

Early in the fifth month after my arrival here, a young and attractive woman was begging near the Stupa. One side of her face was severely black and blue. Out of the corner of my eye, I barely noticed the man hovering about twenty feet away, darting glances at her. I gave her thirty rupees instead of twenty. I later learned that she was intentionally beaten by that hovering man, in the hope that the signs of abuse would evoke more sympathy and higher contributions from tourists and local working folks. There was no way to know if the man was her husband, pimp, boyfriend, or owner.

I don’t give anything to any Kathmandu street people any more. It’s about more than just the aggressive, annoying thing. Many of the horrible things seen in the Slum Dog Millionaire movie actually happen here in real life. It may be a lot more widespread and severe in India, but some of the same cruelty exists in Kathmandu as well.

I feel badly about not helping those of my street brothers and sisters that are regular people in legitimate need, but there is no way to tell which folks are on the level and which folks are part of a beggar’s cartel — or something that is much more abusive and disturbing. I have to step on my natural instinct to help, in order to no longer support the many levels of social and individual pain trying to grow stronger on these streets.

Our US government’s savage actions and TV’s exaggerated imagery have fostered quite a bad international reputation of the American people. But, as is true in most countries, individual citizens are often a lot nicer than their government. American people can be generous. We can be quite compassionate and forgiving as well. This is especially true of Americans that have had some training in and experience with real forgiveness and compassion. But if I ever again see a young woman with a black and blue face, and a man hovering close by with his eyes on her begging hand, I might just screw up, forget what Buddha taught me, and kick the living fuck out of the guy. He not only beat a defenseless woman. He also iced the heart of a warm man.

About the Author

Doug “Ten” Rose may be the biggest smartass as well as one of the most entertaining survivors of the hitchhiking adventurers that used to cover America’s highways. He is the author of the books Fearless Puppy on American Road and Reincarnation Through Common Sense, has survived heroin addiction and death, and is a graduate of over a hundred thousand miles of travel without ever driving a car, owning a phone, or having a bank account.

Ten Rose and his work are a vibrant part of the present and future as well as an essential remnant of a vanishing breed.

Follow him on Facebook, Doug Ten Rose

Travel Adventure Books can be an excellent gift to your friends and family, buy from Amazon.com

#traveladventurebooks #keepreading #kindlebooks

Many thanks to our wonderful friends at the Pema Boutique Hotel for their help and support.

The books Fearless Puppy On American Road and Reincarnation Through Common Sense by this same author are also available through Amazon or the Fearless Puppy website, where there are sample chapters from those books. Entertaining TV/radio interviews with and newspaper articles about the author are also available there. There is no charge for anything but the complete books! All author profits from book sales will be donated to help sponsor an increase in the number of wisdom professionals on Earth, beginning with but certainly not limited to Buddhist monks and nuns.

If you missed the Introduction to the new book that will be titled Temple Dog Soldier, or would like to see several chapters of it that are available for free online, go to the Puppy website Blog section. This is a book in progress. You will be reading it as it is being created! Just like you, I don’t know what the next chapter is going to be about until it is written. As the Intro will tell you, this is a totally true story — and probably the only book ever written by and about a corpse journeying completely around the world!

#adventure books #reading #travel adventure books #travel adventure book #fearless puppy on american road #Reincarnation Through Common Sense #buddhism #buy books online #buy books #buddhism books #buddhism book #amazon kindle #amazon.com

0 notes