Chronological ethnocentrism… oooo, big words, that must mean I’m smart. Alright, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way we can be serious… maybe. I find this subject actually quite fascinating because it speaks to this little nagging voice in your head, the voice that questions common truth and accepted thought. When people say at least it’s not the cold war, or at least it’s not the fifties, or at least we’re not in Russia, these are all various examples of ethnocentrism. It means that we, as a culture, kind of blot out the truth to an extent
by the thought that we uniformly march forward in time progressing evenly. So twenty years ago we had to have been more
racist and less intelligent, handsome what have you, and in twenty years time
we’ll all be better, less racist, more intelligent and more handsome. Except for you Kyle, you suck. Also we, the place we are in now, most
obviously is better than other places.
The United States must be the best, regardless of my lack of experience or
knowledge of other places. Seem
silly? Draw it in a few steps. Does your region seem better than
others? Obviously New England is far
more sophisticated that other regions.
Al other states are far behind the intellectual discourse of New
Englanders. This could only be true is
intelligence was inversely proportionate to driving acumen. And, oh my god Rhode Island drivers make me
swear and scream in my car. Adi was
bewildered by this behavior. Driving in
Long Island, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Delaware have never
given me such aggravation. She stared,
mouth agape at my transformation from rational human being to knuckle dragging
insult generator and rage-bot as my fingers curled around the driving wheel
shaking with fury. Not my finest hour but
I digress.
So why is that true?
Are we just so self obsessed we feel things are better because we’re
around? Or is simply more comforting to
think that our ancestors were idiots and we’re better? Maybe it is some misguiding optimism that
things have to get better.
I bring this up because of this article:
In the article it talks about the new moniker given to
Barack Obama as the first gay president due to his recent outpouring of support
for gay right and marriage. I appreciate
his sentiment but it always seems odd when we get character revelations around
election time. If it were near the
beginning of his presidency it would seem less smacking of a grab for positive
public attention. But I’ll take what I
can get. The article goes on to say that
the praise is nice but it grossly wrong.
It’s wrong because of James Buchanan.
Time to drop some knowledge.
Several article point to James Buchanan being gay. That kinda one ups approving of gay marriage. Now, this kind of factoid is one that must be
questioned and scrutinized. But there is
enough evidence of homosexual tendencies to at least point out that while
President Buchanan may or may not have been gay he was probably a bit more
rainbow proud than our sitting President.
Not to detract from Obama’s stance.
Political maneuver or not I’m glad Obama is siding progressively. At this point it seems that politician’s lag
far behind popular opinion and we as a people are dragging them by the nose
forward towards a brighter future.
Whereas it should be the bright luminaries of our day influencing the
American public towards that beacon of improvement. In my humble opinion it seems politics in
this country have degraded and faded from their austere and pure form into
backdoor dealing snake oil hucksters.
But let’s find fault in our political system another day (It’s
always easy to complain about greedy politicians, regardless of the whole
burden of truth). I think a major part
of the problem I history and those who tell it.
Partly I blame history teachers.
Anyone who says history is a hard subject to teach is an idiot. History is awesome. Its filled with wars, betrayals, illicit sex,
espionage, romance, treachery, debauchery, explosions, and mystery. No book or movie can be as awesome or
unbelievable as the stuff that we as a race have done. The problem is book make things boring. And they shouldn’t. Books can be wonderful amazing thins but
history books for the majority of my school career were boring and at many
points, wrong. We like to think of the
whole serf class during the period of the dark ages as being constantly downtrodden,
horribly abused, bent backed, black teethed, malodorous perverts. Sorry some Python leaked in at the end,
ignore it and move along. That premise
is inherently false. Serfs didn’t have it
that bad. We have this problem as seeing
people living in thatch cottages near animals being the lowest of the low and
that we have elevated ourselves to be better and greater. It isn’t totally true. There were hierarchies within the serfs. There were those who could read. There wasn’t as much filth and disease as
everyone thinks. IN the cities of course
there tends to be much more due to chamber pots being emptied directly onto the
streets hence why men were supposed to walk on the outside bit of the sidewalk
and women in side and why they put their coats down when the ladies crossed the
road. Because of shit. Men didn’t want their ladies covered in
filth. That was the code of ethics for
being a gentlemen. You wonder why we
don’t hold open a door and you say chivalry is dead. Nope it’s just there isn’t as much poop out
there with the whole advent of sewers.
Sewers remind me of something important. The Romans, predating the dark ages, had
working and efficient sewers. They had n
earlier from democracy (which we Americans stole and melded with French and
English thought). Not only that but the
gay thing wasn’t such a big deal. Roman
sexuality however was a bit odd in the idea of penetration equals power and
oral penetration meant that your mouth and then therefore you word was
sullied. Those receiving were in no way
sullied. But worse still anyone who
performed on a woman was even more sullied and thus their words were
sullied. So there were some forward thinking
ideals mixed in with very archaic ones.
Which is more how I like to think is history. We just stumble forward and some things
advance while others stagnant and others, worse still, feel the effects of
entropy. So the Romans had working
sewers then the dark ages didn’t. A
whole bunch of time and we as the western society took massive steps backwards
in basically every bit of study like we got a bad card in Monopoly or land in Chutes
and Ladders.
So I get to thinking why do we forget about all those forward
thinking parts of history. Like the
great gay men who have shaped our history.
There is no denying Alexander the Great was gay. And we obviously pretty great it was in his
name and not one went about changing it to Alexander the pretty ok. We’ve had a bit of time to revise and edit so
it could have been done. But ignoring
the hot button topic of homosexuality why do we forget these ebbs and flows of
culture? Why during the dark ages did it
take so long to have that amazing resurgence of art, science and philosophy of
the Enlightenment and the Renaissance?
Why now do we forget our history?
Is it our fault for not educating ourselves? Is it some darker plot of nefarious (I love
that word) invisible forces censuring our intellectual consumption so we cannot
know the truth of our past? I doubt this
to a certain extent as I cannot believe the government so capable of
conspiracy. It just isn’t that easy to
hide massive plots regardless of what the lone gunmen say. And yes, I just pulled an X-files reference.
I think it’s probably just our perceptions. You get used to your environment and because it’s
what you know it’s what you love. And
what you love must be the best. So you
convince yourself the rest of the world the rest of the time isn’t better than
it is now. In some ways this is
right. But mostly it is always wrong. One thing that blew my mind recently was my preconceived
notion of what certain countries look like.
What an average street looks like in Chain, in South African, in
Yemen. I thought about it and I realized
I only know what has been represented in film essentially. And I know half the time most locations are
represented by Toronto. It’s cheap to
shoot there and they a bunch of different sections that mimic other cities. There was a post online with two
pictures. Both had what appeared to be Muslim
people walking down a shopping area on a busy street. In one you see a young couple, smiling, in
jeans and polos. The other, in more
traditional garb. Obviously I can’t
comment on the smiling. The picture with
the smiling couple was taken in Pakistan.
The other was in England. I would
never have guessed. Processing that I
began to think what other preconceived notions do I have? Am I just a sponge absorbing the thought of
those around me and that shapes my idea of the world?
All I know is I owe a few history teachers a swift kick in the
ass for making such an interesting subject so boring. I mean they could people talking about people
flinging shit in the streets or fellatio but they talk about all the boring
bits. History should be fun. And history makes us better people.
Ben
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Thanks for posting. You are awesome!