What's up with the new post?

Originally, I started this blog to mostly be about writing, but it occurred to me that if I really love history and theology so much, then why not write about it here too? I'm not saying I won't write about fiction too, it's just I have multiple passions and as such I would be happier and more motivated to write if I am to write not just about fiction, but history and theology, and on re-appraisal, yes, politics.

I don't imagine this will bug my all of two readers.

Afrocentrism and Matriarchal Studies

When you research into history, whether out of interest or for your job, you will sometimes come across conflicting schools of thought on what really happened. This becomes increasingly common as you go back further into time as records become fewer in number and physical evidence becomes scarcer. One example of this is the debate on whether the Phoenicians and Carthaginians actually sacrificed their infants, or whether they simply cremated those young who died and kept them in mass mausoleums. I, on the matter, am neutral, seeing the need to look more into it, but the debate is rather fierce as it's a pretty grim claim and those who study Punicology often have a very strong opinion about Carthage and Canaan that's hard to shake.

Sometimes you will come across things called "Afrocentrism" and "Matriarchal Studies". At first, these can seem benign, when you first glance at them. However, one quickly notices several problems with both. In Afrocentrism, the idea quickly becomes the dichotomy of "blacks vs. whites", framing it in a specifically American context for one, and second disregarding the relationships between the ethnicities in the context of the time periods they observe, but instead putting their own modern viewpoint onto it, which isn't necessarily a bad thing until we start getting things like "the white people destroyed the Library of Alexandria to weaken the black Egyptians and make sure that the Black man stayed at his feet" or "the white historians are all editing history to make the Black man look bad". There we see the problem. On the other hand, we have Matriarchal Studies, which tries to look at history to get a closer look at the woman. However, the problem arises that Matriarchal Studies forgets to really observe society as a whole, and begins to use things as "archeomythology" (the practice of uses myths to support a historical position, started with the Matriarchal Studies/Goddess Movement) and making very damaging and outright sexist claims, such as matriarchal societies being more peaceful than the "androcratic" societies that were portrayed by Marija Gimbuta (major proponent of Matriarchal Studies and the "Kurgan hypothesis" of Indo-European genesis, the latter of which I subscribe to in part) as invaders who subjugated the idyllic Old Europeans with their matriarchy and Goddess worship and made everything as it is today, with our war, famine, and the like. You begin to see the problem.

But the biggest problem with both is that they have an agenda, which you really shouldn't have when observing history if you want to be legitimately factual. History is no respecter of race nor gender, and we can't expect to tailor it to how we would like it to be. If that is your interest, join the Society for Creative Anachronism, which replicates history "as it should have been".

However, if one is interested in looking at some of the elements of Afrocentrism and Matriarchal Studies for different purposes, whatever they may be, I shall suggest one look at "Black Athena" by Martin Bernal, and "the Goddess and Her Heroes" by Heide Goettner-Abendroth for Afrocentrism and MS respectively.

Finally.

Alright, finally I should be updating this thing regularly again. Had a bit of writer's block but now I'm back into the swing of things and should be able to get something up by tomorrow for all of my two followers.

Happy Easter Sunday, by the way.

Alive.

I am, in fact, alive. I've just had a bit of a rough schedule so I haven't had time to sit and think for a bit

The "Imagine" Controversy

Oh dearest me.

It takes a very special kind of society to get upset over a lyrical change, especially when most people don't seem to understand it. When Cee-Lo Green (one of my favourite artists, by the way, so if you're not expecting bias I warn you there is inevitably going to be) covered John Lennon's "Imagine", he managed to change the lyrics from "and no religion too" to "and all religion is true". Now I'm not going to go on the merits of the change of lyrics, but more the response, which was thoroughly hilarious. A rather vocal (but I hope to all Heavens small) portion of the Atheist community proceeded to explode over this and proclaim various things, like:

"This is SO WRONG! You wonder why free thinkers are so vocal with their rights being violated... this IDIOT is one reason why!! He took not only the intellectual property of Lennon's and made it his rubbish but stole the whole meaning of the song to push his TERRORISTIC RELIGIOUS BULL SHIT on the world... as usual with a NO BRAIN HAVING SHEEP! Hell with our freedoms right?? We get called bigots as you play with your imaginary friends & destroy the world... YOU ARE PATHETIC!!"

Of course, this is in the complete minority (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2012/01/01/thats-not-how-the-song-goes-cee-lo/ for a more complete picture of what was going on -- you'll see someone did tell him to calm down)

I don't know if the changing of a lyric warrants that regardless of what it changes. Still, seeing people completely freak out over this is rather hilarious to say the least.

Barely conscious

So Christmas and New Years have come and gone and I'm just kind of floating through life at the moment. Lots of food at Christmas and lots of drink at New Years but not a lot of thought. I'm hoping to get back in that.

Aw.

I appear to have lost my only follower, unless blogspot is glitching out like it does sometimes.

EDIT: Yup. Glitching.

Hoorah, my ego lives.