[RD] Cultural Appropriation: The Solution?

[luiz]

I will say "Latin" is not really used in the US. Latin-American sort of yeah, but "Latino" is way, way more common than "Latin" when referring to a person or persons, and even "Latino-America" is more common too. So I'd guess that's why.

Again, bizarre. The English translation of both Spanish terms Latino and Latina is the gender neutral Latin. Just like the English translation of both Portuguese terms brasileiro and brasileira is the gender neutral Brazilian. Using LatinX as a gender neutral English word makes as much sense as using BrazilianX or brasileirX.

I suppose using LatinX goes beyond a desire to use a gender neutral term and into the territory of signaling how gender conscious one is.

 

[sophie]

Well, obviously there is not an 1-1 similarity but 16th century was not a good time for religious tolerance. It was a time of inquisition, witch hunt, reformation and counter-reformation, wars of religion and book burnings everywhere.

Maybe more robustly in a bit, but suffice it to say, "witch hunts" were heavily localized, and not particularly common, deadly, or persistent even in the regions in which they did occur (and were also largely a 17th century phenomenon). Degree of religious tolerance varied heavily by region, type of settlement, ruler, and time period. Reformation and counter-reformation doesn't really say anything about violence and intolerance per se. Book burning/banning was, again, nowhere near as commonplace or widespread as you seem to think it was.

This was also the period in which humanism exploded into the political conscious. The 16th century was the first time where, on a large scale, knowledge, learning, and the arts were being weaponized as tools in political warfare. Learning and the arts were exalted by secular leaders to a degree that hadn't been seen in that way in hundreds of years. The reintroduction of Greek was an enormously costly, generations-spanning endeavor. We're talking on the level of billions of dollars in today's terms. Latin scholars were finally reading things other than Cicero and Boethius. For the first time, again, in centuries, people were going into Monastic libraries and taking books off the shelves. The Renaissance wasn't about the rediscovery of classic texts in that Western Europeans discovered that Muslim and Orthodox scholars had been preserving them all this time, so much as it was a discovery that Western Europeans had these books all along, but nobody was really looking for them. I can't remember the specific text (might have been De Rerum Natura) was discovered literally being used to hold up a table. It had probably been serving that purpose for several hundred years. The only extant copy of that text, and nobody had bothered to look at it until then.

Christianity in this period also changed profoundly. Firstly in the introduction of humanism into Christian theology, and secondly due to the emphasis on spiritualism. Christianity, on the whole, in this period was one concerned far less with slavish concession to authority, and one much more concerned with experiential spiritualism. Anybody who would characterize the 16th century in such a way as you have has clearly not read Erasmus or Teresa of Ávila or Savonarola. Hell, or even the major Reformation figures like Luther, Zwingli, Melanchthon, or Bucer. There was far more to it than you seem to think.

I won't say it was all sunshine and roses. I'm not delusional. The Peasants' War, the Beeldenstorm, and the Italian Wars were all horrific and destructive, to say nothing of the violence perpetrated against the Jews at this time. But there was also a ton of good that was happening at the same time. It was a beautifully complex era in a beautifully complex region. It's like, the main reason why I study it.

 

[warpus]

Famous Five.

Okay then, let's remove almost every single historical figure from history books, and take down all their statues..

 

[Senethro]

Okay then, let's remove almost every single historical figure from history books, and take down all their statues..

This but unironically.

 

[Thorgalaeg]

Maybe more robustly in a bit, but suffice it to say, "witch hunts" were heavily localized, and not particularly common, deadly, or persistent even in the regions in which they did occur (and were also largely a 17th century phenomenon). Degree of religious tolerance varied heavily by region, type of settlement, ruler, and time period. Reformation and counter-reformation doesn't really say anything about violence and intolerance per se. Book burning/banning was, again, nowhere near as commonplace or widespread as you seem to think it was.

This was also the period in which humanism exploded into the political conscious. The 16th century was the first time where, on a large scale, knowledge, learning, and the arts were being weaponized as tools in political warfare. Learning and the arts were exalted by secular leaders to a degree that hadn't been seen in that way in hundreds of years. The reintroduction of Greek was an enormously costly, generations-spanning endeavor. We're talking on the level of billions of dollars in today's terms. Latin scholars were finally reading things other than Cicero and Boethius. For the first time, again, in centuries, people were going into Monastic libraries and taking books off the shelves. The Renaissance wasn't about the rediscovery of classic texts in that Western Europeans discovered that Muslim and Orthodox scholars had been preserving them all this time, so much as it was a discovery that Western Europeans had these books all along, but nobody was really looking for them. I can't remember the specific text (might have been De Rerum Natura) was discovered literally being used to hold up a table. It had probably been serving that purpose for several hundred years. The only extant copy of that text, and nobody had bothered to look at it until then.

Christianity in this period also changed profoundly. Firstly in the introduction of humanism into Christian theology, and secondly due to the emphasis on spiritualism. Christianity, on the whole, in this period was one concerned far less with slavish concession to authority, and one much more concerned with experiential spiritualism. Anybody who would characterize the 16th century in such a way as you have has clearly not read Erasmus or Teresa of Ávila or Savonarola. Hell, or even the major Reformation figures like Luther, Zwingli, Melanchthon, or Bucer. There was far more to it than you seem to think.

I won't say it was all sunshine and roses. I'm not delusional. The Peasants' War, the Beeldenstorm, and the Italian Wars were all horrific and destructive, to say nothing of the violence perpetrated against the Jews at this time. But there was also a ton of good that was happening at the same time. It was a beautifully complex era in a beautifully complex region. It's like, the main reason why I study it.

Of course there were many good things and brilliant people. Europe is a huge place and 100 years a long time. Specially in the 16th century when the big change from the old medieval world to the new age was happening. If you read my previous post i talk about Burgos law which is regarded by many as one of the first references to human rights in modern world. But you always study the most interesting events of any any given time. Beyond the intellectual elites, 99'9% of the people was still in the dark ages, as primitive and xenophobe as ever and anybody of different religion was a pagan or worse, an heretic which needed to be converted for his own salvation or destroyed for the glory of God. Moors, jews, indians, protestants (or catholics) or wathever. No very different attitude a Taliban has towards other religions today.

 

[inthesomeday]

Okay then, let's remove almost every single historical figure from history books, and take down all their statues..

Would you be quite sad if we did? Do you feel like you need icons to worship, and snuff out dissent against?

 

[Thorgalaeg]

This but unironically.

 

[Lexicus]

Take that dude's statues down too

 

[sophie]

But you always study the most interesting events of any any given time. Beyond the intellectual elites, 99'9% of the people was still in the dark ages, as primitive and xenophobe as ever and anybody of different religion was a pagan or worse, an heretic which needed to be converted for his own salvation or destroyed for the glory of God. Moors, jews, indians, protestants (or catholics) or wathever. No very different attitude a Taliban has towards other religions today.

I mean, I specifically study the exact opposite of "the intellectual elites", and I can state unequivocally that none of this is correct.

In areas not dealing specifically with my field of research, refer (again) to the spiritualists. They were an ENORMOUSLY influential force in 16th century Christianity - Protestant and Catholic alike - and they began pretty explicitly as an anti-elite movement. I would direct you, again, to refer to Teresa of Ávila, or many of the early alumbrados like Isabel de la Cruz, or some of the German spiritualists like Müntzer or Karlstadt. Erasmus's whole point was likewise explicitly anti-Intellectual elitism - a programme of education designed to get the church away from esoteric Ivory Tower semantic quibbling à la Aquinas or (ironically) Ockham and into the chapels to do what they were meant to do: uplift the layman. This was likewise the cause which Jan Hus and the other members of the Bohemian reformation took up.The major movements I identified (aside from weaponized humanism) started as commoners' movements and developed with an animus explicitly directed away from intellectual elitism.

The Protestant Reformation really should be viewed in the context of a broader Catholic Reformation initiating as early as the 13th century, which, by and large, was the product of agitations among the lay world, and in particular the middle and lower classes of the lay world, to find a more personal, more experiential form of salvation. This is manifested both in earlier movements like the Franciscans, the Hussites, and Erasmus, as well as in the major Protestant movements, and these spiritual and humanist elements were likewise incorporated into the Church theology post-Trento (the so-called Counter-Reformation - not a term I particularly like).

 

[Lexicus]

I mean, I specifically study the exact opposite of "the intellectual elites", and I can state unequivocally that none of this is correct.

I am interested in the relationship between playing Civ as a young'un and unconscious adoption of a linear view of history with all the required simplifying assumptions.

 

[warpus]

This but unironically.

Okay but first let's start with the monarchies and existing "living statues"

 

[innonimatu]

I mean, I specifically study the exact opposite of "the intellectual elites", and I can state unequivocally that none of this is correct.

In areas not dealing specifically with my field of research, refer (again) to the spiritualists. They were an ENORMOUSLY influential force in 16th century Christianity - Protestant and Catholic alike - and they began pretty explicitly as an anti-elite movement. I would direct you, again, to refer to Teresa of Ávila, or many of the early alumbrados like Isabel de la Cruz, or some of the German spiritualists like Müntzer or Karlstadt. Erasmus's whole point was likewise explicitly anti-Intellectual elitism - a programme of education designed to get the church away from esoteric Ivory Tower semantic quibbling à la Aquinas or (ironically) Ockham and into the chapels to do what they were meant to do: uplift the layman. This was likewise the cause which Jan Hus and the other members of the Bohemian reformation took up.The major movements I identified (aside from weaponized humanism) started as commoners' movements and developed with an animus explicitly directed away from intellectual elitism.

Erasmus or Teresa de Ávila were hardly anti-elitists. They were born already as part of the wealthiest and most educated strata of society. Though they did let a "rebellion" or sorts, they were not outsiders to the elite of the era.

The attitude of the common people in the countryside was, I suspect, very tolerant throughout the Middle Ages, though subject to regional variations and swings in periods or calamity or due to the action of some charismatic individuals. But I have not yet found enough information to have any certainty about this, and don't think will ever. The most convincing evidence I've seen are the manuals about confessions for priests, which indicate that there were quite a lot of common "sins" that the church expected to be happening, and could not afford to punish too strictly. Live and let live was probably the rule, sometimes interrupted by an outsider bringing in a new agenda and setting some people against others, with morals or sins possibly being an excuse more than the cause of conflicts. And these comings and goings of outsiders were probably rare. This was a time, we should keep in mind, when transgressions were punished with death (very rarely) transportation to some relatively far away frontier or the galleys (rare) or some symbolic humiliation, prison being unpractical. My guess is that most transgressions had to be tolerated because small communities had no practical means of repressing those without serious harm to the community. And, or course, Europe was a large place with many regional differences! My take on this came from reading histories about the southern, Mediterranean countries. Feel free to correct me!

The towns and cities were probably more unstable, the swings and the crowds occasionally let to flashes of emotion, and on that we do have evidence. The pogrom against "new christians" that happened in Lisbon in 1506 came unexpectedly and against the will of both the church authorities and the royal authority. But all it took was a climate of fear and plague, and the initiative of some renegade monks and foreign sailors to start it. More famously and also in a place that had been relatively "liberal", there is the case of Gorolamo Savonarola in Florence, how he took power despite his rather talibanesque ideas, and later lost power just as suddenly. Some of the things he did remind me of the events at Münster with John of Leiden, but those had a more dramatic background in the peasant's rebellion and did not come unexpected.

My impression is therefore that intolerance and the use of force to impose conformity with moral prescriptions were less common, or at least less successful, in the late Middle Ages than in the Renaissance and early Modern eras. The 30 years war was terrible, the one Middle Ages parallel I can think of, the conquest of occitania by the french monarchy under the cover of a crusade, was not nearly as destructive.

 

[sophie]

Again, bizarre. The English translation of both Spanish terms Latino and Latina is the gender neutral Latin. Just like the English translation of both Portuguese terms brasileiro and brasileira is the gender neutral Brazilian. Using LatinX as a gender neutral English word makes as much sense as using BrazilianX or brasileirX.

I suppose using LatinX goes beyond a desire to use a gender neutral term and into the territory of signaling how gender conscious one is.

Latin, at least to my native English-speaking ear, refers exclusively to the Latin language, and even then, solely the language itself - not a speaker of the language, who is referred to as a Latin-speaker or Latinist, but never "a Latin" (similarly to other denonyms/languages - Chinese, English, French, Spanish, etc.). Any association with Latin in terms of "someone from Latin America" would be considered archaic at this point, and largely unused due to an association with that person being an "old guy racist", which would get you back to reasons why "Hispanic" has largely fallen out of regular use (aside from it simply being a non-comprehensive term).

Latinx is simply an acknowledgement that operating on the assumption that "all are masculine until proven otherwise" is kinda sexist, in the same way that we've moved towards gender-neutral or gender-ambiguous terms in a lot of other things (e.g. fireman -> firefighter; waiter/ress -> server; steward/ess -> flight attendant, etc.). If it bothers you so much, you're also more than welcome to use latino/a, that's generally the terminology I use when I'm actually vocalizing the word.

 

[Bugfatty300]

Oh gosh, if anyone is in need of protection in the social hierarchy it's the frat boys! Who shall we find to take their slings and arrows??

I think the fact that the most complaints of cultural insensitivity are against them says more about horrible frat boy culture than anything else. I really don't buy the narrative of society being overrun by over-aggressive "SJW" political correctness.

Who are the people making the complaints? Actual Mexican people or others?

Most are Chicanos I think; people of Mexican decent who live in the US and are more familiar with it's race peculiarities.

 

[Evie]

Maybe more robustly in a bit, but suffice it to say, "witch hunts" were heavily localized, and not particularly common, deadly, or persistent even in the regions in which they did occur (and were also largely a 17th century phenomenon). Degree of religious tolerance varied heavily by region, type of settlement, ruler, and time period. Reformation and counter-reformation doesn't really say anything about violence and intolerance per se. Book burning/banning was, again, nowhere near as commonplace or widespread as you seem to think it was.

While it's true that they reached their peak in the first decades of the XVIIth (and slightly later at the fringes of the European world, with Salem being one of their last dying gasps), it would be eminently questionable to characterize witch hunts as largely or primarily a XVIIth century phenomenon. That would be to ignore the way they build up throughout the XVIth to that early XVIIth century paroxysm - and the way they were already fading in much of the European core long before the mid-point of the XVIIth century.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I was nothing but polite.
The conversation is a result of your volition.
You in fact butted in.
You are entitled to have role models of your choosing.
You are very much not entitled for other persons to not have opinions about them.

And it would do you well to consider your own tone first.

It's hardly "butting in" when you reference me or quote one of my posts and then go on to post something snide.

You could have expressed your views without that.

You said this before.
Unless you want to be in the Canadian Senate (the Senate? really?) they are kind of late to give you the franchise.
And as much as it may hurt your sensibilities:

is not polite.

I did not say I wanted to be in the Senate (I'm qualified on most points except a major one: I don't own a house or land; otherwise, if Trudeau wanted, I could be appointed tomorrow if there was an opening for an Alberta senator). But even if I did there are much worse jobs a person could have, and barring egregious rule-breaking, it's a secure job until age 75.

 

[NovaKart]

Sometimes people lose their jobs and are targeted over a misunderstanding or by overly zealous SJWs, it’s a thing but I do think it’s open for debate as to how common it is. And some of them want to shut down a discussion, like what happened to Kimberly Peirce at Reed College.

 

[Lexicus]

like what happened to Kimberly Peirce at Reed College.

RIP this martyr of the Great Culture War of 1990-????

 

[Akka]

I entered this thread with the expectation of seeing a lot of white male Americans speaking on behalf of "minorities" and applying strictly US-centric problems and visions to the world at large.
It certainly didn't disappoint.

Cultural appropriation? Is this another stupid US thing which is eventually exported to the rest of the world making us all a bit more stupid?

The ability to describe the near entirety of the subject in a such a concise and yet true sentence is pretty impressive

 

[inthesomeday]

I entered this thread with the expectation of seeing a lot of white male Americans speaking on behalf of "minorities" and applying strictly US-centric problems and visions to the world at large.
It certainly didn't disappoint.

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