History is a pyramid of skulls.

[Kidlicious]

Hollywood is propaganda. Sick and bad.

[Kidlicious]

I don't really get what you're getting at here. I don't think people borrowing culture contributes to people being complacent about racism, etc. I think people would be complacent about racism anyway, and admiration for the products of another culture if anything gives them the ghost of a reason to give a damn about its producers. A white boy who's really into rap will at least yell "this is BULL****" if his favorite rapper gets pulled over and harassed for being black. A white boy who doesn't like rap won't even hear about it, or if he does will shrug it off.



In general, really sacred things are fairly easy to distinguish. They're basically always associated with religions of some sort--I can't think of anything else that's intrinsically and exclusively tied to identity in the same way. Haka, for example. I can get why Maoris don't like non-Maoris doing the whole routine, because the act has some kind of spiritual significance to them. It's central to identity as Maoris. As opposed to a custom that just happens to be a way people in a specific community like to eat, dress, or amuse themselves. My lily-white wife used to own an ao dai (it doesn't fit anymore). Some Vietnamese friends gave it to her; nobody dreamed it meant she was trying to steal their culture from them. As I'm not proposing making a law of this, I'm comfortable with leaving it hazy.

As for Christmas and Easter, they diverged from actual Christian practice so long ago that they're essentially different practices that happen to go by the same name and get celebrated at the same time. I see nothing sacred about rabbits hiding eggs or magical fatties hopping down chimneys. If anything, I'm mildly grateful that Americans have not abandoned Christianity so utterly as to leave even the meaningless rituals behind. When a liberal Protestant used a famous Byzantine icon as the title image for her theologically vapid internet manifesto a few weeks back, now, that irked me. Because, if she wanted an impressive-looking picture of Jesus, and her own religious tradition was too artistically and imaginatively bankrupt to produce one anymore, that was her problem. She had no business swiping one of ours.

You got trolled.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Ming? Could you please do something about the pollution? Lori threads, by definition, pretty much have an invisible [serious] tag automatically. Seriously.

[Elok]

Ignore list makes him invisible unless somebody quotes him. All he does is keep it bumped for me. Now, if only people would stop quoting him . . .

Re: OP, I would add that there's a school of thought that "cultural appropriation" includes even writing about characters from a different culture than your own. Straight cis white people writing about Indian princesses or black soldiers or gay teenagers are exploiting the sufferings and experiences of underprivileged communities for their own profit. Or something. In theory, TCOL was a monstrous act of appropriation, since it involves lots of nonwhite characters in a culture derived heavily from Islam. Needless to say, I think this is rubbish. And it's not purely academic; did you follow the link on Slate Star Codex where big chunks of YA fiction are being policed by a sort of Twitter-based horde of liberal censors who trash a book if it strays from prog orthodoxy? Don't have the time to dig for it now, but Scott Alexander was far from the first one to notice it.

EDIT: http://www.vulture.com/2017/08/the-t...a-twitter.html is the article SA linked to. A little Google-fu did the trick.

[Dinner]

That is just example 1,478,389 of why SJW are generally bad people who long ago ran out of real issues to deal with and so now make up imaginary issues simply to justify their continued pointless outrage and general lack of real things to do in their lives.

[Kidlicious]

Didn't know Coke and Hollywood were sacred liberal cows now. Interesting.

[Broken_Erika]

Can't have Hollywood without coke.

[Lorizael]

When a liberal Protestant used a famous Byzantine icon as the title image for her theologically vapid internet manifesto a few weeks back, now, that irked me. Because, if she wanted an impressive-looking picture of Jesus, and her own religious tradition was too artistically and imaginatively bankrupt to produce one anymore, that was her problem. She had no business swiping one of ours.

Now imagine that others feel as invested in their cultural traditions as you are in your religious traditions, and imagine that for some, this happens all the time. I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed to do this, only that grievances about it are understandable. Also, there are no famous Byzantine icons.

[Dinner]

I own a Byzantine Icon though it is a reproduction.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/icon/hd_icon.htm

[Elok]

"Famous" is relative, given that we're the second-largest Christian confession in the world and still get confused, in this country, with a small sect of Jews. At any rate, "cultural appropriation" gets used to refer to a bunch of things. Some of these claims strike me as more reasonable than others. Native Americans not liking people dressing up in buckskins for Halloween, for example; I wouldn't much care to have my public image stuck in the same category as "pirate," "zombie," or "sexy nurse," either. Objecting to people ripping off musical trends seems rather shortsighted and neurotic, since I doubt we'd have had Motown or funk, let alone rap, without Elvis and the Beatles clearing the way. Do these same people refuse to eat our "Chinese" food? As for "you can't write about a group you don't personally belong to," to hell with that.

[Elok]

I own a Byzantine Icon though it is a reproduction.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/icon/hd_icon.htm

Perhaps I should clarify that my objection was not merely to the use of the image by someone who was not Orthodox; it doesn't bug me in the slightest that you own a reproduction of an icon. In fact, I'm rather pleased, even though it means nothing to you on a religious level. In the specific example I cited, my annoyance was at the implication that some hippy-dippy Millennial pastor's tripe was somehow associated with, or endorsed by, a faith tradition that found her whole worldview repulsive. Also, the icon in question was a somewhat ironic choice; it was probably the first mosaic put up in Hagia Sophia after they drove the Latin usurpers out of the capital in the late thirteenth century. The following century and a half was spent steadfastly refusing anything that smelled like theological compromise with the West, even when it might have meant military assistance against the Turks. In effect, that icon comes from the beginning of a period when the Empire, faced with a choice between compromising its beliefs or ceasing to exist as a polity, chose the latter. The saying went, "better the Turk's turban than the cardinal's hat."

[Elok]

OTOH, a few weeks back I was pumping gas when a gigantic pickup truck pulled up, blasting its speakers. The song started out as generic cornball country, then abruptly transitioned into rap with a twang and red-state lyrics ("God-bless-A-mer-i-ca!"). My wife tells me this is a whole genre now. I'm not sure if that represents organic cultural borrowing, or a secret project funded by Steve Bannon to covertly create sympathy for revival of anti-miscegenation laws. Either way, it somehow managed to be worse than the sum of its terrible, terrible parts. So perhaps clearly defined borders between cultures aren't ALWAYS a bad thing . . .

[Dinner]

Yeah, you are right that it has no religious significance to me and I bought it simply because I liked it as a work of art and as a momento of my time spent in South Eastern Europe. On that level I value it as it reminds me of pleasant memories plus it is a nice piece of art. I fully understand that people who are Eastern Orthodoxed in faith can and do appreciate such icons on a religious level well and think that is great. I am not being profane with it and simply hang it on the wall in my living room. It makes a nice conversation piece.

[Berzerker]

I would add that there's a school of thought that "cultural appropriation" includes even writing about characters from a different culture than your own. Straight cis white people writing about Indian princesses or black soldiers or gay teenagers are exploiting the sufferings and experiences of underprivileged communities for their own profit. Or something.

There's too many schools of thought

[Kidlicious]

Now imagine that others feel as invested in their cultural traditions as you are in your religious traditions, and imagine that for some, this happens all the time. I'm not saying people shouldn't be allowed to do this, only that grievances about it are understandable. Also, there are no famous Byzantine icons.

Saying that a grievance is understandable is saying that the offending person should stop offending. I'm actually all for not trying to offend people, but let's take elok for example. We all know how he feels about protestants. If his daughters marry one, and they probably will he will cry in his pillow for days while in the fetal position. He does this because of his own hatred. So I would not be so worried about offending him.