YALL...

like— think for a second about how mind-bogglingly incredible it is that we know who osiris is? that somebody just made him up one day, and told stories about him to their kids, and literally thousands and thousands of years later we are still able to go “there was a god whose brother cut him into pieces”, it’s so arbitrary, it’s so incredible

that in talking about scheherazade and her husband, you are doing something that someone in every single generation has done since it was written— you are telling stories that have lasted an impossible amount of time 

can you conceive of telling a story, and then traveling into the future and hearing that same story told— with alterations, and through media that you could not possibly conceive of, but your story— in the year 3214?

the fact that we! as a species! have been telling the same damn stories for so long— the fact that we’ve seen homer’s troy and chaucer’s troy and shakespeare’s troy and troy with fucking brad pitt because we never fucking stop telling stories! never ever ever!

we never stop caring about stories, or returning to the same stories, or putting our own spins on stories. we never stop talking about the characters as if they were real, or asking what happened next, or asking to hear it again.

But stories were told of him - yes?

And did they make people laugh?

Did they make them squirm?

But a hearth stone was carved of him, yes?

Someone's love and time emptied into little mouth stitches and a curly mustache

They imagined him, right?

And someone looked at the sky

Saw Thiazi's eyes

And the old dwarf's toe

And saw the red one, burning bright

And named it Loki -

Right?

Does a lack of worship mean

A lack of love?

What about a million scintillating threads tying the web of stories, great and small?

What about kindling the imagination

Like wildfire

Like dandelion seeds

Blowing across a northern sky

Why does worship not mean

Deeply Beloved?

I am with Them - They are with me

Everyone who once heard a story who heard a story of a god called Loki

And told it to someone who told it someone

I'm sick of seeing that lie peddled by clickbait news sites and popular accounts trying to ridicule her with "Oh you didn't expect coffee to be hot?".

What actually happened should radicalise you.

In 1994, Stella Liebeck, who was 79 years old, spilled coffee on her lap while in the passengers seat of the car. The coffee was dangerously hot and caused third-degree burns over 16% of her body including her inner thighs and genitals.

*Warning - Very graphic images of the burns*

Image 1.

Image 2.

Stella originally tried to settle with McDonald's for the cost of her medical care - $20,000. They only offered her $800.

Throughout the case it was discovered that McDonald's were selling coffee between 30-40 degrees higher than other places. That change in temperature causes third-degree burns much faster, if it had been from somewhere else she would have had roughly 20 seconds to wipe away the coffee and avoid third-degree burns.

Congress’s anti-communism target fell hard on Hollywood, and those in the industry who were suspected of communism at all were blacklisted from all jobs, because studio’s didn’t want to face backlash from Congress

Salt of the Earth was made nearly 100% with blacklisted crew members from Hollywood, and had such difficulty finding actors that they hired local citizens and miners from the actual strike the plot is based on. There were only 5 trained actors involved, and one of them (Rosaura Revueltas, the woman in the gif) was deported to Mexico before they finished filming on accusations of communism, with no proof and no substance. The filming was plagued with police harassment and threats (according to my professor they were shot at more than once), and the local union hall was burned down.

Decolonization isn't a metaphor. It isn't some untouchable ideal. It's an active, constant process of undoing and unlearning, while re-learning and re-making ourselves.

The world has moved on, indigenous peoples are exhausted of saying this, but some people are still stuck in 1900's racist terminology. Eliade, author that, in my opinion, we have to thank for popularizing the term "shamanism", claimed that the rituals of shamans are first and foremost ancient techniques in "primitive" cultures.... which ties back to the racist idea that some peoples and traditions are less developed, "savages, primitives", less evolved than the white people who engaged in "advanced, civilized" european religions.

"The Tungus (also known as Evenki) word saman or xaman, from which the term “shaman” is derived, is among the most frequently used indigenous terms in the history of religions and anthropology. Other examples, historical or contemporary, are fetish from the Portuguese Congo, mana from Melanesia, tabu (taboo) from Polynesia, totem (dotem) from the Ojibwa in North America, and potlatch from the North West coast of North America. These and other concepts were uncritically employed as comparative notions in anthropology until they fell into disrepute with the abandonment of reductionist evolutionary theory during the 1920s. Since that time, scholars have called attention to the semantic problems of taking words out of their original linguistic, religious, and cultural contexts in order to give them a universal meaning."

"In the history of religions and anthropology the term “shaman” has become a common denominator for religious specialists in indigenous traditions outside the Western cultural sphere, particularly in so-called “primitive” cultures. The predominant view among specialists on shamanism has been that the shaman can only exist in simple communities, i.e., in nomadic cultures based on hunting, fishing, and gathering. As we shall see, anthropologists have developed a predilection for the dichotomy “shaman” versus “priest” when describing religious specialists operating in non-Western cultures. In this model, “shaman” designates a “primitive” religious specialist living in allegedly “simple” tribal communities whereas the “priest” is a religious specialist in hierarchically organized (e.g., self-styled “civilized”) urban societies."

— both quotes are from Pharo, Lars. (2011). A Methodology for a Deconstruction and Reconstruction of the Concepts “Shaman” and “Shamanism”. Numen. 58. 6-70. DOI: 10.1163/156852711X540087.

Because I don't have the time nor energy to write a detailed post myself, I'm going to invite the community to these light readings below, and to look into their further reading, as to educate themselves on why certain terms belong in the past and should stay there.

Now take this logic and apply it to things like ADHD, autism, clinical depression, and other less visible/divergent disabilities. You cannot think your way out of feeling.