Barnstorming on an Invisible Segway

That makes sense - as to why people miss it, I mean. Because doesn't Hammurabi's Code have something similar? And doesn't the Biblical code owe a lot to Hammurabi? Unless, of course, you believe the Bible is a direct transcription of the Word of God and doesn't owe anything to anyone human.

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Jesus sent us off to bring comfort to the imprisoned, so while it may be that many people conceive this as How Christians Do Things, I don't think Christ can be reasonably attached to it.

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spaceoperadiva.livejournal.com

I'm picking on us, but the Chinese do this as well. It's less a "Christian" thing (although that's the way a great number of Westerners seem to mentally frame it, going all the way back at least to the Crusades) as a Us versus the uncultured Barbarian hordes.

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alecaustin.livejournal.com

Hey, I resemble that remark! (The "Us vs. uncultured Barbarian hordes" one, I mean.)

Still and all, despite my clear awareness of the superiority of Chinese culture to everyone else's, I can understand how Wergild works. I don't understand why other cultural imperialists find it so damn hard to get their heads around; perhaps they're just inferior?

(I'm kidding about being a cultural imperialist, of course. Kind of.)

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spaceoperadiva.livejournal.com

I think the thing is that some people buy so heavily into their own cultural constructs that not only do they think them superior to everyone else's, they become unable to analyze any other culture except through a (usually negative) filter of their own cultural biases.

One doesn't have to go native and start wearing linen tunics and carving runes to understand weregild, but one does have to pry one's mind out of one's day to day 21st century mindset for a couple of seconds to get it. The people who can't do this are absolutely no fun to eat out with, because they won't even try the squid salad. :-D

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This reminds me of my history prof at Gustavus. He started the first day of class by saying that anybody who didn't read science fiction needed to start, because that was the mindset we'd be cultivating for his class. Platonic love at first sight, it was.

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lthomas987.livejournal.com

Which prof?

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Eric Carlson, for "England 1399-1688."

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I am still in a state of annoyance about the lack of things to request on interlibrary loan about Finland. On the other hand, I see the Byock has arrived. (I am bouncing, quietly, in a newly brunette sort of way; but, you can't see that of course.)

Is that one of the ones you have read? (Viking Age Iceland)

You know on a slightly different topic, one of the things that came of his website (I downloaded and can send if you like) aside from what I am writing you in email about Egil's Bones, is about how the system functioned primarily through arbitration (I guess there is some other not-unimportant social stuff in there; I am really looking forward to this book.)

I think the other thing that is capturing my attention is what I know about the history, how very subsistance fragile it was. I do wish I had more of the languages, not just for finding out about things like wergild but for understanding the richness of the art that came out of this.

You've got me thinking about bride prices now, and more genrally about value, war, feuds, stuck things, and also something (Alan Garner?) said about WWII inspiring an unusual amount of good fantasy. And then back into mulling about fairy tales and the different ways we tell each other stories.

And now kitsune, and dangerous women. ;-)

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WWII inspiring an unusual amount of good fantasy

Seems only fair. WWI inspired an unusual amount of good poetry.

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WWI inspired a metric crapload of good fantasy, too, and can't be justly blamed for the bits where that good fantasy inspired bad fantasy.

And Pat Barker, oh, oh; good non-fantasy prose as well.

I'm still furious with my schools for trying to gloss over WWI, because there's just so much there.

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I honestly think that WWI changed the world, in ways that WWII only intensified.

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Maybe it did. I'm not sure on that one. I can't disentangle the old Physics Mris from the more general approach, so WWII seems very different indeed and not just more intense.

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That was me again. Sorry. At least I logged in the second time (WWI poetry links, below).

I get WWII from a different perspective: not engineering physics in my education but also six years of Hebrew school. It seems to me that the dehumanization that led to trenches and gas attacks in WWI was the major factor allowing for atom bombs and concentration camps in WWII, but I can't think of any way to argue about whether the changes from the two wars were one thing or two that's not entirely subjective.

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I don't think that the building of the atomic bomb was dehumanizing. I think that physicists had previously allowed themselves a naivete they couldn't allow themselves any more after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was more plausible to think of things as "interesting problems."

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I was thinking more of the usage of the bomb than its building. I can see being able to delude yourself about the bomb before its use.

Though I'd submit that scientific experiements performed on concentration camp victims during that war was dehumanizing, on the part of the scientists as well as the politicians mandating such experimentation.

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Yes, I agree that when you're experimenting on a human being right in front of you, you have no excuse for naivete.

And most of it wasn't good science, either, which is a lesser consideration but not available as a mitigating factor.

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I was thinking about this..

http://www.viking.ucla.edu/Scientific_American/Egils_Bones.htm

about being able to write that way from Egil's position. I admire that. And I apologize I think that should have been WWI.

What poetry were you thinking about?

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That article about Egil is fascinating. (Do you suppose he's the Egil Peter S. Beagle had in mind, in Folk of the Air?)

There's a ton of information about WWI poets on the web: here (http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/projects/jtap/tutorials/intro/) and here (http://www.firstworldwar.com/poetsandprose/) and here (http://www.english.emory.edu/LostPoets/) and here (http://www.english.emory.edu/LostPoets/). Start with the last - it has the most poets discussed, with examples from each. The others address fewer poets in more detail.

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I am afarid I don't know the answer to the first question. I've read it twice but both times were very long ago (bookwise.)

Thank you for the links!

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Yes, I have read Viking Age Iceland. Also Medieval Iceland and Feud in the Icelandic Saga. Love the Jesse Byock.

Arbitration, yes: it made much sense to me. Much sense indeed. So much I've been playing with it (among other things) in Dwarf's Blood Mead and related works.

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not... playing how? I am stamping hard on a Prince Humperdinck quote here. (Time etc)

The piece that caught me was the absence of the judicary and executive branches.. which is not to say anythng about implementing in current systems aside from what I recognize as actually happening.

And also, I am afraid I have to admit that I was cushing a bit to Egil and also to realizing something about history, and myself, and that was that I did assume a lesser type of cognisance.

The Byock Egil thing.. he was working towards demonstrating that there is historical relevance in the stories also.

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Playing in the sense of turning over what it'd mean for people, what assumptions it'd produce and how they'd go right or wrong or sideways. The fiction-writer kind of playing.

You assumed a lesser type of cognizance when/where/with whom?

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I am going to reply to this in email, mainly because I think it dovetails in.

But so that I don't leave the thread hanging here, the word I was really looking for was prejudice. It just struck me, that as much as I think about different types of intelligences, that I was so surprised when I read about Egil's verse. And why that was says something about my assumptions about Icelanders (or people maybe of that time.)

It relates to several other non-LJ conversations about differences, that as much as we try to understand and discuss etc, it is very hard to be unbiased. This I really feel is at the root of that situations I mentioned to you at work, that is really is a culture clash. There are personal elements and they don't help but the base is cultural. But then too I lived within another culture for a while (yes, I know we have them here too) and experienced that from the reverse.

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sorry, that one is me.

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mamapduck.livejournal.com

What a tit.

Although maybe she just couldn't spell "punitive damages".

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dlandon.livejournal.com

*gag*

I can excuse getting an obscure, difficult-to-find historical fact wrong. But I cannot excuse inaccuracy with something that is so damn easy to research that it could only be sheer laziness that caused the author to mess up.

Puh-leaze.

- D

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