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When the conversation is about our place and contributions in much larger systemsI agree with what you're saying, but to me this is a still a problem with no clear approach.
Many content creators are small companies. They lack the capacity (in my estimation) to meaningfully move the dials on this issue. Not to say it isn't good to try, but it also places on onus on them which they may not be able to deal with. Even Paizo is a small business IMO.
Even if Paizo could get everything right and make everyone perfectly happy, the breadth of their audience and the size of their company still means it affects a tiny fraction of the larger system.
That doesn't mean it's not worth caring about, but from my perspective it also seems like a rather hopeless situation. The ones in real positions to move things forward aren't business like Paizo. It's businesses like Facebook, what was 21st Century Fox (the film and tv stuff, not "news"), and other mass media and social media platforms.
Unfortunately it seems like all these titans will do is pull a show or fire an individual if it's deemed offensive by a large enough portion of people.
I don't have a solution, and the situation seems rather hopeless to me. But that's just my perspective on things.
Oh no I agree, at the end of the day each of our own individual choices, or even choices as smaller companies might not change the *whole system* but we can choose how we are going to act within it. Paizo historically, from what I can tell is consciouss of this typically acts deliberately and with respect. Hence why I chose to start this conversation from a position of curiosity.
I recall a few years back Facebook had issues with flagging indigineous names as being "fake" and restricting accounts bases off of that. I am uncertain if they ever fixed it or not
Customer Service & Community Manager
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By Holly Honderich
BBC News July 1st, 2021 Accessed July 9th, 2021
Excerpt: A rising tally of these sites - more than 1,100 so far - has triggered a national reckoning over Canada's legacy of residential schools. These government-funded boarding schools were part of policy to attempt to assimilate Indigenous children and destroy Indigenous cultures and languages.
…
When attendance became mandatory in the 1920s, parents faced threat of prison if they failed to comply.
[I]The policy traumatised generations of Indigenous children, who were forced to abandon their native languages, speak English or French and convert to Christianity.
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"It was our government's policy to 'get rid of the Indian' in the child," said Chief Bellegarde. "It was a breakdown of self, the breakdown of family, community and nation.”
Website for The Indian Museum of North America Website accessed July 9th, 2021
THE INDIAN MUSEUM OF NORTH AMERICA® is home to a large collection of art and artifacts reflecting the diverse histories and cultures of over 300 Native Nations. The Museum, designed to complement the story being told in stone on the Mountain, presents the lives of American Indians and preserves Native Culture for future generations.
American Library Association’s landing page for Indigenous Tribes of Seattle and Washington Website accessed July 9th, 2021
The website has a bunch of links and resources for more information.
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If we are to say authors should not have to expose their heritage( which I am in agreement on), perhaps maybe we shouldn't expect or assume that people who bring up these issues are just overzealous white saviors/allies who have no connection to these issues?I think the problem is that where the criticism is coming from is important, your (in a broad sense not just you) privilege may not stop you from being an ally, and you may strongly consider yourself one, but it matters what things you fight for under that banner and the actual effects they have on the people whose interests you're trying to represent. You might have a gut feeling, or a conditioning that things should or shouldn't be portrayed in certain ways, but the people it actually effects might not feel that way-- making your advocacy potentially harmful. Similarly, you have power that you can misuse, both in terms of the indigenous group, and in terms of others as well, so if you're going to fight the good fight, you have to be self-critical. It isn't about how good you or I feel, its about doing what's right.
For example:
I don't nessecarilly think it's questionable to say people who have historically been violently denied their culture should have priority over how their culture should be used and what aspects of it they feel comfortable sharing.What does it mean for something to not be questionable here? What power are you exercising and who is that decision being made for and imposed upon? Which people who have been violently denied their culture should have priority over how their culture should be used?
The thought of the dominant group acting as a kind of jury who has the power to privilege some voices within marginalized groups over others and then enforcing the desires of those privileged voices is chilling, and its a big part of why my own advocacy rejects 'cultural appropriation' in favor of attacking the root causes of the oppression and increasing representation-- the presence of...
So I think a big issue here is style of our arguments. I am choosing to speaking in a much more casual and ultimately broader manner of speaking. Which may be broadcasting uncertainty and vagueness in my language or goals, compared to yours which is much more precise and formal.
I also appreciate your statement early on expressing to clarifying you are talking in a broader sense as it is helped me feel secure that you've read and choosing to engage with me in having read my full statements.
I one want to say, I appreciate your approach and I think for the most part we largely agree, and we'll given what I've said about my own identity statements on mixed heritage specifically ring true to me all to well. I want to clarify one thing I particularly am viewing cultural appropriation as being a part of a system. Individuals within a system I am not interested in particularly unless if it's something egregious but then that may fall more in the lines of something like stereotyping or engaging in redface. When it comes to appropriation, my question is how are systems, companies, institutions representing a culture or people.
I believe focus and effort should predominately be put towards tackling issues of oppression and representation. I think that language should still exist to describe the feeling one may feel about having a parent who was a survivor of residential schooling( or being a survivor yourself) and having to worry and reconnect with your culture only to then say see it portrayed by agents/systems of the dominant group, especially in a ill informed or disingenuous way. I think language needs to exist to reflect that experience, and the effects of cultural appropriation seem to at least be a decent way of explaining it. There maybe better language, or another manner rof talking about it. But that trauma deserves to be talked about and have appropriate language to better express it. I also want to make it clear that I don't think you are trying to shut down or dismiss those experiences. From your writing I can tell you are extremely passionate about this subject. I am trying to simply express why I still find the language of cultural appropriation useful even if it is not my focus either.
( I want to make it clear I do not think Paizo has portrayed anything disingrniously)
I also fail to see how allowing people to discuss the previously mentioned effects is prvliegeing one voice over the other. It is only a recent phenomenon thanks to mass media and the Internet that a lot of these ideas are actually being heard. If anything it often feels like the dominant group( to be precise here, White Americans) preferring to not engage or listen to Indigineous voices unless it backs up preconceived notions of passivity or indifference. And while I would just love to ignore their thoughts on the matter, they kind of largely hold the institutionalized power in the society that I live in. And if we ultimately advocate for greater representation, yeah some people will view their culture as something be shared, others will have distrust, and will have trauma or strong opinions on how to share it, and I think that's fine. But the language should be there for people to use if they need it.
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...If we are to say authors should not have to expose their heritage( which I am in agreement on), perhaps maybe we shouldn't expect or assume that people who bring up these issues are just overzealous white saviors/allies who have no connection to these issues?I think the problem is that where the criticism is coming from is important, your (in a broad sense not just you) privilege may not stop you from being an ally, and you may strongly consider yourself one, but it matters what things you fight for under that banner and the actual effects they have on the people whose interests you're trying to represent. You might have a gut feeling, or a conditioning that things should or shouldn't be portrayed in certain ways, but the people it actually effects might not feel that way-- making your advocacy potentially harmful. Similarly, you have power that you can misuse, both in terms of the indigenous group, and in terms of others as well, so if you're going to fight the good fight, you have to be self-critical. It isn't about how good you or I feel, its about doing what's right.
For example:
I don't nessecarilly think it's questionable to say people who have historically been violently denied their culture should have priority over how their culture should be used and what aspects of it they feel comfortable sharing.What does it mean for something to not be questionable here? What power are you exercising and who is that decision being made for and imposed upon? Which people who have been violently denied their culture should have priority over how their culture should be used?
The thought of the dominant group acting as a kind of jury who has the power to privilege some voices within marginalized groups over others and then enforcing the desires of those privileged voices is chilling, and its a big part of why my own advocacy rejects 'cultural appropriation' in favor of attacking the root causes of the oppression and increasing
I'm glad we are talking about it.
There isn't anything wrong with talking about it,and discussing the very real harm bad representations can have, and how to go about fixing the imbalance in representation and authorship-- but the movement has power to actually do things, and power can be used, so being very careful about what we decide the right thing to do must be is a necessity: Last time this topic got brought up and OP was disagreed with, they karen'd on twitter about how the Paizo forums should just be shut down, classing us as some kind of space overly tolerant of bigotry. Thankfully nothing came of that in the long term, but I'll admit, the fear that a clarion call was going to go up to consign this place to the dustbin really messed with me, I even spoke up when I saw it in my feed (I'm on queer RPG twitter, as a queer RPG person, go figure) and got blocked by that (very white) kid for my trouble.
Of course, that isn't to suggest we should privilege all speech with a platform simply by virtue of it being *a* viewpoint, but we've seen accusations of appropriation and caricature, leveled at designers representing their own cultures (when Ruby Phoenix was announced, for instance) it isn't hard to see the need for a conversation on the power social movements hold over the subcultures they are working to change, and how to ensure that power isn't wielded abusively (or neutered, but I'm less worried about that with how prolific support for greater sensitivity is, both in the fan base and in companies like Paizo.)
Sayre's discussion of the exhausting need to constantly self identify to attempt to signal that the representations are not disrespectful, is an example of how that power can be misused and become problematic, and sort of also supports the difficulty in navigating issues of representation in ideologically diverse cultural experiences (because we should probably be able to identify respectful depictions and usages by their content, and it seems like we can't do that, given how often indigenous authors feel pressured (as opposed to when they do it in the course joyously celebrating their heritage) to clarify their own histories to render their work respectful in the public eye.)
My personal hope is that our understanding of these issues can evolve, and reframe itself to better target the injustices marginalized (specifically indigenous in this instance, but lets be inclusive) people face (and I think its important to see problems concerning appropriation, as a symptom of those deeper systemic issues, perhaps to the point where fighting them is the best course to fight original problems of representation.)
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...If we are to say authors should not have to expose their heritage( which I am in agreement on), perhaps maybe we shouldn't expect or assume that people who bring up these issues are just overzealous white saviors/allies who have no connection to these issues?I think the problem is that where the criticism is coming from is important, your (in a broad sense not just you) privilege may not stop you from being an ally, and you may strongly consider yourself one, but it matters what things you fight for under that banner and the actual effects they have on the people whose interests you're trying to represent. You might have a gut feeling, or a conditioning that things should or shouldn't be portrayed in certain ways, but the people it actually effects might not feel that way-- making your advocacy potentially harmful. Similarly, you have power that you can misuse, both in terms of the indigenous group, and in terms of others as well, so if you're going to fight the good fight, you have to be self-critical. It isn't about how good you or I feel, its about doing what's right.
For example:
I don't necessarily think it's questionable to say people who have historically been violently denied their culture should have priority over how their culture should be used and what aspects of it they feel comfortable sharing.What does it mean for something to not be questionable here? What power are you exercising and who is that decision being made for and imposed upon? Which people who have been violently denied their culture should have priority over how their culture should be used?
The thought of the dominant group acting as a kind of jury who has the power to privilege some voices within marginalized groups over others and then enforcing the desires of those privileged voices is chilling, and its a big part of why my own advocacy rejects 'cultural appropriation' in favor of attacking the root causes of the
1) I am sorry that happened to the board and you, Karens are really exhausting.
2) As a Trans woman I am really familiar with concepts and ideas that are designed to protect marginalized people being turned against them. I guess from my view point concepts surrounding cultural appropriation still has its uses but that also doesn't mean their aren't better tactics or more important goals to go after.
3) I regret my framing of my original post. I never wanted to pressure anyone to come forward the way Micheal did and I clearly failed at that.
4) I appreciate the discussion you and I have engaged in.
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Some wandering & wondering...
I think cultural appropriation begins where outsiders start to control the narrative more than the original folk themselves do (or when outsiders outright disrespect the original though that's simpler to spot). With the strong imbalance in representation & media presence, privileged people (even with well-intentions) can cross this line too easily and too soon, with it being hard to backpedal. Heck, my first thought of a Wendigo reflexively goes back to the Marvel supervillain(s) which is more akin to the Hulk, but clawed, cannibalistic, and supernatural rather than gamma-powered. It wasn't until D&D/PF that I learned more about the original lore (not that there's a single variant since different tribes approach Wendigos differently.) As others have noted, both from within and without the culture from whence Wendigos came, that's pretty cool to see this myth represented.
Which is to say, if we're going to borrow stories and lore from other cultures, we should stick to the original(s) as best we can. People in Golarion who live around Wendigos probably should be blanking out part of the monster's name or avoiding talking about them; they are capable of wiping out a region after all. That behavior's part of the package. But should I be behaving so? Does respecting another's beliefs entail me acting as if I shared them? Is some reader flinching whenever they read the name in this post? And then there's the bigotry of low expectations muddying the waters!
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Another aspect with culture being represented broadly is eventually its lore will become the lore of others outside the original group, i.e. ancient pantheons. We can see this in real time as characters & lore morph when adopted overseas (or by various RPGs for that matter). Ownership of culture is a difficult concept to delineate even before it goes mainstream or international, much less after. And then someone random will write the definitive work on that lore, i.e. Dracula, and that's that; vampires went from X to Y, even though the originators still believe in version X.
Is that acceptance/transformation/adaption good or bad? Should the myth of the Wendigo have been kept isolated? Would that be respecting or disrespecting it to keep it away from the world?
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I'm reminded of a saying in theater that the playwright only controls 1/3 of the play despite being the one who conceived it. Or how authors & poets have to release their babies into the world and they become the readers' now. (It still amazes me that authors get gainsaid about their own works.) I suspect it's similar with culture.
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I feel like I'm more inclined to say that presenting a thing from a specific people's folklore in a game that shows a wider context in the universe is generally going to be okay provided that we don't contradict (or really comment) on the original culture's presentation of whatever it is.
Like Earth is a planet in the fictional universe Golarion exists in. If we say Penanggalans are real, they're just found in more places than the Malay people who first described them were aware of, that's not necessarily disrespectful to the people who came up with it.
I feel like you're going to run into a lot more problems with your Wendigo story that takes place in like suburban South Dakota than one which takes place on an entirely different planet and describes a similar creature and just describes it using a word that is familiar to the reader.
This isn't carte blanche for sure, but if we're going to have to a gaunt, bloody-lipped creature that represents winter, avarice, hunger, and gluttony that wants to eat sapient beings in our stories, I'm not sure we're doing anybody any good by pretending that's not even related to the wendigo stories of the Algonquin peoples.
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By that standard, since certain Christian denominations, depictions of demons and devils would not only be consider sinful, but also harmful. And so, in order to be respectful we should avoid them or, maybe, form a committee from several Christian denominations to approve the depictions of demons and devils.
Also, as a Peruvian, I should be demanding that the Tunche be removed from future Bestiaries, because it is supposed to be a sacred forest guardian and not something to be slain. As a matter of fact, I was excited to see Peruvian folklore depicted.
Humbly,
Yawar
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Christianity has been a dominant faith and culture not only in the Americas but the world at large and in fact participated in the genocide)and has often been a big part of spreading false ideas of indigenous religions and the removal of religious and cultural practices. So regardless of how you feel about this topic I feel it's in rather poor taste to bring it up as a direct comparison.
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I wasn't going to contribute to this thread as I'm British (Britain has no indigenous culture) and this thread has a distinctively American vibe to it, but I think that gatekeeping which religions/faiths/cultures get to be explored and compared is a little off.
The way culture and ideas are spread and the nature of sacred and profane are not easily separated. Many Christians will have an issue with how imagery from their faith is depicted (as will Muslims, Jews and Zoroastrians with angels&demons).
Control of narrative (as mentioned by a previous poster) matters a great deal. Many cultures like to actively export their own ideas, some don't.
Cultures cannot, and do not, exist in isolation. How they interact is complicated and needs to be done with respect. People are free to disagree with each other, but they need to be aware of how others will react.
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Christianity has been a dominant faith and culture not only in the Americas but the world at large and in fact participated in the genocide)and has often been a big part of spreading false ideas of indigenous religions and the removal of religious and cultural practices. So regardless of how you feel about this topic I feel it's in rather poor taste to bring it up as a direct comparison.Christianity is also one of the most persecuted religions in the world and, unlike some indigenous religions, did not practice human sacrifices.
But again, why does that matter? Either the concerns of groups within a religion about the use of parts of said religion in RPGs are valid or not, be it devils or Wendigo. The subjective degree of oppression has nothing to do with that.
I would argue that
1) The accusations of human sacrifice in indigenous cultures is a nuanced one that has been largely based on and viewed via a western lenses. I am not saying there was never human sacrifice but that subject is complex and I am by no means an expert on it. I would also argue Christianity has had many human sacrifices they just went and called them by several different names( witch burnings, Inquistions, etc)It matters because you are comparing a multitude of cultures that were ultimately almost *exterminated* by the dominant culture that you are comparing them to. While Christianity is not an official state religion of lets say the U.S(as that is where I am from and I'll speak from that experience), it has had a large impact in the development in it's culture. Demons, Devils, and Angels are in western culture because *Christianity* because Christians wanted them to be in there. So even as these nations evolve to secular cultures, they are built largely on Christian foundations. To claim they aren't would be a denial of history. I am not claiming that they should remain that way, but rather it is a simple fact of history. Demons, Angels, and Devils(as symbols and figures, ir not as actually believed in entities) are just as much part of the history and culture of the U.S and other western nations because of Christian influence over centuries.
Not to mention: A lot of what we know about demons, devils, and angels come from literature that is largely not considered to be apart of like actual literal Christian text. How we view these things aren't necessarily coming from like Christian Doctrine.
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The subjective degree of oppression has nothing to do with that.
(I've been writing this for a while and can't remember what the 'that' in the quote refers to, so I'm just using the idea of subjective degrees of oppression as a jumping off point)
I'd rephrase this as which groups hold more real-world power, cultural political or otherwise, and that's a really important factor in these discussion.
If you have something like North American indigenous culture, they definitely haven't held power in recent history. In many cases the US government tried to exterminate them and wipe out their culture.
It's much different to have Native American cultural figures pulled into games than say, devils. Devils (as compared to Satan/The Devil) have been a part of a dominant culture-at least here in the US, where Pathfinder is made and where most of the freelancers live—for long enough that they're pretty well defanged and ubiquitous. Their inclusion in fantasy RPGs isn't really hurting anyone or exploiting any historical power dynamics, because devils're a part of the dominant group's cultural tradition. Christianity has also been well-represented in the halls of political power. Even non-career politician Christians have enough access to power—through feedback to legislatures, faith groups, etc.—that if something truly offensive were being done with Christian imagery, they be a meaningful part of any conversation to alter what was happening.
Meanwhile, many Native American groups don't have the cultural or political presence/power to exercise that control over their own cultural heritage. E.g. the Washington football team with the slur for a name, or the state of New Mexico using one of the sacred symbols of the Zia pueblo on the state flag without permission.
In short, remixing devils neither perpetuates any historical cultural misuse. And if devils/demons/etc were more important sacred figures in contemporary Christianity, the people who held actual stakes in their portrayal could exercise a meaningful amount of control over that portrayal.
If marginalized authors were writing e.g. folklore creatures' portrayals in a Bestiary, that'd be different. They're the stakeholders, they have the context to choose a respectful, joyful way to bring that heritage into the game. You can see that in Bestiary 3, in fact! Off the top of my head, check out the stone lion and the tikbalang.
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All true, but real world power does not factor...
(I've been writing this for a while and can't remember what the 'that' in the quote refers to, so I'm just using the idea of subjective degrees of oppression as a jumping off point)I'd rephrase this as which groups hold more real-world power, cultural political or otherwise, and that's a really important factor in these discussion.
If you have something like North American indigenous culture, they definitely haven't held power in recent history. In many cases the US government tried to exterminate them and wipe out their culture.
It's much different to have Native American cultural figures pulled into games than say, devils. Devils (as compared to Satan/The Devil) have been a part of a dominant culture-at least here in the US, where Pathfinder is made and where most of the freelancers live—for long enough that they're pretty well defanged and ubiquitous. Their inclusion in fantasy RPGs isn't really hurting anyone or exploiting any historical power dynamics, because devils're a part of the dominant group's cultural tradition. Christianity has also been well-represented in the halls of political power. Even non-career politician Christians have enough access to power—through feedback to legislatures, faith groups, etc.—that if something truly offensive were being done with Christian imagery, they be a meaningful part of any conversation to alter what was happening.
Meanwhile, many Native American groups don't have the cultural or political presence/power to exercise that control over their own cultural heritage. E.g. the Washington football team with the slur for a name, or the state of New Mexico using one of the sacred symbols of the Zia pueblo on the state flag without permission.
In short, remixing devils neither perpetuates any historical cultural misuse. And if devils/demons/etc were more important sacred figures in contemporary Christianity, the people who held actual stakes in their portrayal...
You're flat out ignoring the point being made that Devils are NOT actually a part of Christian culture in the way you seem to think they are. They are a part of modern literature that pulls from Christian themes in many cases because it is a dominant religion of the world, but never in the Bible do you see a hierarchy of Hell. Never in the Bible do you see multiple types of Devil. In fact Biblical Satan is a fallen angel, and not the mental image most of us have of a devil.
[re: Ixal's post] I think there's some decent points in there, but I both agree and disagree. Give me a while to chew on it!
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Christianity is also one of the most persecuted religions in the world and, unlike some indigenous religions, did not practice human sacrifices.
It isn't practiced by adherents, but Christianity is absolutely based on a single human sacrifice.
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The PBS YouTube Channel called Storied (a.k.a. Monstrum) has a video about the Windigo. They use that spelling (out of dozens) because it seems the most prevalent among Algonquin sources. They make a point of referencing original sources yet it's obvious control of the Windigo narrative has shifted into mainstream culture's hands. Supernatural featured the creature as has Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, a 40-year old children's book that's sold millions (and continues to compete). So we already have generations in the U.S. raised with the monster as part of their culture.
For the most part it seems that other than Marvel the mainstream renditions have stayed fairly close to the original...except for the antlers because apparently IIRC those were added for a compilation many decades ago. So already we have a signature feature of the Wendigo that's errant, and will likely remain with it, even when we inevitably get a Space Wendigo.
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Control of the narrative's a nebulous concept. We have instances in modern times where authors lose control over their own copyrighted works. Lee Child, whose hulking main character was represented by a small Tom Cruise, made a point that the movies had zero impact on the books; the print remains the same, those stories remain the same, and the movies can't ruin that with their new variant. Such casual recognition of that becomes difficult though when ideas tie back to identity & religion.
Personally I find it both good scholarship and respectful interaction to stay true to the original narratives as much as possible. Yet then there are the needs of the venue, the tides of creativity, and the momentum of time which will alter our stories. Do we even have access to a lost original that precedes those versions we know of?
And then there's the line between respecting the narrative and holding the belief. I cannot do the latter nor act like I do. It seems a step too far IMO to be asked to believe as a matter of usage of the narrative. Of course the ramifications of that ripple throughout religion and therefore politics so I'll simply leave it at that.
Cheers.
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Christianity is also one of the most persecuted religions in the world and, unlike some indigenous religions, did not practice human sacrifices.It isn't practiced by adherents, but Christianity is absolutely based on a single human sacrifice.
A willing person self-sacrifice with perfect knowledge of the consequences and implications of his act. That is greatly different from sacrifing a captive. The enfasis is on self-sacrifice.
Even in the Old Testament, people were supposed to sacrice something of value to atone for their trespasses, but not people. It was a shock when God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son.
Humbly,
Yawar
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There's a difference when one culture has multiple views of how a shared concept gets treated (i.e. Satan) and when two cultures vie to control the narrative that the dominant (and historically domineering) culture did not create. While the cat might be out of the bag re: Wendigos, we who know the source can still defer to the original narratives as the touchstone from which to develop new stories. Yet I'm not sure having outsiders subtract letters or refrain from speaking of a creature was ever a viable option, at least not in the outsiders' own circles.
It's a blurry line between respect for the narrative and respect for the belief behind the narrative (especially if there are different viewpoints within the original culture itself).
-A lot of stats about Christianity are due to its size. It's the most persecuted by sheer number, but the % of Christians persecuted is low. If a religion's present in so many authoritarian countries, that religion's going to suffer under that many more dictators (etc).
-Christians also have done the most persecuting. Canada's unearthed some of that (quite modern) history these past few months though of course the problem stretches back millennia.
-Historically, most Christian persecution has come from rival Christians.
-The same goes for Muslims vs. Muslims, continuing today.
-As pointed out, human sacrifice is a core tenet of Christianity, albeit the one instance. Yet the Old Testament (OT) features human sacrifice, including genocide on behalf of Yahweh.
-At their roots, nearly all ancient religions have human sacrifice. :O
Thankfully most of them gave it up, often before flourishing. Not good for civilization it turns out.
-Angels in the OT were monstrosities, not only for the horrors they unleashed, but in their descriptions too. If not called angels, a mortal witness would measure them demons.
-Dante and his woodblock artists certainly encapsulate much of our modern sensibilities of Christian afterlife lore, yet much of the imagery goes back to early non-canonical Christian works. In these, apostles took road trips through heaven & hell. Dante made the definitive work out of hundreds of years of accumulated lore, much like Stoker did with vampires.
-These road trips did feature different levels, both in heaven and hell, with the levels ranked by degrees (and some inaccessible). They had apocalyptic and/or Gnostic overtones so while popular they didn't make it into the Bible. (And Revelation almost didn't too!)
-Zoroastrianism, Greek-Roman myths & mystery cults, along with Judaism blended together to form early Christian concepts of the afterlife and war between good & evil. The torturous concept of hell came with Jesus. (thanks?)
-Abrahamic religious views on Satan (et al) have morphed a lot, with the original seeds hardly resembling what's sprouted from them. Satan isn't even a name in the Bible, it's a job description. Many of the names we have for him were considered separate entities. And the serpent was just a serpent once. Also a surprising number of ideas which seem biblical sprung up within the last few hundred years.
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It sort of seems like the major point of contention in this thread is whether or not a state of oppression creates a moral justification to empower the oppressed group to limit the use of 'their' cultural elements (scare quotes pertain to the idea of collective ownership of cultural elements, as opposed to free diffusion.)
Thats presumably why other cultures keep getting brought up, to demonstrate that we don't really normally bequeath that degree of control-- both in the sense of whether anything can provide an ethical justification for that authority to limit expression, and whether it would actually gave a positive impact on the indiginous groups status if it did.
As an additional resource in this context, I highly suggest lesbian feminist Sarah Schulmann's Conflict is not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair contrary to the title, it dives into the systemic condition of oppression-- particularly its discussion of control as being at the center of both supremacist and traumatized behaviors on a systemic basis. E.G. the way in which we construct our own power when in a state of conflict, and when we are or feel victimized.
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You're flat out ignoring the point being made that Devils are NOT actually a part of Christian culture in the way you seem to think they are. They are a part of modern literature that pulls from Christian themes in many cases because it is a dominant religion of the world, but never in the Bible do you see a hierarchy of Hell. Never in the Bible do you see multiple types of Devil. In fact Biblical Satan is a fallen angel, and not the mental image most of us have of a devil.
You are conflating canon with folklore and culture. Christmas is not on the Bible, but it would be hard sell to convince someone that Christmas isn't Christian.
Also, there are as many variants of the Christian Canon as there are Christian denominations, so, while influential, Catholic Canon is not definitive.
Humbly,
Yawar
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You're flat out ignoring the point being made that Devils are NOT actually a part of Christian culture in the way you seem to think they are. They are a part of modern literature that pulls from Christian themes in many cases because it is a dominant religion of the world, but never in the Bible do you see a hierarchy of Hell. Never in the Bible do you see multiple types of Devil. In fact Biblical Satan is a fallen angel, and not the mental image most of us have of a devil.You are conflating canon with folklore and culture. Christmas is not on the Bible, but it would be hard sell to convince someone that Christmas isn't Christian.
Also, there are as many variants of the Christian Canon as there are Christian denominations, so, while influential, Catholic Canon is not definitive.
Humbly,
Yawar
Christmas isn't Christian. It's a Pagan celebration of the Winter Solstice that was coopted by Christianity to forcibly convert people from other religions to theirs. I'm not Christian and I celebrate Christmas.
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YIKES!
Lots of crazy toxicity is starting to exude from every pore of this thread, just as I feared.
Listen, folks, if you want to have a conversation where multiple people of different faiths are haggling over who "owns" a particular holiday I'm afraid the boulder is already rolling downhill at terminal velocity, especially when you have adherents trying to claim things that are just flat out historically inaccurate in favor of their own faith.
Perhaps we should lock and discard the thread before it gets any worse, surely?
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Yeah the only one who can claim offense on the depiction of Devils and Hell is Dante Alighieri.
And he dead.
I still think it's kind of wild that Dante's Bible fan fiction is still so influential today.
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A specific point of contention that I think related to the Windigo here is that since the idea of this creature as a monster exists in the wider consciousness, a lot of well-meaning writers who want to do "justice" to the original context are going to do their research by asking a native person about it.
It's going to be pretty annoying if the only interest outsiders have in your culture it's in their monsters, and not what they mean, just the details that can fit in a monstrous context.
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A specific point of contention that I think related to the Windigo here is that since the idea of this creature as a monster exists in the wider consciousness, a lot of well-meaning writers who want to do "justice" to the original context are going to do their research by asking a native person about it.
It's going to be pretty annoying if the only interest outsiders have in your culture it's in their monsters, and not what they mean, just the details that can fit in a monstrous context.
To be fair, that's just the nature of our hobby in particular.
Like, the game is about fighting monsters and doing magic and stuff, we're naturally going to be more interested in a culture's monsters, and its traditions we could work into spell casting, or even cultural weapons.
Meanwhile a musician might be more interested in learning about indigenous music to incorporate those techniques into their own style of music.
A chef might be more interested in the unique culinary traditions of a culture and how they can inform the overall culinary scene.
To some extent, this is actually natural, there's a reason Kumiho, Kitsune, Hui Jing, and other variants of fox spirits aren't interchangeable, its because they were appropriated (or to use a less loaded term, diffused) early in history and the writers and storytellers who heard about them imbued them with new and different meaning.
In fact part of the issue, is that this is kind of a thing culture just does whenever a new group hears it, they pick it up and make it their own, and you get more permutations of that initial story, like a big game of cultural telephone, and then new permutations become culture in their own right.
I know some people are thinking that conversation is a distraction, but it really lies at the heart of this issue and we can't really move forward without discussing it-- we can't gloss over the question of whether someone can ever have a right to limit someone else's use of a culture. Attempts to do otherwise are attempts to win that debate via fiat by presuming an answer and bullying others into accepting it.
In the books 1491 and 1493, Charles C. Mann alludes to this as being the nature of "hemogenocene" that time period where travel and communication make the exchange of ideas and resources throughout the world ubiquitous, whether it takes place through colonialism or some other means.