Question: We had a bit of a debate on how Japanese (and Greek) gods are seen as racist. I was wondering if you could give me some details on where this came from. Since I cannot find it, but everyone just says so.
Ah, the heady smell of mythological racism!
Let's not leave anybody out; it's not just the Dodekatheon or the Amatsukami. Pretty much all gods are pretty racist by modern standards. It's not that they're necessarily bad people (okay, a lot of them are bad people), but that they come from a time and a religion when that was accepted as fact. They're old, and, just like your ninety-year-old neighbor who still uses embarrassing racial slurs without the slightest recognition that that's not okay anymore, they come from a different time and a different worldview.
The idea that all ethnicities of people are actually the same and should be treated equally is a desperately new one in the world, unfortunately; for the vast bulk of history (and certainly all the time periods from which the religions of the gods of Scion came), other races were not just people like you that happened to be different colors or shapes. They were actually other races, as in not like you and, in many cases, probably not as good. Ancient cultures almost always treat foreign races as threats, weirdos or inferior beings; it's a cultural self-defense mechanism. Romans looked at Celts and saw dirty, primitive peoples who were clearly nothing like themselves. Spaniards looked at Moors and saw strange, incomprehensible peopl who were clearly nothing like themselves. The Japanese looked at the Chinese and saw weird, superstitious people who were clearly nothing like themselves. And historically, the usual conclusion for most cultures is that those other people over there are probably just less awesome than they are - either weaker, or stupider, or weirder, or more barbaric, or whatever else they came up with. In the modern day, having collectively kind of figured out that racism is douchey and we should all stop doing it, many countries no longer find their solidarity that way; now we employ nationalism, saying "My country is better than your country" rather than "My people are better than your people", but it's the same general principle.
Racism in ancient cultures is practically a given, and it's far from confined to only the Japanese and Greek gods. The Japanese probably get the strongest of those vibes because of their incredible insularity as a culture - these are a people who wouldn't even let foreigners into their country until the mid-nineteenth century, after all, and who have been cultivating a tradition of cultural and racial superiority for hundreds of years, currently best exemplified by the infamous nihonjinron. The Dodekatheon are probably on peoples' short lists because they encompass those shining examples of racial snootiness, the Romans, who were so condescending about foreign races that they refused to believe that they even had traditions and religions of their own and instead just assumed that they were doing the Greco-Roman religion, just wrong because they weren't very bright. But beyond them, there are also the Aztecs, who believed that all other races were just put on earth in order to be sacrificed, or the Chinese, who thought even other races of Chinese were probably monkeys, and slews of others all around the world. If you feel like some Wikipedia spelunking, there's a pretty great article about concepts of foreign races across history over there that's well worth a look.
(Not that any of this is to say that no ancient people anywhere ever respected foreigners, or liked them on a personal basis, or anything like that. It's just a general overview of the wide majority.)
So it's not so much that gods are racists as that they come from places and time periods before racism was even a concept. Each one is a deity who believes his pantheon and race are the best pantheon and race, and why shouldn't they? As far as their own myths and legends go, it always seems true. That doesn't mean they'll necessarily be horrible to everyone who isn't from their native lands, nor that individual gods might not sometimes adopt more lenient modern attitudes, but for the majority of them, their ancient laws, customs, and beliefs belong more to a world that viewed different races as distinctly different beings than to a young, modern one that views them as the same on a fundamental level. It's one of the many places that Scions may have to struggle, attempt to reform or even fight against the gods; they're modern people with modern morals, and that means they're likely to clash with their old, crochety racist parents now and then.
what is the Aiser racist view, and do they even have one considering there policy of sleeping with just about anyone as long as they look good and even if they don't (cough...Freya...cough, dwarves...cough). And if anyone says nazism I will reach through the internet and slap you because that was a completely human invention.
ReplyDeleteThe Aesir certainly distinguished between races as distinctly different beings that were not treated the same way. The poem of Rig (Heimdall) and his creation of various races of humanity separates them into three distinct groups: the race of thralls (described as black-haired, sunburned and flat-nosed), the race of commoners (described as red-faced and bright-eyed) and the race of nobles (described as blond, fair, slender and more wise). The same poem also opens by declaring that it will discuss all races descended from Heimdall, those "greater and lesser". Most scholars view this as a pretty clear example of creating a divine reason why some races are inferior to others (similar to the religious roots of the caste system in India).
DeleteSince they don't have much in the way of records of their social behavior, it's hard to tell how interaction with other cultures really went outside of murdering them and pillaging their villages. It's a pretty safe bet that a normal viewpoint of "we're awesome, everyone else is less so" is appropriate, especially since everyone else in Europe is doing the same thing at this time.
Again, there's probably not much foaming at the mouth xenophobic "zomg foreigners are inferior devilspawn" going on, just as there wouldn't be in most ancient cultures. It's just a de facto baseline.
Back in my Senior Year of college the Professor for my Scandinavian Tales and Sagas Class (which was amazingly awesome) touched on this a bit. The Aesir, apparently, had a certain type of clan view with a fancy name that I can neither recall off the top of my head nor motivate myself to try to find in my notes at this hour. But anyway, the gist of it was that it was okay for men to marry/sleep with women outside of the clan (since descent was traced patrilinearly anyway) but not for women to sleep with/marry men outside of it (which is presumably part of the reason why Odin was upset at Freyja for sleeping with the dwarves).
DeleteA tidbit about that that the scholars find interesting is that the only God that was born from the union of an Aesir female and a non-Aesir male was Loki, whose father was a giant. They think it's meant to signify that even his birth was "improper," or something along those lines. And it's supposedly just one more reason why he was looked down upon.
Trick comment. There are no aesir women.
DeleteAll excellent points. I hadn't even thought about that re: Freya, but it makes perfect sense - the Aesir tend to joke about her proclivities a lot, but that's the only time they've ever gotten on her about her busy after-hours schedule.
DeleteHeh, this reminds me of first reading through the Florentine Codex and seeing the rich, tangy racism that the Mexica used to describe their neighbors. The Otomi got it the worst, IIRC.
ReplyDeleteIt's also kind of humbling when you look at comparatively recent studies in anthropology and zoology and suchnot and find things printed by highly respectable, educated people who spout things that, fifty years later, sound like they came from the mouth of some backwoods hillbilly.
The Mexica are such unabashed racists. It would almost be admirable for its ballsiness if it weren't so totally awful. (Not that they're the only ones - the Culhua racism right back at them in the Codex Chimalpopoca is pretty impressive, too, iirc.)
DeleteYeah, I actually had this question pop up right after some thoroughly nauseating trips through the halls of Egyptology gone by, where otherwise incredibly awesome scholars whose insights and contributions were invaluable were also stridently yelling about how the Egyptians had to be secretly white and the Nubians, being black Africans, could never have built any of the stuff in their kingdom on their own. Sigh.
intelligent people are limited by the wisdom of there time. The Rabbis who wrote the talmut were incredibly wise and rational, but they also favored slavery and stoning and held the xenophobia inherrant in Judaism at that time (I say xenophobic because they were a far more insular society than almost all there neighbors requiring circumcision and conversion to Judaism before letting any forgein male join them a marry a jewish woman. Also if any of you know about the story of Jacob and the daughter of the egyptian priest he married you know what I'm talking about. She had to be converted to Judaism by divine power and "cleansed" of the taint of worshiping the pesedjet before Jacob would marry her.
ReplyDelete