Department Of They Nailed It, Again (damn!)
Once again, a well-researched, well-written, well-postulated, intriguing, provocative article from The Atlantic … And, once again, because said article observes the truth about our society, it is also well-effin’ depressin’ in some ways.
“The internet’s biggest by-product is loneliness; porn isn’t special in that regard. You and I weren’t made to live this way; we barely are living this way. Many of the traits that make us human—our compassion, our ability to devote sustained thought to a problem, our capacity to fall in love and to sacrifice for the people we love—are meaningless to the algorithms that rule us. They’ve deformed us.
Every time I hear a middle-class young woman make the utilitarian argument for why she makes sexual videos on OnlyFans—because she can make in two hours of work what would take her 40 hours to earn waitressing—I think, Here it is at last: end-stage capitalism. The phase in which nothing has any value or meaning other than its sale price.”
( Excerpt, “Sex Without Women – What happens when men prefer porn?”
The Atlantic, by Caitlin Flanagan )
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Department Of Things That Never Get Old [1]
Welcome to yet another new feature of the new year, which may continue on the third Friday of each month. Or…not.
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Department of Holy …
Cow? Mackerel? Matrimony? Shit?
Holy Uncanny Photographic Mental Processes, Batman! [2]
Ahem – make that, Holy Week, ® which, in the Christian tradition (or most of them [3] )
is this week.
“During Holy Week, Christians recall the events leading up to Jesus’ death by crucifixion and, according to their faith, his Resurrection.
The week includes five days of special significance. The first is Palm Sunday, which commemorates Jesus’ humble entry (on a donkey) into Jerusalem to observe Passover….Maundy Thursday marks Jesus’ institution at the Last Supper of the Eucharist, thereafter a central element of Christian worship [4] …. Good Friday commemorates Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross….Holy Saturday, also called Easter Vigil, is the traditional end of Lent….Easter Sunday is the celebration of Jesus’ Resurrection, according to the Gospels, on the third day after his crucifixion….”
( excerpts; Brittannica: What is Holy Week? )
“The Easter celebration is a bit of a strange holiday. Is it about bunnies and eggs? Is it Pagan, or Christian, or Jewish? Why does the date move?…
What is Easter?
Easter is a Christian holiday celebrating the day Christians believe that Jesus returned from the dead after being killed.
So why does the date of Easter move?
And where did the eggs and bunnies come from?
In early Christianity, the Christian church moved the celebration of Easter to coincide with an existing pagan festival on the first full moon after the spring equinox, which is why Easter moves every year. In old pagan customs, eggs were a symbol of new life, and rabbits a symbol of fertility. These ‘Easter eggs’ became ways for Christians to talk about the “resurrection” (when Jesus Christ came back to life) they celebrated.”
( excerpts, “What is Easter: A Timeline of Holy Week,” Westminster Chapel )
We (MH and moiself ) are heading up to visit daughter Belle for the weekend. Weeks ago, when moiself began looking at lodging and restaurants for the trip, I wondered why venues seemed to be so crowded or unavailable…oh yeah, it’s a holiday weekend. MH and I had to be reminded that this week, for many, is Holy Week. We’ve often remarked to each other that it’s funny how, once you’re out of religion and your kids are out of their school cycles, the breaks/holidays at this time of year (Spring Break; Easter, which sometimes coincide but not this year) just aren’t on your radar.
So, Happy Holy Week to those of you who observe it. [5] Just please remember [6] where your observances come from ( moiself’s primer follows; you’re welcome ) before y’all go around proclaiming holy this and holy that.
As with almost all “Christian” holidays, Easter was originally a festival of another religion, and derives from a variety of pagan celebrations When early Christian missionaries encountered the Northern European tribes they attempted to convert them to Christianity and, of course, alter the peoples’ existing religious observations. They did so somewhat stealthily, as suggested by church authorities and finally “officialized” in 601 A.D., when Pope Gregory I issued an edict to his missionaries regarding the customs of peoples they wanted to convert. Rather than ban outright the native customs and beliefs, the pope had his missionaries incorporate them (e.g., if people worshipped a tree at Yule time, rather than cut it down, Greg I advised missionaries to consecrate the tree to Christ – thus, the Christmas tree).
Still, every Easter, many Christian parents are put in the uncomfortable position of having to explain to the kiddies why the torture, execution, and supposed resurrection of Jesus is celebrated with colored eggs and cute widdle-bitty bunnies – uncomfortable, in that most adult Christians have only a vague clue about the connection. [7]
The name of the holiday, Easter, is the name of a pagan goddess, and was identified as the source of the holiday’s name by a Christian theologian, “The Venerable Bede” (672-735 CE, in his book De Ratione Temporum). The name Easter has many variations (Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra, Eostre, Ester, Eastra, Eastur, Astarte, etc.) but all of these come from the same Roman deity, the goddess of the dawn, named “Eos” or “Easter.”
The Saxons also celebrated the return of spring with a festival commemorating their goddess of offspring, fertility and springtime renewal, Eastre, and other ancient peoples had similar celebrations. The Scandinavian deity was “Ostra” and the Teutonic “Ostern” — both goddesses signifying spring and fertility, and their festivals were celebrated on the vernal equinox. Christian apologists often insist that the name of the goddess Easter is just a coincidence, and that the name actually came from the Germanic word “ostern.” Cool story, bros, but this doesn’t explain all those bunnies and eggs.
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Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week [8]
Special Easter Edition
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May you strive to see the value or meaning of everything other than its sale price;
May you appreciate the origins of rites and rituals and their variants;
May you celebrate Spring, no matter what you call it;
…and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
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[1] At least, to ever-youthful moiself.
[2] Robin’s 20 Weirdest ‘Holy Batman’ Lines From the TV Show
[3] Easter is celebrated on two different dates depending on which church you belong to. The Great Schism of 1054 caused “The Church” to be divided into the Catholic and Orthodox Church. Later, the Catholics switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, while the Orthodox Church followed the original calendar system of the Julian calendar.
[4] Which most Christian churches refer to as Communion; which most non-Christian religions view as a bizarre, ritualistic quasi-cannibalism.
[5] And if you do celebrate Holy Week, what the holy hell are you doing reading THIS blog?
[6] Or learn, for the first time, if you’re like the majority of Christians who have no little idea of the histories of their holidays.
[7] Some remember that Easter is somehow linked to the Jewish Passover celebration. However, seeing as how Yahweh didn’t send a plague of egg-hiding rabbits into Egypt, the link seems rather…tenuous.
[8] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
