It transcends all cultures that people need celebrations. The beauty in human cultural diversity has something to do with idiosyncrasies. The stories we tell each other about events, such as the first Thanksgiving become part of our national identity. Most stories are fictionalized to a large degree in order to promote national pride, and Thanksgiving is a great example. Conflicts with nationalistic myths an issue in modern times, because we are more sophisticated then we were even a century ago. We know the reality of Thanksgiving is not what is portrayed in mainstream culture. People of conscience are those who believe in an objective morality, in that murder, slavery and oppression is immoral in any culture. The mainstream narrative of Thanksgiving overlooks the treatment of Native Americans by European colonizers. Thats not something however, people of compassion can overlook, and so the narrative will change. Compassion in innate. As much as there is a teeny-weeny voice for compassion in U.S. mainstream culture, it exists. We are more intelligent than we were a century ago, and therefor more compassionate. I know thats a hard sell for activists used-to a focus on the atrocities in the modern age, but it is indeed a cultural trend, and since youre reading this, youre part of that. Think back 100 years to know your ancestors werent concerned with politics in the way you are today. Compassion and intelligence are contagious and growing, so Im confident in predicting the narrative for Thanksgiving will indeed change. Compare cultures to see them as a collection of stories we tell each other, and our moral ethics are reflected in those narratives. We are now starting to tell the truth about the treatment of native Americans. As our narrative of Thanksgiving changes, our ethics do as well. People have always needed celebrations and pride. A challenge in our time is to make celebrations be consistent with modern moral ethics. ~t
Posted on: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 17:50:40 +0000
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