This close
Sep. 11th, 2022 09:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingbootThis close to losing my temper big time and telling a whole bunch of good worthy people to f*** right off. It's been what, two, three days? So I get it's all still raw. And whatever the mourning period, whether it's just seven or, god help us, ten, I still don't know, all I need to do to gain fame and fortune is say on social media; 'She isn't dead. I have seen her and spoken to her, and she is risen!' And I swear, I could be a millionaire by the end of the week. I am not joking; if it wasn't such a disgraceful thing to do, I might almost be tempted. I just need to sound credible, then make up some nonsense; and if I say she walked on water or she healed my tendonitis or she gave me a message to impart to the nation, I tell you, they would eat it up. There's only one thing they can't bear to hear and that is anything that shatters this burgeoning new χρῑστή Elizabeth in their heads. And I am furious with people I thought were sensible actively forbidding friends to comment on their FB with anything 'negative,' by which they mean true but unflattering of Her Majesty. Are we not already inundated with social media cults who think it is all right to silence dissent? Do we really need another? These damn things are everywhere. and their proponents absolutely deserve to be mocked and/or ripped off, prissy little authoritarians right and left. God I am sick of them.
I cannot believe that anyone forces silence on their disagreeing friends.
Yes I can, of course I can. People are just feeling and it's only proper to let them process pain. I know, I know. Again, being a grown up, understanding. It is just so irritating to watch history being rewritten.
So far it's been 'don't blame the monarchy for colonisation, it was all the East India Company!' Sinking the whole matter of the Raj and other, shall we say, incidents across the world ('I just tripped over this tea-chest, yer onner') apparently there were Kings and Queens and they were all nice and sacred (I'll come on to that in a minute) then along came capitalism and ruined everything. I mean, there's a lot wrong with capitalism, but can we at least accept it's better than feudalism? A life where, born as an agricultural labourer, you stayed as one all your days, and aspiration was in defiance of God's plan for you as a serf or whatever? Oh, the evils of being lifted out of poverty! Jaysus, this is Men In Tights style history.
But it is not the worst. I am on the verge of endless face-palms over this 'sacred king' stuff, Golden Bough theories grafted onto Arthurian myths, and somehow dragged into the 21st century. Oh they are pretty in their way, but we have no evidence to back up their existence pre or post William the Conqueror. He was anointed as king with sacred oils by the Church, because that was how your claim to kingship was ratified. With all his glorious anointing he then went on and committed what apologists try to claim was 'not quite a genocide.' Kingship was no sacred thing, it was hard and bloody and cruel; and without this base, no English king has any right to anything. There must be a line of descent, via Sophia of Hanover, back to William of Normandy, who gained his kingdom by war and mass murder. It has nothing to do with sanctity. Hieros Gamos was not a thing, the one who came nearest to it was Elizabeth I, and she used the idea for propaganda purposes. It's not mysticism, it's politics.
But there is a kind of magic in the weaving of moods and symbolism, and yes, it is intensely powerful. I listened to some of the service of Thanksgiving, and some of it was soaring in its beauty.Behold O God Our Defender by Herbert Howells was the pinnacle for me, beyond this my interest began to wane. And if my foot was up to it, I would go into Edinburgh this monday to see the passing of the coffin. For yes, this is the end of a cycle the like of which I will never see again. I respect it, love history, try to understand the lessons of time. And I too am a part of all this in some way, though I don't feel it as others do.
If I can hold on to that, my ire will fade, and instead of wanting to snap 'Donchoo ever make me choose between truth and friendship again,' I will really feel what I know to be true; that this is pain and terrible grief for many. I scream in my corner here, so that my silence everywhere else can be genuinely benign, the mark of a friend.
But it ain't easy.
I cannot believe that anyone forces silence on their disagreeing friends.
Yes I can, of course I can. People are just feeling and it's only proper to let them process pain. I know, I know. Again, being a grown up, understanding. It is just so irritating to watch history being rewritten.
So far it's been 'don't blame the monarchy for colonisation, it was all the East India Company!' Sinking the whole matter of the Raj and other, shall we say, incidents across the world ('I just tripped over this tea-chest, yer onner') apparently there were Kings and Queens and they were all nice and sacred (I'll come on to that in a minute) then along came capitalism and ruined everything. I mean, there's a lot wrong with capitalism, but can we at least accept it's better than feudalism? A life where, born as an agricultural labourer, you stayed as one all your days, and aspiration was in defiance of God's plan for you as a serf or whatever? Oh, the evils of being lifted out of poverty! Jaysus, this is Men In Tights style history.
But it is not the worst. I am on the verge of endless face-palms over this 'sacred king' stuff, Golden Bough theories grafted onto Arthurian myths, and somehow dragged into the 21st century. Oh they are pretty in their way, but we have no evidence to back up their existence pre or post William the Conqueror. He was anointed as king with sacred oils by the Church, because that was how your claim to kingship was ratified. With all his glorious anointing he then went on and committed what apologists try to claim was 'not quite a genocide.' Kingship was no sacred thing, it was hard and bloody and cruel; and without this base, no English king has any right to anything. There must be a line of descent, via Sophia of Hanover, back to William of Normandy, who gained his kingdom by war and mass murder. It has nothing to do with sanctity. Hieros Gamos was not a thing, the one who came nearest to it was Elizabeth I, and she used the idea for propaganda purposes. It's not mysticism, it's politics.
But there is a kind of magic in the weaving of moods and symbolism, and yes, it is intensely powerful. I listened to some of the service of Thanksgiving, and some of it was soaring in its beauty.Behold O God Our Defender by Herbert Howells was the pinnacle for me, beyond this my interest began to wane. And if my foot was up to it, I would go into Edinburgh this monday to see the passing of the coffin. For yes, this is the end of a cycle the like of which I will never see again. I respect it, love history, try to understand the lessons of time. And I too am a part of all this in some way, though I don't feel it as others do.
If I can hold on to that, my ire will fade, and instead of wanting to snap 'Donchoo ever make me choose between truth and friendship again,' I will really feel what I know to be true; that this is pain and terrible grief for many. I scream in my corner here, so that my silence everywhere else can be genuinely benign, the mark of a friend.
But it ain't easy.
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no subject
Date: 2022-09-11 10:54 am (UTC)And when people are mourning the Queen's death, what they are really mourning is the departure of a fixed point that has been fixed for longer than many of them have been alive. Certainty in a world of flux. I think that's worth mourning.
Yes, of course, the British monarchy is steeped in colonialism and genocide. Much of the past is.
But, I dunno. I think it's wrong to judge the past by the moral standards of the present. A hundred years from now, you know, our descendants will be villifying us because we slaughter live animals for protein even though technology exists to grow protein in a tub.
And I guess I'm high church enough to find the atavistic rituals of the past rather charming. 😀. I'm sorry your foot is bothering you! I would quite like to see the procession of The Coffin through Edinburgh's medina vecchia through your eyes.
no subject
Date: 2022-09-11 11:34 am (UTC)We cannot judge the past by the moral attitudes of the present (having said that, William's Harrying of the North was considered extremely brutal even by the standards of its time) but I would at least like folk to base any judgments on something closer to real history than The Mists of Avalon!
I would like to go into Edinburgh on Monday. But the truth is, I have a blood test at 10 that day and my foot has got much worse over the past week, so while I don't doubt I would be all right at the time, things might get a bit hairy after.
It's definitely a shame.
no subject
Date: 2022-09-11 11:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-09-11 11:46 am (UTC)