MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 
Parental Love - a myth? (Politics)
Reply to topic Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Ishmael


In: Toronto
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Hatty wrote:
Coinciding with the 'death of God'?


That's what I'm thinking of.

Many try to trace it to the Great War but it seems to me the sickness was setting in decades before that.
Send private message
Tatjana


In: exiled in Germany
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Hatty wrote:

I like it too. Reminds me of springbok, all those gazelle leaping deliriously into the air. Maybe Amish youth are bucks who spring.


I think that's just it. There's an expression in German:
"sich die Hörner abstoßen" (to sow one's wild oats), which describes mostly young men at a certain age going around and make first experiences of all what means to become "a man" . It refers directly to the horns of deer or gazelles or whoever is rubbing his horns when they itch.
_________________
-Gory at thasp, keener fortha karabd-
Send private message
Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Well, it explains why Americans are so fond of Sauerkraut with Wurstchen!

Yes, it's interesting that people will cling onto their cuisine for longer than the way they dress (or speak?). It might be a valid way of determining America's ethnic groups, depending on how many generations on average continue making their traditional dishes... Cabbage looms large in Central and Eastern European cooking though, not just German (in the Hassidic programme the 'hero' was chopping pickles exactly the way my Romanian mother-in-law did, I could taste them as I watched him).
Send private message
Hatty
Site Admin

In: Berkshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Many try to trace it to the Great War but it seems to me the sickness was setting in decades before that.

Yes, God 'died' at some point in the nineteenth century, there's an almost tangible sense of mourning (and hostility towards those who were seen as responsible, the reaction to Darwin was no less intense than the controversy that raged around Galileo). But is this lack of spiritual certainty linked to the "cultural suicide" you see in Europe? After all the Victorian era was outwardly vigorous and confident; similarly, large swathes of Europe were under the thumb of totaliarian anti-religion regimes but the arts (even the sciences) flourished nevertheless, presumably because the artists had a mission, a need to be life-affirming. Without some kind of malaise culture has nothing to engage with, it would indeed 'commit suicide'.
Send private message
DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Well, it explains why Americans are so fond of Sauerkraut with Wurstchen!

I asked some of the kids recently to name typical American food off the tops of their heads: I didn't quite get the clear-cut answers I was expecting, but frankfurters and hamburgers did figure highly.

I favour bratwurst, myself.

I still love "Ommadawn."

Then your Soul is Saved.
Send private message
DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Show me the money.

Light blue is German:


http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.jpg

This paper http://www.census.gov/prod/2004pubs/c2kbr-35.pdf

and captions in here http://www.economicadventure.org/visit/exhibits/nbss/maps/ancestry/ancestry.cfm

say the largest single group is German (with twice as many as English or African descent and 50% more than Irish), being the majority in half the counties.
Send private message
Ishmael


In: Toronto
View user's profile
Reply with quote

What is the figure for percentage of total population?

The color map can be misleading because population density is nothing in the interior as opposed to the coast. (This is why the popular vote vs electoral college has proven so divisive of late in American politics.)

And as for revolutionary times, we are dealing exclusively with the 13 colonies. The great waves of European immigration were to come later to populate the west (the current mid-west) which is, indeed, where we now seem to find the majority of apparent German ancestry (though I grant your point about ancestry does not depend on conditions in 1776).

But I have to be honest, I can't help but see these stats as somehow misleading. For example, what is the strange yellow-colored "American" ancestry? Suspiciously, it dominates the most England-friendly part of the nation -- the old south.

Granting that the map is accurate (or has its accuracies), it does raise some interesting questions. Principally perhaps, What drew so many Germans to America? Was it American Protestantism?

One hears all the time of the Pennsylvania Dutch, no one ever talks about Mid-Western Germans.

Another thought...

How might this inform our interpretation of the Celtic Fringe in Britain-Europe?
Send private message
Tatjana


In: exiled in Germany
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Ishmael wrote:
Another thought...

How might this inform our interpretation of the Celtic Fringe in Britain-Europe?


I suspected it years ago already: I have serious doubts about "Celtic" and "Germanic" being so very much different: Dan mentioned the Gundestrup Cauldron found in what's supposed to be Germanic Heartland, ortho archaeologists putting it into the Trade Objects drawer. My doubts stem from Megalithia, the question of who really were the Cimbri and Teutonii (Celts?Germans? Both?), and the similarity in bog rites observed in Britain, in Ireland and in Denmark/Northern Germany....
Not to forget the imo very interesting question as to why the "Celts" do not have a creation myth (but the Germans have one)... and Balder and the whole question of mistletoe... and if I think a bit more about it, I'll probably go even more nuts.
_________________
-Gory at thasp, keener fortha karabd-
Send private message
DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

The color map can be misleading because population density is nothing in the interior as opposed to the coast.

I'm content with the sweeping statement. There is still a sense in which "most of America is German", but I don't draw any conclusions from it. There is also a sense in which "most of America is German" is plainly untrue.

But I have to be honest, I can't help but see these stats as somehow misleading. For example, what is the strange yellow-colored "American" ancestry? Suspiciously, it dominates the most England-friendly part of the nation -- the old south.

We should always be suspicious of stats... and this is about ancestries claimed in the census, so it's probably that self-determined ethnicity bollocks.

German was the top category in 1990 as well, but falling from 23% in 1990 to 15% in 2000 (I think -- it's in that paper) might be the most interesting thing.
Send private message
DPCrisp


In: Bedfordshire
View user's profile
Reply with quote

I have serious doubts about "Celtic" and "Germanic" being so very much different

In terms of the Celts we have left, they could hardly be more different. The industry's conviction that Hallstatt and La Tène arose somewhere in the "Celtic/Germanic" border region might be a very significant pointer to the dynamics of "empires", but all the stuff about how material culture reflects the population and how Celts -- whose identity is officially weakened to "people speaking Celtic languages" -- once populated a swathe all the way through to Anatolia is a tissue of nonsense. No offence.

Dan mentioned the Gundestrup Cauldron found in what's supposed to be Germanic Heartland, ortho archaeologists putting it into the Trade Objects drawer.

Yes, I postulate that "Northern Megalithia" was once Celtic. Jutland was clearly colonised by Scandinavians, so we know one regime was rubbed out by another, sometime. There was even some mention of Celtic ancestry being claimed for Danes/Danish.

the question of who really were the Cimbri and Teutonii

I think I flagged this as an area we need more info on.

and the similarity in bog rites observed in Britain, in Ireland and in Denmark/Northern Germany....

Quite.

The Gundestrup cauldron is usually described as depicting human sacrifice, but Grigsby makes a good case for identifying it with Bran's cauldron of rebirth. {The guy held above the pot is upside down, like a baby being born, or an Achilles being dunked.} In either case, the apparent connection between the cauldron and the bog bodies suggest the cauldron was "at home", not just some foreign objet d'art. Furthermore, it appears to have been dismantled and hidden -- as though the Celtic regime was coming to an end.

But "the Celts built the megaliths" doesn't say anything about the general populations anywhere in Europe.

Not to forget the imo very interesting question as to why the "Celts" do not have a creation myth (but the Germans have one)

Interesting. I thought you said they were no different. You're helping to fill in the picture of how they are different.

People tend to call themselves "the people" and their creation myths tell how they came to be in their ancestral lands. Is that fair? So if the Celts -- I take it you mean the Insular Celts -- have none, perhaps it's because they were under no illusions about having been here for all time.

...and Balder and the whole question of mistletoe...

I don't quite follow, but I find the whole area of Celtic and Viking mythology, art, the Picts, Anglo-Saxons... to be most confused and perplexing. Northern Megalithia will surely find a place in the proper unravelling of it.
Send private message
Ishmael


In: Toronto
View user's profile
Reply with quote

The guy held above the pot is upside down, like a baby being born, or an Achilles being dunked.}


Hmmm...another element of the Meditereanean ancient world showing up in the wrong place?
Send private message
Tatjana


In: exiled in Germany
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Not to forget the imo very interesting question as to why the "Celts" do not have a creation myth (but the Germans have one)

Interesting. I thought you said they were no different. You're helping to fill in the picture of how they are different.

People tend to call themselves "the people" and their creation myths tell how they came to be in their ancestral lands. Is that fair? So if the Celts -- I take it you mean the Insular Celts -- have none, perhaps it's because they were under no illusions about having been here for all time.


...and Balder and the whole question of mistletoe...

I don't quite follow, but I find the whole area of Celtic and Viking mythology, art, the Picts, Anglo-Saxons... to be most confused and perplexing. Northern Megalithia will surely find a place in the proper unravelling of it.

Errr... I might not have expressed myself properly (again).
You mentioned Grigsby's book, which set off a whole stream of ideas in me back then (especially the bog section).
What I think is that what orthos separate into Celtic and Germanic are merely two "tribes" - for want of a better word only, mind! - of one and the same people. Both built Megaliths, both had bog sacrifices, both referred the mistletoe, both used boats and had a long tradition to do so and navigate the sea and the rivers - in Scandinavia, they even built boat-shaped megalithic structures - ,

Both had, and in some cases still have, extremely similar folk customs, the nordic animal-style is extremely like the so-called
Celtic style and the "Celts" don't have a creation myth because the early medieval scribes didn't bother to write it down because they thought it was the Nordic creation myth. Which it is. It's one and the same.
The last is speculation on my part, of course.

And don't get me started on the Picts!
I wish I had more time..... sigh...
_________________
-Gory at thasp, keener fortha karabd-
Send private message
Komorikid


In: Gold Coast, Australia
View user's profile
Reply with quote

Hmmm...another element of the Mediterranean ancient world showing up in the wrong place?


Or the right place if the Mediterranean ancient world was the successor and not the progenitor
Send private message
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic Goto page Previous  1, 2, 3, 4

Jump to:  
Page 4 of 4

MemberlistThe Library Index  FAQFAQ   SearchSearch   RegisterRegister   ProfileProfile   Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages   Log inLog in 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group