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Thursday, June 30, 2016

Diversity: It's What's For Dinner!

Or lunch, in this case.

Where I work, we have a regular event where they set up lunchtime booths for people to bring in dishes from different cultures in order to celebrate diversity. I got an email recently asking if I wanted to furnish such a booth. I'm thinking of doing one called, "Taste of the Aztecs." It would feature nothing but organ meat.

Did I mention it would be very fresh?
Twigging off: That image came from this frightfully evil web page, designed to show children that the Aztecs were brave and kind and the Spanish were evil and violent. I swear, Hitler in Mein Kampf had more facts and better logic than this rubbish. Here are some quotes.
  • "The Spaniards’ use of animals and technology made them no less barbaric than the Aztecs, just dramatically different."
  • "The eating of human flesh by the Aztecs was an act of great religious solemnity and compassion."
  • "Large animals were not indigenous to Ancient Mexico. Tapirs and deer were among the largest types. For this reason, animal drawn carts were not invented and the wheel was not used technologically (though children’s toys were made with wheels). Though the Aztecs did lack European knowledge of metallurgy, they were keen merchants and patrons of the arts. Their capital city was probably the biggest, cleanest and most beautiful in the world."
It's the work of pampered children who live cocooned in a world of luxury created by the Christian Europe they've learned to despise as a part of a chic, hipster culture that confuses shallow ignorance with deep thought. I think the easiest and clearest rebuttal is this: You would never in a million years deliberately choose to live in a world derived from the Aztec civilization.

I'm open for other suggestions for responses to this sophomoric idiocy.

3 comments:

  1. I'm with (fan fiction author) Vathara-- she did an amazing book re-imagining Avatar: the last airbender, and one of the changes was removing an Aztec flavored group.

    I can't remember exactly how she described it, but it was something like "Yes, they did worship the sun. Go look up how they did it. Don't do it near meal time."

    ****

    I'm slightly mean, so I'd probably respond in the form of putting them in real context-- not with European Christians as a baseline, but with all the other groups as a baseline.
    By that measure, they were just a little bit nastier.
    Has the added benefit of helping to get it across that Jesus' thing about us all being brothers was really freaking radical, and don't get me started on the restraint involved in "an eye for an eye."

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  2. I'm thinking of doing one called, "Taste of the Aztecs."

    Try to work the flayed human skins worn as ritual/religious clothing into the event.

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  3. Great idea, Ilion! And here I was wondering what to wear!

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