Babylon In Bytesize

BABYLON IN BYTESIZE

‘Cultural Appropriation’ is a post-modern term popularised circa 2010 onwards as a part of the ‘Wokeism’ social agenda. It is important to be aware the term ‘woke’ has been culturally appropriated to serve a new agenda, is no longer used in its original intended sense. This characteristic well answers ‘what is post-modernism?’ With shades of Orwellian ‘newspeak’ and ‘double-think’ well in effect on contemporary international cultures. It is an attempt to unify diverse traditions into a more practical and easily managed monoculture. Therefore to express ‘cultural appropriation’ in terms of black and white is difficult outside of extreme and obvious cases of it. 

The English peoples do not object to other nations being english-speaking as a common language as a cultural appropriation due to historical roots of the matter, the English language being one of the Colonial Conquistadors at a time of the past which few if any living persons can remember first-hand. Before hating on the English for this is would do well to become aware the English were perhaps the first and still are living under colonialism themselves, it is deeply entrenched into the mindset. 

My ancestors are Celts. On my mothers side, through the Cornish branch of Brythonic Celts, dating back through mixed European Celts to La Tene region. On my father’s side, Norse Celts mixed from across the Scandinavian region, what we now describe as Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. The evidence for this claim is the DNA testing. Interestingly my son’s DNA indicates he has more Finland DNA in him than I do. We pass along to our descendant genes which are not dominant in ourselves. What else might we be containing? His mother is mixed Germanic gypsariat and Welsh branch of Brythonic Celts. ‘I are’ European despite Brexit. 

Why this is important to mention is in regard to a Bronze Age coin dating circa 3000 BC, discovered in Central Europe, which very clearly shows a Celtic King or Queen wearing dreadlocks. The Celtic peoples, my genetic ancestors had dreadlocks. This is indisputable, with archeological evidence to support it. 

Recently I was accused of cultural appropriation by a woke black woman who did not like how a white guy has dreadlocks. I certainly did not set out to offend anyone. She interpreted the statement of my hairstyle in a different way than I had intended when I made it. In her woke belief system dreadlocks is a black people thing only. 

I have written this by way of a response. My attitude is simple. Live and let live. Work with what works. The path of evolution is always the most practical solution unless passion is involved. By picking up an agenda from post-modern society to use as a weapon to cause segregation between living people, is a form of virtue-signalling and gate-keeping characteristic of the woke culture agenda to create tension and arguments between people. The items used for this segregation are anything which can be exploited to raise hurt instead of healing, anger instead of bonding. Gender and ethnic origin are the social issues stirred up to create segregation. 

Who exactly is it would be afraid of all the people uniting in friendship and mutual understanding? 

Why would anyone stand against that Humanitarianism ideal? 

The situation is not as simple as that. If only it were. We must understand it from both angles to truly understand what is happening, why it is happening. There is a positive purpose, perhaps even a need for concepts such as ‘cultural appropriation’ at this time in history. 

We are already in an unprecedented state of global-scale multi-cultural integration. Our traditions, all of us, are being replaced by corporate monoculture. You know what the yellow M sign is. We all know what the twisty white lines refer to on a diabetes-inducing, sugar-based fizzy drink which is banned in some European regions because it has the same chemical formula as weed-killer and is considered criminally stupid to drink weed killer or feed it to our children. 

But we do not practise the ecological harmonious lifestyles our grandparents and earlier generations did. Is it because our minds no longer work the same way as did our ancestors? Even our roots have become disposable in the consumer super-marketplace. A need to reinforce boundary lines on our heritage, on our traditions, lest they disappear in one living generation is very apparent. Many of us do not even know what those things are any more. It has nothing to do with skin colour. 

But what if they do it better over there? What if we need to adapt to change to survive? We are a heartbeat following the Edo Period of Japan where the Emperor in his wisdom shut the doors of his nation from any dealings with outsiders, to allow a period for the culture to perfect itself. Today any nation which is doing that is regarded totalitarian and inhumane by the rest of the global collective. 

Does anybody here remember a time when ‘The Internet’ was young, we referred to ‘the Global Village’? Does anyone still use that terminology or was it a late 1990s early 2000s aspiration which dissolved with the rise of corporate social media? Somebody I asked this of replied, “It became a city, mate.”