Many of us have been arguing that the confederacy statues should be removed from public squares. I firmly agree with that sentiment as expressed by, among others, the very unsentimental David Petraeus. Few nations are foolish enough to celebrate traitors who wanted to destroy their country or to perpetuate the dehumanization of 10% of their country. Those statues must go.

While that is the most important point, the question then arises what should happen to the imagery. I think history important and hence believe that the statues, or many of them, should be preserved in less official places to ensure that Americans never forget the evils that once lurked in their public squares.

In that context there is an example that may be illustrative. I have an old friend who has run two museums in the New England regions famous for the old whaling industry. Those institutions used to celebrate the adventures of white people and perhaps the odd white whale. That was, however, a deceptive portrayal of the relevant history.

My friend the curator went through the old records and found a lot of neglected details, including some unseemly ones. Determined to remedy that imbalance, he forged relationships with other parts of the hoary maritime networks and created exhibits to describe them. The museums now have exhibits showing the presence of Japanese whalers in New England--no rarity back in the day--and elucidating the fact that a lot of those ships were also involved in the slave trade. So yes, there are now cooperative relationships between museums and universities along the Slave Coast of Africa and some of the stodgiest, previously "whitest" communities in New England. Now delegations travel back and forth, exhibits are exchanged, and records are compared and shared.

That, in my view, is how history should be done. There are no statues to slave traders in public squares along the New England coast, but there are now museums that explain what truly happened: everything from Captain Ahab and visits to Old World, to the Japanese people and documents in New England, and thence to the profoundly disturbing connections between New England whalers and the enslavement and transportation of Africans to the Americas.

Let's not destroy our history. Let's correct it. No more trumpeting Manifest Destiny and ignoring the Native Americans; no more praising Ishmael but averting our eyes from the role that that most American of industries played in the country's Original Sin.

The truth, blemishes and all.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/13/2020 09:24PM by Lot's Wife.

Statues are designed to glorify. They need to be done away with.

And I love me some fresh scrapple fried up crisp in an iron skillet. But here I'm going to turn into a cranky old goat and say that Tastykakes aren't as good as they used to be before the corporate takeover.

I'm a little biased in favor of museums, having worked for one, but yes, they can be a remarkable resource for reflecting our changing social values through original source material.
Love to the duckies.

We were able to go to The Barnes before they moved it to Center City near the Philly Mormon McTemple. Boo to both things.

Here's a great documentary about The Barnes and Philly corruption in general:

"The Art of the Steal" https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1326733/

The Barnes was bequeathed to Lincoln University, and my father used to sit in the Barnes and sketch when he was a student. The museum was like BOOM! All up in your face crammed with twenty-something billion dollars worth of art.

I guess it's good that it's more accessible to the public because it's no longer on the Mainline, but still.

Hervey - if you're out there, I just bought six pounds of Scrapple (everything but the squeal, y'all), and a ton of Tastykakes on Amazon. Awesome.

I love the Barnes. And they should never have moved it.

Would that all scoundrels were as artistic as he was.

Amen

The best thing we can have in public: space (to create your own [FREEDOM] activities, narrative, memories and such)!

Peace

Recently there were a couple of dreary troll posts trying to stir things up with a comment that ran against generally accepted reality. It was along the lines of "The Earth has always been flat!!"

But the topic, with just as much documentation in opposition to the claim being made, was an example of just how ignoble humans can be. ...like ignoble and evil...

Okay, I'll just say it: The troll post said that the Holocaust is fiction.

We have museums dedicated to the substantiation of the occurrence of the Holocaust, and besides documenting its existence, these museums serve to warn us.

According to the a recent inquiry to the Los Interwebz, 14 United States Presidents have "Libraries" which I assume have a bit of a museumish aspect to them.

It's said that the current President intends to house his enormous, "it's the biggest library of any President, with the most 1st place golf tournament trophies" at either Pebble Beach, Agusta National or Pinehurst, whichever course bribes him the most.

There's a museum for EVERYTHING!

'Tis rash, I know, to reply to an EOD post with a serious observation. But rash is who I am. In fact, my real name is "Lot's Rash Wife" although an evil biblical scribe deleted that plain and precious truth. I'll never understand how Joseph, when correcting the Bible, failed to rectify that calumnious omission.

With that irrelevant preface out of the way, I would say only that the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin is overwhelmingly effective. The idea is unexpected, the construction profound in its simplicity. There is no attempt to make it frightening; children run through the stones and sometimes climb on them. The profundity comes from the historical context. Perhaps one day something similar will be possible as a memorial to slavery in the United States.

I would hope so. I would like to see the confederate statuary stored somewhere accessible for those who want to see it and for historians trying to understand the era of slavery and the two eras of Jim Crow. But it would also be good if the United States arrived at a place where something simple but profound could be created to mark the experience of the men and women who lived through those traumas and the pain inflicted by those scars on the country as a whole. The Holocaust left a gaping wound in the heart of Germany and slavery has did the same thing to the United States.

One day it won't be controversial to say that. One day it will be okay to say "I'm sorry."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/15/2020 04:54PM by Lot's Wife.

I visited the Holocaust museum in Berlin about ten years ago. It was a very sobering experience. I understand that many Germans were opposed to its construction. But it is there as a reminder.

So now think of a Slavery Museum in Washington DC, not too far from the White House.

Building can often be more inspiring and glorifying than the exhibits inside them. The Natural History Museum in London is housed in a fantastic building that is itself a monument to the Victorians who built it. Similarly, simple memorials, I think, do more to focus on the reality of what is being memorialized than grand statuary. My visit to Yad Vashem was moving, the simple children's memorial was emotionally shattering for me.

Visiting museums has always been high on my list of enjoyable/educational activities :)

A museum is reasonable for housing the relics representing the perspectives of different groups. It's certainly better than the mob coming and tearing down statues and rioting imposing a radical view on everyone else, as a few have been doing recently. But this may eventually lead to the tearing down of 'all' public monuments. Society may not universally agree on who is still acceptable, so they all would have to go.

Where would that lead us? Probably a more European way of looking at things, a sort of lost hopelessness, lost sense of purpose, a lack of defense of a cultural morals that in the past may have produced superior results, there would be no sense of a present manifest destiny.

In America the movement seems to be to erase heritage, As Jesse Lee Peterson suggested most folks sense there is something wrong with them, that they are in a fallen state, but they want to have pride and push the blame elsewhere, so they take their discomfort out on other things and other groups. They pass the buck.

America has been exceptional because we have traditionally taught children about the great men of our founding (even the confederate heros such as General Lee, and Stonewall Jackson), we had our heroes, but now those heroes are being relabeled as racists. And the mob wants to take them down. The next generation will be getting an education that has devolved of it's heros, it will be aimless. Society will become aimless like Europeans currently are.

macaRomney Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> But this may eventually lead to
> the tearing down of 'all' public monuments.
> Society may not universally agree on who is still
> acceptable, so they all would have to go.

This is the slippery slope problem that goes ignored. Mt. Rushmore, The Jefferson Memorial, everything named after Washington?

I brought up this problem in a post about Eric Gill, who committed horrible evil:

Is Gill Sans Evil?

https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,2289946,2289946#msg-2289946

The writing on the wall was written at least ten years ago when very silly people got away with removing the n-word from Huckleberry Finn. That was a travesty.

macaRomney Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> A museum is reasonable for housing the relics
> representing the perspectives of different groups.
> It's certainly better than the mob coming and
> tearing down statues and rioting imposing a
> radical view on everyone else, as a few have been
> doing recently. But this may eventually lead to
> the tearing down of 'all' public monuments.
> Society may not universally agree on who is still
> acceptable, so they all would have to go.

Slippery Slope Fallacy. Tearing down monuments to racists and slave owners does NOT mean the loss of all monuments.

https://owl.excelsior.edu/argument-and-critical-thinking/logical-fallacies/logical-fallacies-slippery-slope/#:~:text=A%20slippery%20slope%20fallacy%20occurs,come%20to%20some%20awful%20conclusion.


>
> Where would that lead us? Probably a more European
> way of looking at things, a sort of lost
> hopelessness, lost sense of purpose, a lack of
> defense of a cultural morals that in the past may
> have produced superior results, there would be no
> sense of a present manifest destiny.

1. Is there a peer reviewed source for your claim of hopelessness in Europe, something you learned in Europe, or is this another example of your anal-cranial inversion, macaRomney?

2. Losing a sense of Manifest Destiny wouldn't be bad for the same reason losing the Divine Right of Kings and the old belief that the Imperial family were living gods were beneficial-- they were lies used to justify horrible things.

>
> In America the movement seems to be to erase
> heritage, As Jesse Lee Peterson suggested most
> folks sense there is something wrong with them,
> that they are in a fallen state, but they want to
> have pride and push the blame elsewhere, so they
> take their discomfort out on other things and
> other groups. They pass the buck.

From what I've seen, it's guys like you that blame everyone else. Over a century of slavery? "Not my fault!" Policy to Native Americans that meets the definition of genocide? "Manifest Destiny!" The public realizing that having monuments glorifying said atrocities? "They're destroying our heritage! Get the tiki torches!" Instead of accepting that the country was terrible in the past and working to right the wrongs of the nation, you build up the atrocities as some "golden age."

>
> America has been exceptional because we have
> traditionally taught children about the great men
> of our founding (even the confederate heros such
> as General Lee, and Stonewall Jackson), we had our
> heroes, but now those heroes are being relabeled
> as racists.

1. General Lee and Stonewall Jackson commanded armies against their own government. That's not heroism, that's treason.

2. Teaching kids about the founders as you describe is like American exceptionalism and the Mormon version of the profits; it's bullshit that gives people warm, fuzzy, special feelings instead of telling the truth.

3. They're not being relabeled as racists, they always were. We're just admitting that now.

> And the mob wants to take them down.
> The next generation will be getting an education
> that has devolved of it's heros, it will be
> aimless. Society will become aimless like
> Europeans currently are.

Hero worship isn't education. And if we need to have apologetics and justifications for heroes (for fuck's sake, macaRomney, learn to spell!) they aren't worth following in the first place.

Again, is there actual evidence for your claim of European aimlessness? Or are you just giving evidence of American cluelessness?*

*BTW, I'm American and have the right to give my country crap for what it does wrong.

> a sort of lost
> hopelessness, lost sense of purpose, a lack of
> defense of a cultural morals that in the past may
> have produced superior results

Who are you describing with those words? Europe?

Or the White House?

"Let's not destroy our history. Let's correct it." ?

Let's not destroy our history. Let's expose it!


I like all sides of a story told. Every facet of a jewel twisted and turned to catch the light and the setting shown to be 18 carat gold or only nickel with some cheap counterfeit plating.

Makes you wonder what a no-holds-barred, lets-show-it-all Mormon Museum would look like that was curated without prejudice. Now that could be a high bar to test a TBM's faith by. No?

I am immediately reminded of the Pompeii exhibit that Saucie and I visited.

It had an X-rated component to it: a room with a docent guarding the door.

Obviously, I was keen to check it out, but Saucie wouldn't let me. She said it was interesting, but only when viewed from a sociological point of view. But she exited giggling so I took her assessment with a grain of salt.

This is the distressing post! (Kidding, LW - cogent thoughts, appreciate)

"To be or not to be . . . " or, sincere apologies to Shakespeare, to statue or not to statue. That is the question.

I don't think we can know "the" answer, unless statues are understood.

A clue is in -- why do these generate such heat? That's the interesting thing.
Suspect it has something to do with survival.

Our brains are wired to function not only in follow-the-leader mode, but also in teams of roughly ten to twenty. Even today this pattern persists everywhere (how many soldiers in a platoon, aircraft in a squadron, players on any sports team etc) -- get larger than 50 and the natural tendency is to splinter into separate groups, even among other primates (local church congregations of primates especially)

But then with agriculture we began to organize in groups of much larger than 50 -- city states and the dawn of civilization -- and roughly at that time, we began carving and erecting statues.

So --

What is the purpose, what do these do?
Why are these so necessary, and why coincident with the dawn of civilization?
That's the question.
Answer these, it becomes easier to approach the topic from less heated perspective, because we neutralize the survival fight-to-the-death factor.

=========

As an aside and of some interest -- statues and what these represent "live" in a part of the brain abbreviated vmPFC.
This structure exists only in humans and in no other species.
(It's also inactivated in the true psychopath.)