What 'Day' Is Today?
 |
The answer to this article's title question depends on your cultural reference; the ideas your parents, schooling, society and past histories have taught you...and what you've learned since then.
We all share a cultural heritage descending from both natives and colonialists throughout time and place.
We are all children of times of slavery, freedom, war, peace, conquest, liberation, defeat and victory.
We are all children of pride in, and rage at, the past.
Who can claim to be an original inhabitant of any place since mankind has always migrated across the earth?
Migration is when a person or people go from one location to another...even if that location is only a mile away.
Although it is claimed certain peoples (their genome) have never left the African continent, peoples within that landmass have still moved from place to place within.
There may be a strong 'claim' for a particular African people being natives of Africa.
However, without the presence of 'without-a-doubt' empirical evidence showcasing the history of ancient humans (not humanoids or varied human-like animals), such a claim has yet to be agreed upon and factually cited.
The entirety of the human genome has yet to be mapped.
What Is 'Today' And What 'Year' Is It?
In most of the world and for most people at this very moment, 'today' is Monday 9 October 2017.
It is already 'tomorrow' (Tuesday 10 October 2017) somewhere on earth.
In other places and for other people, today is 18 Muharram 1439 (Muslim calendar).
In still other places and people, today is 19 Tishrei 5778 (Jewish calendar).
For some other minds, 'today' has yet to be narrowed down to a particular date and month.
The 'educated' guess says it is year 4, 540, 000, 000 (four billion five hundred forty million), give or take half a billion or so years (a scientist's calendar, maybe?).
That extraordinary number is a hypothetical measure of the earth's age.
What about dating 'today' or calling today a certain day?
Learning From Patterns And Observation
Today is called 'Monday' in most of the world.
The term 'Monday' is derived from old Latin for 'day of the Moon'.
Interestingly, mankind began dating calendars and conceptualizing times by the Moon's movement, repeated pattern and its appearance (new, crescent, full, etc.) across the night sky.
Tracking time according to the sun's movement (via sundial) is, according to archeology, a more recent development considering ancient developments (circa 1500 B.C. Egypt).
Some of the early estimates of timekeeping according to archeology are from the Neolithic era (around 15, 200 B.C.), so maybe today's year could be more like year 17, 217 A.D...but people have existed on earth for longer than 17, 000 years.
The earliest calendar that archeology collectively acknowledges having existed is from Sumer (Babylon) and dates to about 2100 B.C., making this year ... year 4117 A.D. (an archeologist's calendar, maybe?).
Quite a lot of history is full of births, deaths, wars, kings, slaves, ideas, festivals, events, occasions and traditions.
Many people and their ideas were firstly realized then retired and forgotten in any given expanse of time.
Lots of time has past between the Neolithic age of time concepts being formed and that Sumerian calendar bringing time's concept into clearer understanding...and with that time much knowledge.
What is left and being deciphered from looking in the dirt is sometimes built upon previous ideas, and every so often a new idea or discovery changes the way man looks at the past.
What Some People Think 'Today' Is
Let us consider recent history from an American-centric (and largely western cultural) point of view.
In the United States, 'today' has been popularly called "Columbus Day".
The commemoration of Columbus' arrival to the western hemisphere in the year 1492 was first 'officially' recognized by a government body in the state of Colorado in 1905, with a greater government acknowledgment later becoming a federal holiday (all 50 states) in 1932.
Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer commissioned by the Spanish monarchy to search out a passage into India with a western bearing for the sailing ships.
A 15th century Italian sailor hired by Spanish royalty to find a new way to do business with Indian merchants by avoiding the land trading routes held by the Ottoman (Turkish Muslims) Empire as middlemen.
Expecting to eventually find Indians, the sailors traveling with Columbus encountered lands uncharted, unknown and unseen by old-world inhabitants.
Columbus and his contemporaries believed they had arrived in east India.
Amerigo Vespucci (whom America is named after), another Italian sailor commissioned by Spanish royalty, realized that it wasn't east India or Asia that had been 'discovered' by Columbus, but a very different land with different animals and peoples.
Progress According To Financial Motivation
Around the same time the Portuguese were looking for another sea route to India to also avoid market making middlemen.
Along the way they explored and charted the journey around the south of Africa, arriving in India as previously attempted westwardly by Columbus and Vespucci.
Newer ideas do not always replace older ideas, and this is true regarding the naming of places, things, and days.
History's progress (or regress) never occurs in a vacuum outside of economic endeavor.
However, as I see things, as economic motivation is one man's aim (and a default position for most historians I would guess), humanity and its development is the aim of other men...and I am one of these men.
Where there is a fortune to be made (or protected), there is a political argument to wrestle over regarding means of economic extraction...and how people will be managed in order to realize the ends.
Today's commemorative 'holiday' has become yet another controversial political topic in America.
No new worlds are to be discovered on the earth (besides the ocean depths and places man has yet to inhabit on land, which are few).
Everything seems to be a political scandal these days, but was there ever a time in human history an issue wasn't political in one way or another?
Read about what defines the term 'politics'.
I think it is very important for all people to discuss politics, but not all people are able to do so.
Discussing politics can be a good and a not so good thing depending on the manner it is discussed.
Opportunities Found In Unlikely Places
Discussing politics, along with historical significance and personal identity, is a good thing because it can allow yet another learning opportunity...if those discussing are open to learning.
Discussing politics may allow someone to see past the intrigues of ignorance; past the comforts of being absolutely clueless to how the past has shaped the present in both positive and negative ways.
There is a comfort for some people not knowing any better (ignorance).
Ignorance of the world is usually understandable regarding children, but a sad reality for adults.
Political discussions can not be so good for those easily swept away by ill-mannered arguments, or who cannot tell a fallacy from a solid argument.
Politics tend to pander to people's ignorance.
This is why vague and meaningless slogans dominate political campaigns.
The power of political intrigue exploits people's emotions...these very emotions that arise from ignorance and that are confronting usually incorrect yet long-held beliefs.
A Glimpse Into A Past Culture
The following is a paragraph about Columbus' opinion of people he encountered on his journeys:
The Arawak Indians of Española were the handsomest people that Columbus had encountered in the New World and so attractive in character that he found it hard to praise them enough. "They are the best people in the world," he said, "and beyond all the mildest." They cultivated a bit of cassava for bread and made a bit of cottonlike cloth from the fibers of the gossampine tree. But they spent most of the day like children idling away their time from morning to night, seemingly without a care in the world. Once they saw that Columbus meant them no harm, they outdid one another in bringing him anything he wanted. It was impossible to believe, he reported, "that anyone has seen a people with such kind hearts and so ready to give the Christians all that they possess, and when the Christians arrive, they run at once to bring them everything."
- Smithsonian article on ColumbusAs with anything historical, current ideologies and identities of people are based on a recalling of the past, through memory and written reports.
The past has also been written and recounted by people with their unique view of the world.
Before Columbus arrived to the eastern portions of America, do we know what the various people he encountered called any given day?
What were their thoughts?
How did they express their world, or themselves?
What were their dreams like?
I'm sure the Arawak (and the various unique identities of peoples within that canopy of natives called Arawak) had their own naming of things; celebrations, remembrances and traditions.
There is no resource showing they had calendars or had counted on the moon's movements as have other past cultures in determining the idea of 'days' within 'months' and 'years'.
The Arawaks, like so many other peoples the world over throughout times, are lost to history's questions.
Why Care Should Be Taken In Considering Revising Names Of Days And Previous Ideas
The year 1492 is quite significant regarding world history, specifically Spain and the Spanish effort in commissioning sailors to find a passage to India (and by mistake, the rest of the planet's oceans and lands).
1492 was the same year the western-most reaches of that time's Islamic empire was forcibly removed from the Iberian Peninsula (when most of Spain was called al-Andalus).
The previous culture (the descendants) that was conquered eventually expelled the conquering culture (their descendants).
The Islamic influence went no further 'west' with Columbus aside from the remnant of that culture found in Arabic words adopted into Spanish along with numerous other cultural embellishes.
The identity that enveloped most of Spain from 711 to 1492 (almost 800 years) was rejected.
So what it is the big deal, or importance, of today and calling it 'Columbus Day'?
There is so much more beneath the surface of any particular day to remember.
History tells us what happened and what may happen, because patterns repeat as nature shows.
Life is more than what is on the surface, as I hope this article illustrates.
Some argue it is about legitimizing a particular culture, or claiming a greater significance, or something else.
It is all these and so much more.
Will the indigenous of America (or where western culture has conquered) expel the dominant culture as the Christian Spaniards expelled the Muslim Spaniards?
Is that even possible?
Would that be beneficial...and if so, to whom exactly?
If it was possible, what would be replaced for Columbus Day, and how would such a change further the current culture's development?
What will the culture be like after such an expunging of the past?
This is what people in power desire to prevent, because not only can a cultural shift sometimes negatively affect economy, it can be deadly for many people directly and indirectly involved.
Some people counter Columbus Day in desiring this particular day to be called Indigenous People's Day.
So people in America, regardless of their country of origin (or that of their forefathers) see Columbus Day as a political wedge that others have made it out to be?
But is this 'day' a political wedge?
Are people upset that they enjoy the western cultural benefits despite that culture's shortcomings?
Would people have preferred that it was a Muslim monarch that sent Columbus?
Would people have preferred the ideal that Columbus wrote about in the Arawak?
I prefer the Arawak approach to strangers.
I don't mind the wealth of understanding world history grants in better understanding how mankind has arrived to 'today'.
I do mind that history is political for those who don't appreciate it, decipher it narrowly.
History is political...but 'today', it doesn't have to be.
Comments