Blink

Blink.  

Enough said.  

I heard a a segment of the BBC World something or other yesterday while driving.  I just caught the tail end of it, but was fascinated.  A scholar of some sort was explaining the difference between Persian and Arab culture.  According to the scholar, Arabs defeated the Persian armies in the 5th century and displaced the Zoroastrian religion with Islam.  Persian culture, though strictly hierarchical, was more liberal culturally in that it allowed other religions, particularly Judaism, to be practiced.  My quick A.I. scholarship this morning says this occured in the 7th century.  I'll go with the scholar, but I'm certain it must have been a gradual process for one religion to replace another.  

I find this fascinating as a westerner, one taught primarily about the influence of Greek and Roman cultures on the world.  Before 9/11, the average American knew very little about the Middle East beyond 1001 Tales of Arabian Nights.  When I taught college students the difference between a tale and a fable, I'd have them read "Godfather Death" and then Maugham's "Appointment in Samarra" which begins, "There was a merchant in Bagdad. . . ." 

None of them, not once, knew what country these cities were in.  Everyone sure as hell knows where Baghdad is now.  

I asked Chat to illustrate the difference between a Persian and an Arab scholar.  

Kind of silly.  

I've met many Iranians who identify as Persian.  

"Many?"  

Well. . . more than two.  

The Islamic regime in Iran is a ruthless and repressive entity, but when Trump said he would wipe out an entire culture, I decided to learn something about it, especially the Persians.  

I have the Penguin "History of Religion" books, two volumes.  I have read from them from time to time, but when I go back to my mother's, I think I will spend more time with them.  I find religion both brutal and appalling, but it has been the backbone of many cultures, and I guess I could know more about the way it has evolved civilizations.  But Jesus, really, those two volumes are longer than the Bible.  

Zoroastrianism is one of the world’s oldest known monotheistic religions, founded in ancient Persia (modern-day Iran) by the prophet Zoroaster (Zarathustra) around the second millennium BCE. It emphasizes the worship of Ahura Mazda as the supreme god and centers on the cosmic struggle between truth and falsehood. Its teachings profoundly influenced later Abrahamic and dualistic traditions.

Zoro and Mazda.  Did you know the western word "paradise" was derived from the Persian word for "garden"?  They conceived of the garden as paradise, a contained heaven and thus they cultivated many.  

So much to learn.  So much to know.  Maybe I'll need to learn Aramaic.  

And so, perhaps, we live another day, the oil syringe stuck deep into our veins, the worst El Nino we've ever seen brewing now, heated oceans and melted ice caps, the dying of polar bears and coral reefs, and we looking to the moon, as my mother informed me yesterday, so we can build outposts there and "control the world."  

"Beam me up, Scottie." 

Otherness.  I am fascinated by the "exotic."