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November 10, 2004
Aztecs
So the Guggenheim in New York City has a new exhibit about Aztec civilization. I've got to check this one out. Those Aztecs may well have been bloodthirsty mothers, but at least they had an ethos:
- Because the cosmos, as the Aztecs envisioned it, was under perpetual threat of chaos, a dynamic system of balanced opposites had to be maintained: life and death, right and wrong, man and woman, night and day. Time was cyclical, but it was also fleeting. Every gift required repayment. The gods gave you life, so you owed them life, and they required it in the vivifying form of human blood, your own or someone else's.
I've been wondering what it would be like to be raised in a culture where the gods need to be appeased. Religious differences abound these days all over the world, but sacrifice really seems to have gone out of style everywhere. No one believes the gods are out to fuck us up. Far from it — these days, everyone believes God is on their side.
What might an Aztec priest say if you asked him about Darfur? I imagine he'd say something like this: "Hey, with people like this in charge, what do you expect? Think how much worse it would be if I weren't smoothing things over by killing all these guys. Life is hard work. In this crazy mixed-up world, we're really on our own."
I'm not saying I'm about to become a neo-Aztec, but then, they never really had to reconcile a God of infinite love and a world where it seems to be in such short supply.
Posted by matt[0] at November 10, 2004 02:25 PM
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Comments
If you go, sign up for the audio tour or you will be sorry.
Posted by: Will Baude at November 10, 2004 02:49 PM
You should read God: A Biography if you have not already done so.
Posted by: bcmalone at November 11, 2004 08:42 AM
I loved Aztec by Gary Jennings. Vivid. Entertaining. Had a Mexican roommate in SF who grew up in a small, conservative Catholic town and read this as the first secular book of his life in high school. As a catholic and a descendant of the Aztecs (visibly) and gay, this was... well, read the book. The mockery of the Catholic church is amusing.
Posted by: licious at November 11, 2004 08:54 AM