(FB 1542290125 Timestamp)
Mesopotamian (Semitic) literature is underclass the same way that greek literature is upper class and roman literature (and english for that matter) is middle class. River lands and Forests are wonderful. Deserts suck. People are ignorant, dirty, superstitious poor, and tribal. Disease is rampant. Violence endemic. Thieving heroic. There is a vast difference between the wealthy and the poor. This is not so true in western civilization for geographic and demographic reasons. Just as it was not true in east asia. Just as it was less true in india. So while western lit is heroic (early european, aryan european, greek, roman… all of these are heroic literatures. They are not the submissive literatures of the mesopotamians and the egyptians. Whatever happens along the euphrates and the nile, we can certainly see in Gobekli Tepe and in all of the cities in the near east. Submission. This is not the literature of the hittites (anatolians), old europeans (balkans),
There is a relationship between the russian steppe people, the mongols, and the turkic raiders, in levels of development and harshness of nature, but also an influence and more genetic similarity with the other post-ice-age peoples of europe, which were more influential via the scandinavians, pole-germans, germans, and even french.
The church came into slavic peoples without being able to create an extractive political order as they were in europe. The bad people were the boyars, not the church. Where europeans took out their anger on the church and the aristocracy, americans did it on the aristocracy, europe in general, but were fully protestant and lacking central church political power, so without need to rebel against.
During the period where east slavic people would have rebelled they had ‘better enemies’ to rebel against than the church. SO they did.
Not very difficult really once you understand it but it has been very hard for me to understand it for some reason.
So, the literature of suffering seems to be a continental thing, where the scandinavians are just pagan in spirit still. Germans are nauseating sometimes because of it. Russians nihilistic. And americans (and brits) have no cognizance of it whatsoever. Because we believe the world is under our control if we want it to be.
So I am hostile to the submissive narratives for our people. Tragedy is a better substitute (and a western invention by the way), and tragedy calls upon us to fight together, not just suffer.