Sensationalizing of "human sacrifice"

[ECOLING at aol.com]

What is the difference between factual discussions
and sensationalizing of human sacrifice?
It is possible gradually to pin this down.

McCafferty writes:

>So much of the
>current discussion about this sort of thing reminds me too much of the
>Japanese attempts to hide the facts of their World War II atrocities from
>the modern generation.  Humans are humans.

True.

(When with an American Indian who wishes to believe that
original Americans were somehow exempt from being humans
in these ways, I very gently agree that there ARE cultural differences,
but that there are also many differences within the many pre-Columbian
cultures, and that almost anything did occur somewhere.)

BUT...

Also true that the "exotic, romantic" marketing of magazines etc.
DOES depend on focusing on the sensational, just the opposite of hiding
facts, rather exaggerating their importance and focusing on them.
We all know this happens in TV, in Film, and in popular magazines.

And true that by the careful manipulation of definitions, one people can be
said to engage in human sacrifice, another not.

Even the use of the term "human sacrifice" has a heavy
baggage from history, I certainly have not done detailed research
on this, but I hope someone will do so, as it might be very
revealing, and might shock us into not using the term.
Use of that term I think immediately conveys something
exotic, non-us, to be condemned.  It is NOT used objectively
in the sense of state-sponsored (religious) killing.

I seem to remember it as a child from depictions of Africa,
it merges in my visual memory with cannibalism.
Isn't that revealing?  (At 56 I'm a bit older than many on this list.)

My point is that we should all remain very acutely aware of the
exaggeration and sensationalizing, and of what is at stake.

We mostly DO NOT observe dispassionate academic discussions
of what role state-sponsored killing (whether religious or not)
played in societies of Mesoamerica, as compared with various other
societies around the world.

We mostly DO observe endless re-runs of amateur questions about
whether they did or didn't have "human sacrifice" (with those words
implying something we Europeans would not do, because we do
not apply those words to state-sponsored killing in Europe),
and the discussions which follow those questions.

The endless recurring of those same amateur questions ARE,
I would bet, a result of the publicity
and sensationalizing in the media.
If we grant them status, it gives them longer life.

The endless recurrences of amateur questions about the "collapse"
of the Maya have sometimes led to better quality discussions,
but their endless recurrences ARE, I would bet, a result of the
publicity and sensationalizing (romanticizing) in the media.
In just the same way.

Our continuing discussions, NOT in a world-wide context
of state-sponsored killing (religious or secular),
but as something special to Mesoamerica,
do reinforce this sensationalizing.
There may be aspects of it which are special in certain cultures
of Mesoamerica in certain time periods, but they probably are
not as unique when seen in world-wide terms.  As McCafferty
said, Humans are humans.

So let's be courteous to our fellow human beings,
and stop the sensationalizing of them (or of their ancestors)
as primitive, non-us, whenever we can.
This has absolutely nothing to do with censoring facts.

Best wishes,
Lloyd Anderson
Ecological Linguistics