6 Supposedly Ancient Traditions (That Totally Aren't)
Nothing shuts down a person's higher reasoning functions quite as fast as the word "tradition." If it was good enough for our ancestors, it must be good enough for us, damn it!
Unfortunately, some of the most "ancient traditions" still followed today come from people who knew this, and just made them up off the top of their head.
#6.
The Pledge
The Tradition:
According to this ridiculously schmaltzy video, this video with a hilariously ironic choice of music and 90% of the people in states beginning with the letter A, the pledge is an inviolable American tradition. Given the massive hissy-fit that erupts any time someone tries to change a single word, you'd think the version you grew up reciting was written into the constitution after the Founding Fathers watched a giant bald eagle fuck every letter into Plymouth rock.
An image that would bring a tear to Captain America's eye.
How Old It Actually Is:
The idea of pledging allegiance to the flag was basically an early viral marketing gimmick. It was first published in 1892 in a wildly popular children's magazine named The Youth's Companion. The much-bitched-about "under God" was only added to the pledge in 1954.
Who Made It Up:
Daniel Ford, the man who ran The Youth's Companion, dreamed of putting an American flag in every classroom in the country.
The man loved him some America.
Within a year, 30,000 flags had been sold. Our calculators tell us that comes out to $300,000, which was a lot more impressive a sum in 1892. The man who actually wrote the pledge was a former minister named Francis Bellamy. He was a Socialist (aka, a dirty commie) whose stated mission was to create in America's youth a habit of automatic reverence and utter loyalty to the country. He even came up with an original salute for children to give while reciting the pledge...
Things got awkward around '41.
The decision to add "under God" was made at the height of America's brief flirtation with paranoid schizophrenia, otherwise known as McCarthyism. Congress felt the pledge, like most people at the time, just wasn't American enough. How were these children standing around the American flag, pledging "allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands" to know that they weren't in the Godless Soviet Union? Thus, Congress added God to the pledge, and every generation who passed through a public school after 1954 was transferred into a flawless vessel of patriotism.
#5.
Bushido - The Ancient Code of the Samurai
The Tradition:
For centuries, the samurai and their spiritual descendants followed "the way of the warrior," living lives governed by its tenets of honor, strict devotion to one's master and, above all, self sacrifice. This ancient tradition helped make World War II a hell of a lot scarier, since, according to the Internet, "Kamikaze pilots used the samurai and their code for inspiration ... Just like the samurai, kamikaze pilots had no fear of death, and were honorable men that were loyal to their country."
How Old It Actually Is:
The idea that samurai are either loyal to their country or eager to die in battle is approximately as old as Walt Disney. Bushido as a coherent ideology only dates back to 1905.
Who Made It Up?
The whole thing started with an honest, if retarded mistake by a historian named Nitobe Inazo, who based his 1905 book Bushido: The Spirit of Japan on rules written for samurai. This is the equivalent of reading a high school handbook and determining that teenagers live by a strict code of attending class, and turning weed dealers in to the cops.
According to Karl Firday, professor of history at the University of Georgia and author of a bunch of really smart books on Japan, aside from laws that they were told to follow, the history of the samurai is notable for a complete lack of evidence that they were any more happy to die in battle and even a little bit loyal. It's entirely possible that a warrior sacrificing his life was seen as noble, but that's no different than the European code of chivalry which also made room for honorable suicide. In fact, the evidence paints a picture of samurai that looks more like a modern professional athlete than what we see in our martial arts films. They'd fight and kill for you as long as the money was right. When it wasn't, they'd switch sides, and slice the word "for" clean out of the previous sentence.
So if Japan was one big game of "fuck your buddy with a sword" and Europe was the land of the noble warrior falling on his, how did a bunch of Japanese pilots find themselves swan diving at air craft carriers while saying prayers to the medieval equivalent of Terrell Owens?
As it turns out, our modern concept of Bushido developed as a method of social control. The Emperor and the Imperial Army and Navy wanted something that would boost their men's fighting spirit. When Nitobe Inazo sucked at his job badly enough to write that "the way of the warrior is to die," they all just sort of nodded and said, "Yep, that's the way of the warrior alright!"
Psyche!
#4.
Islamic Fundamentalism
The Tradition:
The boogeyman that replaced the specter of communism in the hearts of terrified Westerners, Islamic fundamentalism seems to come from another time. They rage against science, Western ideals and the basic rights of women. That's why you hear people on Fox News claiming that Muslim world is stuck in the Dark Ages.
"You can't use reason with these people. They only understand shadow puppets."
How Old It Actually Is:
Actually, the Middle East's clock stopped around the same time as the one at Marty McFly's high school in the 1950s. If the Arab world was really still stuck in the Middle Ages, everyone would be a lot better off.
Who Made It Up?
During the period the the Western world thinks of as the Dark Ages, when Europeans were busy murdering each other over matters of religion and superstition, Islam was cool as a cucumber. At the time, Islamic regions were actually more accepting of Judaism and Christianity than most of the Christian world was of Judaism and other types of Christianity. Long before the Italian Renaissance, the Islamic Empire realized the Greeks and Romans had been on to something with this book learning stuff, and used this realization to revolutionize astronomy, literature, physics, philosophy and architecture. Still bored, they went ahead and invented algebra and modern medicine too.
"George Washington invented numbers! We call them Arab numerals to mock them!"
The antiquated practices many Westerners associate with modern Islam are actually a relatively recent development. Reporting from Saudi Arabia for The New Yorker, Lawrence Wright interviewed an older Saudi man who reminisced about the good old days when men and women used to be able to celebrate weddings together. While it might seem weird to Westerners used to hearing stories of ankle length hemlines following the words "Back in my day... ," in the Middle East, when grandparents miss the good old days, they're often talking about a place that was far less up its own ass.
"We had books. And the orgies! Don't get me started on the orgies ...
It wasn't until the 1950s that fundamentalist Islam started gaining influence, and outdated, dying traditions like the veil saw a spike in popularity. That's when followers of a fringe 18th century scholar Mohammed Al Wahab began to take Islam back to basics, which in this case meant an imaginary past where women were treated like shit and all the pesky "progress" of the last 1400 years never happened. During his lifetime, Wahab was taken about as seriously as Pat Robertson is taken today in the West. But in the 1950s, Wahabi Muslim thinkers like Sayyid Qutb started to urge total separation between Islam and the West, arguing that the outside world had "nothing else to give humanity."
Oh really, Qutb?
Qutb and his fundamentalist contemporaries inspired a new generation of radical thinkers, who took this "fuck the West" mentality a few steps further, resulting in a Middle East that is far less progressive than the Dark Ages they're supposedly stuck in.
Some people shouldn't be encouraged to "shoot for the stars."
See, as tempting as it might be to divide history into the bad guys and the good guys, civilizations tend to evolve more like the Batman franchise, kicking ass part of the time, and reaching unspeakable, ass backwards lows that would embarrass their ancestors at others. Muslim people were doing algebra while we were burning women for having funny birthmarks on their face. They just happen to be going through their Batman and Robin phase.
true to human nature, both chivalry and bushido were made up after most of the fighting was over, then they was promptly ignored, unless you wanted to use them against your enemy somehow.
ReplyCracked's poor research show again with the "Arab numerals" statement. The Arabs never invented it, the Indians did. And when I say Indians I am referring to the sub-continent in Asia with all the call centres. Yup they invented it. At most you can credit the Arabs for spreading it to the West, but to say they invented it is errornous.
Replyyeah and if I am not mistaken, wasn't it the Greeks who invented algebra????
That's the joke.
It makes me happy to see people wanting to distance themselves from modern bigots like Rush and O'Reilly. But it makes me just a little depressed to see them in such a rush to do so that they run to the support of long-dead bigots, and try to rewrite history into "good guys" and "bad guys". When have you ever known history to be that easy, guys? Shit, half the articles on Cracked end with "although while this guy did a lot of cool things it turned out he was a racist c**t too, which we should mention."
ReplyReminds me a bit of Winston Churchill's line about how he'd give Satan a favorable reference if Hitler ever invaded hell. The enemy of your enemy must be your friend, right?
Not all of Europe was sticking its thumb up its ass during the middle ages. Byzantine Empire, anyone? They preserved Classical knowledge, built on medicine, and passes knowledge to the Islamic world, who passed knowledge back, until someone yelled "Shenanigans!" and we got the Crusades.
And as for the Muslims of old being totally a bunch of mellow hippies, well that's just a load of nonsense. The hadith of Sahih Bukhari tells of how Mohammed recommended that people be burned alive for deliberately missing prayer. He killed people in battle. He saw a very badly beaten woman and concluded "bitch had it coming" because she insulted her husband's virility. There were laws explicitely making non-Muslims into second class citizens. The Quaran and hadith state that Muslims should not befriend non-Muslims (although it's okay to pretend), that Muslims should keep on fighting non-believers until they've conquered the world and created a theocracy, that women were worth less than men and should be beaten if they get uppity, that killing a non-Muslim was only half as bad as killing a Muslim, and so on.
Of course many modern Americanized Muslims will happily "reinterpret" explicitely stated things in the Quaran, just like how many modern Americanized Christians will happily pretend their own Book of Fairy Tales is ambiguous and totally compatible with however they want to live. But back in the old days, however, I'm willing to bet that "Dude, it's cool, I think every man - or woman! - has to interpret holy books in their own way" didn't go over as well.
But even then it would have varied from region to region.
("Dude, it's just a Cracked joke article!"
It's an article about something actually important in the world today, and there's enough oversimplifying misinformation out there already. I promise I won't correct funny captions under pictures of Davey Crocket)
Oh, and Bushido is basically just the vague list of things military men were expected to do. Like any bunch of regulations, the actual soldiers varied in how much they adhered to them, and probably got lax whenever they could afford to be, but you at least pretended to stick to them if any serious commanding officers were nearby.
Bang on. Its very trendy to say how the crusaders were all assholes and the muslims were all civilised. But there were many, many cases where both sides behaved abominably so ignoring just one lot is stupid
Okay, it's true that during the Dark Ages Islamic countries were arguably "more accepting of Judaism and Christianity than most of the Christian world was of Judaism and other types of Christianity". Being more tolerant than THE SPANISH INQUISITION is not something to pat yourself on the back over. When Muhammad died, Abu Bakr basically went on a killing spree, slaughtering anyone that tried to break away from Islam... which wasn't a small number of people, since many had only joined Muhammad's new religion because he was basically a (religious-flavored) warlord. Umar took over after Abu Bakr, and forced Christians to sign the Pact of Umar, which protected Christians from being massacred... in return for treating them like shit. The Pact stipulated Christians not build churches, repair churches, pray or sing too loudly in churches, talk about their religion, wear crosses, etc. Oh, and the pact made everyone pay a "we're the wrong kind of religion" tax. Aaaaaaand Muslims could basically take any Christian property they wanted, turn a church into a barracks, or whatever. And violating any of these rules was a crime punished with death. Over the following centuries many millions of non-Muslims were killed in the name of Allah/Jihad. It's difficult to get a good figure on HOW MANY were killed for reasons having nothing to do with the Crusades, partly because that's kind of hard to define, and partly because the ones that crunch the numbers the most are either Muslims or Christians, who aren't exactly unbiased. But it's probably safe to say many buttloads of people were killed just for being "not a Muslim" in the wrong place. Yes, arguably more tolerant than the Spanish Inquisition, but again, that's not exactly much of a feat. We should definitely try to teach people not to assume every Arab they meet is a horrible person and a terrorist, and that the vast majority of people that follow any major world religion are probably okayish. But people are going a little bit nuts here, forgetting that Islam was, y'know... founded by a warlord that himself killed a lot of people in battle. No guys, he didn't create the first interfaith exchange of ideas, and go around hugging all the non-Muslims he met.
ReplyYou don't always have to say "O'Reilly, Rush, and their ilk are completely wrong".
"O'Reilly, Rush, and their ilk are distorting history to justify continued hated" is also an acceptable response!
Although I agree with you about the fact that muslims were crazy, where is your evidence that the Spanish Inquisition was worse? I have yet to see a single document that verifies that fact. I only have what was taught to me in my high school history books(which historically have been wrong), and I believe that it's a bunch of bullshit.
Bushido has nothing to do with being eager to die in battle, it's a state of percverance and practice
Replyis percverance anything like perseverance?
Medieval Muslims didn't actually invent algebra or Arabic numerals though. That was more to do with Ancient Indians.
ReplyPerhaps we should try and put this bad blood between the White and Red men away... All white people: bake us native ameicans some good pumpkin pies. If they're good enough, we'll put serious consideration into forgiving you for stealing our land, genociding our ancestors, and relocating us to the shitholes of the USA... Also, give Florida back to us, because you're clearly not using it properly...
ReplyOn behalf of all white people, I accept your deal with one condition. If you take Florida back, you have to take all the people living there with it. No giving them back to us. You want the land, YOU keep the crazy!
Can you also take New Jersey and all its inhabitants? We don't want that state either.
"The Pledge Of Allegiance" (with or without the "under God" part) is the dumbest s**t ever and I can't believe they are still making kids do it in schools today.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesI graduated recently, and in my high school (at least in my classroom)it was an optional thing. You can guarantee that 99% of the students in that classroom never ever stood up or said it, in all 4 years of high school, I sure didn't.
Anyone griping about the pledge of allegiance is a filthy commie.
At my high school it was optional. Most kids didn't want to stand up so yeah...
Listen, folks, kids in elementary schools spend entire semesters doing stuff or not doing stuff that their teachers tell them to do. They don't understand why they're doing it- they just know that they'll get a lot of grief if they don't, so they just blindly go along with whatever bullshit is thrown their way. They become accoustomed to it. That being said, although one student was consistently assigned the task of reading aloud a "Students reserve the right to stand, or to not stand during the pledge" 10 years ago when I was in 5th grade, almost everybody always stood up, because for most of us, it really didn't make a goddamed difference one way or another.
Ahhh, you gotta love the brilliant and lauded History teachers articles like this manage to drag up, always coming in with how wrong an article is, yet never explaining how or telling the "truth". I can call the "facts" that spew from their mouths "wrong" too, but if I didn't take the EXTRA time from bitching to give the "right" history, I'm just as mentally lame as the articles they b***h about.
ReplySomething i'd like to bring up: Yamamoto Tsunetomo, a 17th century Samurai,pegged Bushido as a code remarkably well: "The Way of the Warrior is Death". And swordsaint Mushashi's Book of Five Rings(quite possibly the most influential work on japanese swordsmanship, and applicable to, well, just about every form of combat) makes it fairly clear that Samurai should always be prepared to die. Now, maybe not every Samurai lived up to that expectation, but it's clear that by the 16th and 17th century, the idea of Samurai being those who serve and who die was well established.
ReplyThis also segues into the Chivalry thing: chivalry was NOT what you think. Chivalry comes from the french Cheval(horse) and was a concept that encompassed being a cavalryman, and a damned fine one, at that. It was more about winning and the glory of overcoming others in a martial context, than about justice, piety or any sort of moral code.
Just throwing this out there, but following the awesome advances that came out of the Middle East during the time; which was by the way a conjunction of all of the leading Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaeism and Islam), there was a massive push for anti-scientific thought STRAIGHT AFTER THE BOOM; so we're talking around 1300 years ago, 1950 is wrong. I don't see why people focus on the anti-scientific notions of "Islam" like it is alone and evil, just look at Christianity doing the same things, like trying to push religious teachings in science class.
Replyyou know, reading through all these comments on cracked, its really people who sort of follow islam who get pissed off any time you mention islam. so far reading up on cracked comments would lead you to believe that nobody knows anything at all anywhere about islam. in fact when i look around the nets, it seems ANY comment on islam is that nobody knows wtf they are talking about, and to stfu about islam, and that nobody does research. so where the hell is this elusive research material that will tell outsiders the "truth" about islam?
ReplyI guess all those druids that Julius Caesar mentioned (in Latin they were called 'druides') were fake then, huh? All those years reading ancient Roman texts wasted. Research is fun!
ReplyIf they had at least been level 47 halfling druids, this would have never happened.
No, they were very real. They served as the aristocrats and religious leaders of the Gauls. But there is about 0% connection between the Gaelic Druids and the ones that have sprung up today. Mainly because the Romans, with zeal, practiced what would be considered Genocide: by wiping out the Gallic aristocracy and cultural transmitters they were able to assimilate Gaul into the empire more thoroughly than they ever could.
Look, no offense to modern "pagans" or whatever, but Wiccanism(for example) has tried to claim an ancient cultural genesis that isn't backed up by, well, anything. Worship how you want, I don't really care, but it gets in my craw when Wiccans and other neo-pagans try to claim an ancient cultural heritage, and are getting it ALL wrong.
For example, where is the brutal warrior code/myth that emphasizes the strong, capable man? You get this mysterious horned guy, but where is the machismo that produced a warrior society that was capable of fighting, well, just about everyone.
The in all likelihood intentional lack of research (which we can only assume stems from your fear of planes being flown into your office) is quite appalling in this article. I dear say that your average fifth grader possess superior research skills than the staff over at cracked (which in this case would simply be opening any book focused on the history of islam). The following is a short paraphrasing of some of the pertinent information.
Reply Hide All See All 7 RepliesDude named mohamed decides this whole religion based on judaism that is controlling the world is pretty kewl thing (christianity). Alas dude named muhamed is incapable of reading or writing, or in fact much else except f*****g sheep and apparently having a dick big enough to marry some rich b***h (it's a rhyme it must be true).
Dude named muhammad gets enough pointy object wielding people to buy into his bs that he manages to force some rabbis (under sword-point mind you) to write the f*****g koran for him(yes the koran was written by jews. Your mind = blown)
This invention naturally lends him more credibility and allows him to get more pointy object wielding followers, which upon getting enough of, he promptly proceeds to conquer the s**t out of the city that originally kicked him out. Naturally like all bloodthirsty illiterate sheep fuckers who get some power, this is not enough for him. Therefore, dude named muhammad decides to keep on raping, pillaging and conquering s**t for as long as he can. Eventually dude named mohammed dies. His followers who are then split into several groups or sects, immediately proceed to do the only thing they know how to; kill the s**t out of each other in an attempt to claim power( by the way this is the exact reason why one of the sects that first spring to your mind when you hear the world islam literally translates to "assasins". I'll leave you to the power of google to figure that one out). And guess what they have been doing ever since? Yes that's right killing, raping and pillaging. To add a bit of irony to the fact I find it quite humorous that this religion that allegedly condemns homosexuality has had so many religious and political leaders that were actually either gay or bisexual(Yasser Arafat wiinner of cracked staffs " most deserved nobel peace prize" award is one such example). Furthermore Maimonides was not a muslim but in fact a jew. Islam invented exactly zero of modern medicine and in fact most of its alleged inventions can be traced straight to "stole from another society under sword-point". This is easily seen in todays society where the arabic world contributes exactly nothing to the global society except that which is f*****g BAD for the rest of the world. Their primary exports appear to be oil( generally attributed to stupid white people dumb enough to let muslism know how to get black slimy expensive s**t out of the ground) sand, and ied's. They have no economy worth speaking of otherwise(exception of dubai/bahrain which have shipping), no technological capability that was not bought from a non musiim country. In fact they are so f*****g retarded that they are unable to figure out how to make s**t grow in the same place they have been living for several hundred years. This is illustrated by the fact that most of the muslim world was gonna f*****g starve and die back in the 50's before israel was dumb enough and teach them about agriculture in desert climates.
Dirka Dirka mohmmaed jihad.
And as always friends, have nice day.
~ Random atheist.
from your writing style it seems you're more of a random dumbass who thinks they're smart because they've read wikipedia.
That's not even the Reader's Digest version... that the dunce's 'scraped together' version.
Challenge, randomatheist: Go to the library, and read ten non-fiction books on Islamic history. Your choice. Some of what you read will match up with what you said, but there will be a lot you are wrong on.
Then come back and talk.
Too long; Didn't read!
There is a vast difference between Islamic fundamentalism and the conquests of early Muslims. Considering during the time period you're referring to, of Muhammad, the Umayyad and Abassadi Dynasties, the VAST majority of the population themselves were not Islamic. It was a conquering power that utilized Islam as a banner to unite the people, more so than actually killing in the name of it. What you're bitching about is normal, it's called primeval societies in, albeit civilized times, which were competing to establish themselves. Everyone kills, especially in that time when in some cases(ALL OVER THE PLACE) it was considered ethical and moral. Shut the f**k up, you'd do the same thing if you were in their position. Back then people didn't have the luxury to be as cynical as you are, why don't you try taking into account another perspective you subjective cunt.
-A RANDOM ATHEIST.
There is a vast difference between Islamic fundamentalism and the conquests of early Muslims. Considering during the time period you're referring to, of Muhammad, the Umayyad and Abassadi Dynasties, the VAST majority of the population themselves were not Islamic. It was a conquering power that utilized Islam as a banner to unite the people, more so than actually killing in the name of it. What you're bitching about is normal, it's called primeval societies in, albeit civilized times, which were competing to establish themselves. Everyone kills, especially in that time when in some cases(ALL OVER THE PLACE) it was considered ethical and moral. Shut the f**k up, you'd do the same thing if you were in their position. Back then people didn't have the luxury to be as cynical as you are, why don't you try taking into account another perspective you subjective cunt.
I don't even know why i even swore or insulted you, for that i apologize, but i've already written my comment and i'm too lazy to edit it.
-A RANDOM ATHEIST.
If you don't want to swear, then at least don't censor the f*****g word.
EDIT: My bad, didn't know there was a damned censor in place.
lol he didn't even read wikipedia sounds like he's hoping to be a radio shock jock when/if he grows up
Pretty damn politically correct on the Islam section there dude. I expect more edgy kind of thinking from Cracked. The problem with Islam is not the fundamentalists but rather the actual teachings. There is a rule called abrogation where more recent passages override any previous conflicting ideas. So when you read the Koran and the Hadith with an awareness of the timeline, many of the seemingly peaceful passages are negated. Unfortunate but true.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesThere's a thing called abstinence where you don't have sex until marriage. That's why there are no bastard children in the Christian West. Just because there are rules doesn't mean they are followed. Maybe they went all politically correct on it in the Muslim part because that's actually their interpretation of history?
And in the bible it says to murder women who are raped because they are not pure.
They went all politicall correct because they are Cracked, and they do not fact-check past the first 5 results on Google search.
@Jakob: That is completely untrue. Nothing even remotely similar shows up in the Bible; however, male rapists were killed on the first offence if they "seized" (raped) a woman. Seducers (who did not "seize") were forced to marry the seductee. There is NO case in the Bible of killing a rape victim.
"ham soaked in cider for three weeks, stuffed with sweet potatoes and baked in maple syrup."
ReplyI would eat the s**t out of that!
If your research should tell you anything its that the fundamentalist boom happened about 1300 years ago in the Islam world; Cracked does not fact-check.
Thank you for once just once someone praised my religion (Islam)
Reply Hide All See All 5 RepliesYeah. I don't know that 1950 is the time Islam went back in time in Arab regions. Isn't that the time other parts of Muslim World (notably in South East Asia) started nationalism and rise in thoughts. Blame Saud?
Actually, most of the witch burnings occurred AFTER Islamic and Byzantine science has uplifted the west. Christendom's most henious acts come from he Protestant Reformation era.
Islamic fundamentalism is like Christian Witch hunts; they rise when times are bad, they die when things cool down.
In my research, Islam is more in agreement with Christianity than Christianity is.
If your research should tell you anything its that the fundamentalist boom happened about 1300 years ago in the Islam world; Cracked does not fact-check.
The article said that Islam fundamentalism first appeared in 1950 and is possibly started what we see with Islam today. They stated that Islam was prosperous during the middle ages. I'm not 100% sure if its all true, but at least I don't pretend to be an expert historian....
Bushido may not have existed as a coherent order, but there are documents dating back to the 16th century regarding the way or the warrior 'The Book of Five Rings' is one such document, published in the mid 17th century.
ReplyI think you're confusing fascism with socialism (and equating the later with communism, but I get that that's a joke) for number 6
ReplyNo, they're not. A socialist decided a salute would be a good idea. A fascist then made that salute the most racist-looking thing anybody could ever do. So they cut it out. I'm not sure how you think they're confusing the two?
Socialism is an economic policy, while fascism is more political....
What about Christmas?
Reply