The way Westerners have reduced yoga to a trendy form of exercise is just another example of how colonialism continues to plague us. Yoga is a centuries old tradition of mindfulness, with physical practice only one part of the system. Unless you grew up Indian, learning these ancient traditions of your own people, using the sacred objects in their intended manner, you should not be allowed to practice “yoga” as trendy yuppie moms call it....Welcome to America, pal. We have this little thing we used to call "the melting pot." Get used to it, because there's no fixing it. People learn things from rubbing up against each other, and when you bring people from all over the world, they're going to rub up against each other. Not every part of what they encounter will be useful or interesting to them, but they'll take what they want.
My soul weeps every time I smell the waft of mall food court Chinese. A noble an ancient culinary practice has been raped by American food engineering to become nothing but a foul simulacrum of Chinese cuisine.
That's not racism or violence. It's actually a kind of cooperation and openness to new ideas.
Or maybe this is satire. Who can tell anymore?
6 comments:
I will give up my Chinese take out when they give up their cellphones and penicillin. Deal?
You can't just go and buy this level of stupid off the shelf- it has to be handmade from carefully mined ore of idiocy and forged by cretins into a fine 99.99 percent pure hammer of stupid.
A Priest near and dear to my heart ( He gave my wife last rites 15 minutes before she died) wrote a scholarly five part series on "WHAT IS YOGA? A CATHOLIC PERSPECTIVE" the year before the Dominican's sent him to Rome to study moral theology. It is fairly in depth take on yoga.
Here is a link
http://www.spiritualdirection.com/author/fr-ezra-sullivan-o-p
Do you think this guy would be offended by a Catholic priest writing about Yoga?
More Melting pot, lets add a dash of Catholic theology, say some Thomis Aquinas to that mixture?
-Mississippi
I mean, yoga is honestly a Hindu practice. On the other hand, I worry about soccer moms converting to Hinduism because they go to yoga class once in a while about as much as I worry about kids becoming Satanists because they listen to Heavy Metal and play D&D on the weekends. :)
Isn't it cultural appropriation to speak for a culture you are not a part of? And really arrogant cultural appropriation at that.
Although, after reading it, it must be satire.
Envision a better world free from racism, colonialist violence, and the much-dreaded “problematics.” We can get there, but first we must acknowledge our our theft and genocide of culture that is not our own. To be culturally sensitive, we must only consume cultural products of our own race. Any sort of racial mixing is verboten. Afterall, culture is not meant to evolve. It is a sacred, ancient thing that must never change.
"racial mixing is verboten" -- How much of a Nazi parody can one be? Gotta be satire.
Do any of these people ever fulminate about the use of Gregorian chant—an ancient art form which was created to adorn the Catholic mass—completely divorced from its cultural context, as "chill" music at clubs and raves?
(This is a rhetorical question.)
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