Hi @sarahspeaks and nice to "see" you again :) As usual this is a thought provoking comment and I want to respond to several things here, but first a question for you: I am actually considering doing what I suggested you could do and turning our first comment exchange into a post of its own, or more accurately, incorporating it into a post I have been mulling over for a few days on the topic of a call for more readers/commenters/engagement and less of a focus on content creators(bloggers/bloggin) on Steemit in general. Common courtesy dictates that I ask your permission first... can I quote you in my post?
Next a bit of housekeeping RE he who shall not be named lest it triggers another disruptive fluctuation in your [serotonin, I presume] reuptake inhibitors. From a very young age I have been fascinated with devils, demons, the occult and magic and that fascination has stayed with me as I grew older and realized that the demons and devils in Christian mythology were syncretic elements from older religions that had been "demonized" (I may never use this word in a more relevant context LOL) as they were appropriated. I mention this because it strikes me that demonizing the other and appropriating it is actually at the heart of @zeedout's comments that you have linked here. I do want to note that he who shall not be named is a very friendly and gracious devil, an account that I mainly use to resteem content that I want to promote but which does not meet my very high bar for personal resteems. There are resteem services out there which charge a negligible fee but require that you follow them before using their service - I use he who shall not be named to follow these resteem services so i can use them to resteem content to a wider audience without having to choke my own feed with all the resteemed content from the resteem services. For instance, I resteemed the Titus Frost post you linked to the comments above through two such resteem services using this account.
One final housekeeping note RE votes - you mentioned upvoting @zeedout's comment as it had not attracted any attention, and obviously you have brought it here for my attention as well. I want to point out that there is only a 7 day payout window for posts and comments - once they have passed that time they are paid out and any subsequent upvotes do not actually result in earnings for the author. You also can no longer edit a post or comment after the 7 day window, nor resteem it. This is a function of the immutable and uncensorable nature of the blockchain - once the 7 day payout window is passed, the post or comment is basically finalized and immortalized in the blockchain and no power can remove/censor/edit it. I mention this here though because spending an upvote on a post or comment that is passed the payout window is, in a very real sense, a waste of your Steem power. I would recommend to just leave a comment if you like an older post/comment and save your Steem power in the form of upvotes for posts/comments that are still in the 7 day window. You have only a limited amount of Steem power, which does refresh slowly as you use it, and I personally want to spend my limited Steem power where it will actually do something. My upvote only means a few cents, but I would rather hand those few cents to someone else than throw them down the Steemit drain by spending them on a post older than the payout window.
Moving on to the meat of your comment - I believe you have misread @zeedout, who does not claim to himself be an indigenous member of the Canadian First Nations, but rather that he "connected with a[n] indigenous women in Canada" and then goes on to relate what she said - you will note that @zeedout says, "here is what she said '...", enclosing the rest of the comment in quotes because he is relaying what his anonymous contact said - concluding with the note that this woman is willing to be interviewed RE this topic. This doesn't necessarily change anything about the content of the comment itself, but I wanted to point it out you.
I am honestly not sure what to do with @zeedout's comment so I did not reply to it elsewhere - this kind of falls into the "I know a person who knew a person who..." category, which is a pretty fuzzy and gray category indeed. @zeedout met this person on an online forum - it is one thing to relate a story from your own experience, but quite another to pass on a story from someone you do not even know personally and only met in a forum. The person @zeedout quotes may or may not have been a woman, may or may not have been First Nations and may or may not have heard this story (note that the woman quoted is relating a story from still a 3rd person). I am not saying I disbelieve it - but I am saying that a story related by a person met in an online forum, about a story heard from still a 3rd person, is a pretty tenuous chain to follow.
@carlgnash - Thank God you found me! Luddites should not be allowed to wander around loose in cyberspace. Yes, you're absolutely right about . . . almost everything. I did not read @zeedout carefully before I linked the post to you and to Titus. In fact, I was nearly dozing off after several hours of Steemit reading and several hours of trying to absorb the "do's and don't's" of the culture. Much later I realized that @zeedout was, in fact, speaking of someone else. And I think I may have rushed through the post so hastily because my brain was click- click-clicking its way back to several corroborating YouTube documentary videos about the Catholic missionary schools that were established for the children of indigenous tribes and were later investigated for discrimination and child abuse. In other words, I read the comment and immediately went into brain-skip. I focused on the possibility of a first-person Skype interview with a subject whom I assumed would be @zeedout 's grandmother. But without reading carefully, I left it to Titus to make the connection himself. (I did e-mail @zeedout using the e-mail account linked in the comment but there has been no response.) So, my bad.
HOWEVER, here's where we disagree. I don't at all view this topic as demonizing "the other" although that certainly is the sin that shreds our social fabric. I still think that an interview would be appropriate with a credible subject. The fact that neither Titus nor @zeedout ever responded leaves the whole project in a coma (but not altogether dead).
Carl, your idea of creating content from a series of comment exchanges makes perfect sense because of the presumed interactive and networking purposes of Steemit. People write comments because the thoughts and ideas of others stimulate related thoughts and ideas. Thus, chat rooms. So why not post interesting "chat room" exchanges and invite further responses? I've always said you're brilliant, and I've only known you for a very brief minute.
Freely use whatever you find interesting in my comment links because I've been blessed to meet some of the brightest Steemians in the minnow pond. In fact, and I say this with conscious bias, I am quickly convinced that the intellectual output on the Steem platform far exceeds other social media forums. It's a learning atmosphere. And the only change that I might make would be to ask Steemians to identify their primary motive for participation as either information exchange or earning power. Why does that matter? Because those who really need to earn money might enjoy doing so in a suburb of the community that relishes vote for vote and follow for follow, resteeming and unbridled bot activity unrelated to content. Others who prefer content curation might enjoy a different suburb in which interesting debates are continually generated. (I'm still gathering my thoughts on "social equilibrium.") I've never walked through Reddit, but isn't Reddit content curated by subject-moderators?
OK, this is much too long. Have I covered everything? Let me know. Much love.
No you mistook what I was saying. I was drawing a parallel between Christian appropriation of older gods while literally demonizing them; and the appropriation of native culture and symbolism by a colonial government that systemically oppressed and demonized first nations. I was talking about the root causes of the issues discussed in the post/comment, not the actual content of the post/comment itself.
I have summoned quite a few older gods into existence on Steemit - gods that Christian mythology has appropriated and categorized as "demons" or "devils". I won't list them here but felt I should mention this to you in the spirit of openness given your reaction to my friendliest and most public devil account.
@carlgnash - Well, of course you were. Now why didn't I get that? Could it be because of the exponential Pi to the 7th power factor that is always embedded in the abstract thinking of the members of your tribe? Albert Einstein, Elon Musk, and Steve Jobs. "The Christian appropriation of older gods?" Fascinating. I'll get back to you on that. In the meantime, here is the perfect illustration of every Luddite's cyberphobia. You'll like this.
https://blog.mozilla.org/internetcitizen/2017/07/31/lovestreams-a-story-of-net-crossd-lovers-and-more/?sample_rate=0.01&snippet_name=7044#utm_source=desktop-snippet&utm_medium=snippet&utm_campaign=mic&utm_term=7044&utm_content=rel
I am going to have to check with my copy editing desk to see how that slipped through the QC process. Rereading that entire paragraph culminating in the bit that had you confused I see the whole thing is dense enough that it could be unpacked into its own blog post. I don't usually talk religion here but I do consider myself to be a student of religion and history, and we are touching on some fascinating history here. I think it is relatively safe to point you to the Wikipedia page of the same name as the account of mine that you muted. Many gods of the other (from the Christian perspective), e.g. gods worshiped by anyone not of the Abrahamic lineage, became syncretized elements within the Abrahamic religions but were literally demonized - recast as devils and demons. This is no surprise of course as one of the primary tenants of the Abrahamic religions is that there is only one true God.
The interesting part to me is the lengths to which later Christian theologians during the middle ages and Renaissance elaborated an intricate mythology of hell, with a hierarchy of devil/demon princes serving under Satan all having particular fields of specialty. Most of the names of these devils and demons, of which my alternate account name is one, were originally derived from gods outside of the Abrahamic tradition. Some of this Christian mythology of devils and demons is passed on today in popular culture and even in some vestigial elements of the Roman Catholic Church. Hope none of this crosses a line, I find it terribly fascinating but without knowing exactly what triggered your reaction to my other account's name I may be treading on thin ground here.
Also a reaction to the link you shared - pretty interesting interview with the director, although I think he has a somewhat closed mind to the true possibilities of the internet in general and social media networks in particular. The closing section brought up by the interviewer resonated with me and is an interesting bit of synchronicity as well.
The final message in Lovestreams is, “You are not alone.”A few weeks back I posted a Steemit Open Mic Entry of the same name - "You Are Not Alone" (video below but the post is worth reading)
@carlgnash - I am so happy that your sister is safe and that you're able to treasure and deepen your relationship with her even more intensely and more sensitively. God is truly merciful. Your original song, "You Are Not Alone," is haunting, and if you can send the written lyrics I would really appreciate that. But you have more on your plate than ten people, so if typing up the words will be yet another item on your "to do" list, don't worry about it. I'll type the words myself. My favorite part of the song is the chorus provided by your little one. (Girl or boy?) That reminds me of the two little empaths in the link below. They are so beautiful!
I won't even begin to answer your thoughts on Christianity right now. I'll be offline for a day or so and that theological conversation needs time and space. We'll be exploring that universe for a few hundred eternities. What I find particularly joyous in your sharing the song with me is the intimacy of your home atmosphere. It is a warm and peaceful and loving space that nurtures creativity and all good things. No wonder your little one is so happy there!
Here's the link to the two little empaths (Michelle adds their appearances at the end of her video), and I'll be back in a few days. God bless you, dear Carl.
I'm glad you enjoyed the song and I shared it to precisely to give you more of that warm intimate connection. The lyrics are in the post - I shared the link to the post above the video. The lyrics are towards the bottom of the post. Enjoy your time offline and I look forward to our next conversation. Much love - Carl
@carlgnash - Carl, I think that I might be back online for a bit. It's been very refreshing to listen to the silence of the Planet Lud. When I came back, I found this very interesting post by @berk whose writing reminds me of Dostoevsky and Gogol. So here's the link for your original works curation service. And here's a question. The original writing has not been edited. Do you want the writers to edit before you re-steem? How does that work? Love you.
https://steemit.com/life/@berk/my-trial-gaps-are-always-there#@berk/re-sarahspeaks144-re-berk-re-sarahspeaks144-re-berk-my-trial-gaps-are-always-there-20171015t192324196z