Myths, Legends, Science, and the Interpretation of History

In most of what I write I suppose my genres seem mashed together.  I definitely try to view historical happenings through the lens of what contemporary evidence is developing in genetical evolution and the vast leaps of astro-physical phenomena. My father was a historian but he tended to not challenge the mainstream historical interpretations.  Of course most of those interpretations have radically altered from the way historians were viewing,especially United States historians viewed them in the late 40’s and early 50’s.  But my father seemed stuck in the views that were presented to him at that time.  But my father grew up and was born at the very dawn of the great depression.  His father was sent to prison the year he was born.  His father was born in the mountains of North Carolina that border North Carolina.  They were brought over as slaves before there were any black slaves in North Carolina, or at least before there was a great deal of black slaves in North Carolina.  Of course that means my family were not called slaves, they were called indentured servants.  Obviously there were some skilled indentured servants that did have skills and crafts that actually signed contracts and willingly came to America that lacked many of those skilled artisans and they eagerly needed.  They were willing to agree to have their passage paid to America and usually, depending on their level of skill, sign two to four year contracts,  I spend several chapters in my book writing about indentured servitude (There Never Was…Freedom Democracy Justice). I have no idea where the idea that most were willing to come and that there was some kind of universal seven year contract that is apparently still being taught at least when my own kids were attending high school).  If black citizens are upset about Ron DeSantis trying to reteach black history in America (very documentedly wrong) we continue to teach a very documentedly wrong—really wrong perspective about the indentured.Of course it is for very similar reasons.  No white American wanted to teach the truth to American whites that indentures came to the Americas in the same manner as black slaves and many died.  No one wants to admit that there was no”benefit” to being an indentured, certainly not that the vast majority that were forced to sign contracts when they were accused of crimes to and that the contracts varied depending on what sentence they might face and no one wants to admit that the captain was paid when he arrived and sold or auctioned. But one of the drawbacks at auction was the limitations of terms of the contract that might limit the length the indentured might have been signed  to reduce the length of the service. So both  because the need was higher than could be supplied, and because it was much more profitable for ship captains themselves, thousands and thousands were simply shanghaied.  Technically illegal, the government turned a blind eye.These had no signed term limit to their contract and therefore the contract was negotiated upon arrival in America.  But I cannot find seven years as even a typical average, adult  males were usually in the neighborhood between five to nine years, adult women almost always more than that.  But adult women (post 25 year olds) were not very desirable.  But if anyone that was not an adult, of course, then that would be retained in indentured service until they were older. And if they were not nearing maturation into adulthood of course contracts themselves could be as long as fifteen years.  But to extend those contracts there were multiple methods of devious practice (varying to some degree depending on state law) to extend the service.  For example in Pennsylvania if a owner stated in court that the servant had not actually been producing as much work as they should be, then the courts could extend the contract because the servant had been loafing.  If a woman (girl, if not 25) became impregnated (and since they were always segregated in service by sex, that meant raped by the owner, then their servitude was automatically extended by the length of “time to give birth an recover from giving birth and the duration of weaning (generally averaging to a two year additional service).  But children born while a woman was in service were automatically in service until the child reached the age of 21 for males or 25 for females.  But if a mother reached the end of her service and wanted to remain with her child  she was allowed to “willingly” extend her own service to be with her child.  A conservative estimate from birth and court records indicate that probably at least close to sixty percent of women in service between the ages of 11-17 did become pregnant during service.  Maryland had the most restrictions on extending service and required owners to provide tools, a remittance and a small acreage to all servants upon the termination of the servants’ contract.  Unfortunately the law also provided that if no land were available then in order to prevent vagrancy the servant’s contract could be extended until the plot of land should become available.  

But there was another, old-fashioned, method of becoming indentured.  It was as the spoils of war.  If there were a battle against the sovereign the defeated participants (though not usually the leaders, they would be imprisoned or executed) would be captured and sent to America as indentured servants. And this is how my ancestry came to these shores.  And my family kept a ledger in their family Bibles that extended all the way back to even before we came to America.  Every family member had such a record, except my own grandfather.  Nevertheless my father was as aware of these ledgers as I was.  In 1641 the Irish successfully revolted from England and established the Catholic Confederation. As such there was a treaty with the Stuarts that in granting them their freedom there was a mutual defense agreement. As a result of this alliance, The Catholic Confederation joined the Royalists and when the Rump Parliament, led by their general, Oliver Cromwell, defeated the Royalists and Charles was executed, a contingent led by the Earl of Ormonde fled to Ireland and the Catholic Confederation joined  Ormonde and continued to  resist with the intention of returning England to the royal family.  In fact the Catholic Confederation had signed a new allegiance with Charles II proclaiming him King of Ireland in January of 1649 within days or weeks of the execution of Charles I.  During the civil war however, Michael Jones had been sent to Ireland by Parliament to fight Royalists and by proxy, the Confederation allied with the Royalists in 1647.  And after the fall of the Royalists, more Parliamentary troops were dispatched to Ireland. Now what we need to point out is that while was then, and is now, predominantly Catholic, many Scottish Protestants had fled to Ireland when Scotland itself had its own conflict between protestantism and catholicism.  The pretext of course of displacing Catholic landowners with English ones was retaliation for Catholic discrimination against Scottish protestants.  Well I cannot accept that since it appears that most of the Scottish Protestants were also aligned with the Royalists, that Irish freedom in the treaty that gave the Catholic Confederation de facto independence promised no retaliation against the Scottish Protestants, and if they had negated its terms most likely would have resulted in CharlesI also negating the treaty.  But the most damning evidence that leads me to this conclusion is that there is little evidence that I have found that Scottish landowners retained their lands either adding to the fact that the Adventures Act that Parliament in 1642 to enable to get loans to fund their  rebellion (seven years before their victory) used Irish land confiscation as the collateral upon victory to repay their loans.  

During the war between 1649-1652 (before the mostly completed land transfer that replenished the coffers and allowed Parliament to pay much of their war debt, the process of battle and land confiscation, a great famine occurred that in consequence led to a national outbreak of Yersinia pestis bacterium (that is commonly known as the bubonic plague) and contemporary estimates said 83% of the Irish population died.  (Modern estimates range between 15-50%).  But during this period over 50,000 Irish persons were rounded up and survived the journey to the Caribbean and the southern North American colonies where they sold into indenturehood.   But since nearly half never survived the journey, that means a lot more Irish were forced into servitude. Hence came my ancestors to America.  But unlike slaves my family was able to  bring their ancestry  with them. 

To put this into some kind of perspective, the entire population of the British colonies in North America in 1700 is estimated to be roughly 260,000 persons.  Importation of black slaves from Africa would begin to rapidly increase in the 18th century, but in 1700 there were about 27,600 black slaves, presumably most were more than likely first generation slaves.  But at the turn of the first century of colonization 195,000 persons were in indentured servitude at that time.  Not descendents of indentured servants, but in servitude.  My family was long out of servitude and in their third generation begetting the fourth, so they are not included in that number.  But if you add the population of indentured with the population of the slaves only around 37,400 persons basically owned 222,600 persons. Some of those might have been , like my ancestors, no longer in service.  Figure out that  on your own.  But this country was founded on white slaves before it began to import black slaves.

But those so-called indentured joined with the slaves and attempted to rebel.  Guess what?  They won.  There was no way for such a minority to defeat such a majority.  And even though the rebellion was in Virginia, there was, at the time even a lower percentage of landowners in the most populous state.  Well England sent troops to reinstate the landowners, and after reinstating them, something changed.  Especially in the southern more rural states.  The south almost abandoned indentures in favor of slaves, at first, probably because of immediate need, not from Africa but from the much closer Caribbean where slaves were more available to be shipped to the continent more quickly to replace the indentured who were, at that time, needing to be replaced more quickly. 

But the more lasting change was a legally defined status that slaves (blacks) were legally subjected to a lesser status that their formerly enforced compatriots in labor, the white indentured.  And of course that led to historical revisionism. Indentured servants all willingly came to the Americas because they benefited from servitude.  So naturally if they could convince whites that most of them had not come to the americas, maybe if they changed the curriculum they could begin within a few decades to convince their descendents that black slaves were also benefited by their enslavement as well. It had worked with the whites. Of course that had begun long ago and right after they changed the legal status of white indentured to somehow being superior to the black slaves. So two things are missing in Mr. DeSantis (although he is not alone in attempting this revisionism) equation, the first being blacks were never actually treated with the status of not being lesser even after emancipation, and in fact they began to increase the disparity legally of whites being more and blacks being less, so the legal equality was never put into practice, and practice attempted to be reinforced legally to deny the former descendants of slaves that they have ever been more than lesser to the white.  And secondly the very attempt is being combined with an increase in making those descendants of white slaves feel that any lessening of their own perceptions of being unequal is all due to increasing the equality of blacks.  So in fact, the entire concept that they are trying to imply is being refuted by its own application of its own attempts.

Or maybe black people are just smarter than whites, I don’t know.

Well my father and I had the same family history available to us.  And yet he interpreted that history differently than I could accept.  His interpretation that our family benefited from being indentured just made no sense.  Our family remained ostracized and impoverished  in the North Carolina mountains until by the beginning of the 1930’s most had finally managed to escape.  But my grandfather-his father- stayed behind to be with his ailing grandfather until he began bootlegging to support his grandfather, which had become even more difficult after the depression began.  While in prison his grandfather died and whatever had remained was confiscated and he migrated north after his release. So at a young age I realized history was interpretive  and I began to seek out any interpretation counter to my father’s interpretation.  In the late 60’s a lot of alternate interpretations  began to appear and I began to feel vindicated, but my father steadfastly clung to the interpretations he had learned growing up in the 30’s and 40’s. If I would try to encourage him to at least look at the new interpretations, of course he would not because they had to be wrong–and he continued teaching history without ever  referencing any reinterpretation.

But no matter how any event is interpreted it still must be (in my estimation)  based on discernible facts which should be the premise for any interpretation. 

The Scientific Factor

Unlike my father, my mother’s field was astronomy.  And since she didn’t begin her post-graduate work until my teens I eagerly studied with her.  I was utterly fascinated and developed an enduring interest.  Of course much of what we learned together has expanded and there are new interpretations of the science as well are being propagated, and the discoveries are beginning to exponentially increase on a daily basis. But science, unlike history, has to be interpreted through what is discerned.  Doesn’t mean new interpretations in astro-physics (which we now more generally call the field) don’t vary, but they continue to try to move towards the most contemporaneous consensus in order to develop theory.  The difference is vital.  An historical interpretation is based on the assumption of common discernible factoids.  A scientific theory is based not  by assuming permanent factoids but discovering how discernible evidence leads to the development of common interpretations called theories, but as evidence accumulates, theories can be revised.     Of course there might come a point when theory can be thought of as non-theoretical and those are scientific facts that become the irrefutable building blocks of seeking more theoretical knowledge. But sometimes those factoids themselves, those building blocks, are in error.  Such as when we discovered that the atom was not the most infinitesimal element of matter.  That made the fact wrong and physicists began to diverge into macro and micro understandings and sought a way to put the two divergences back into a whole theory, for a while called the theory of everything.  Now there is beginning to be a new interpretation that maybe everything is already whole and not in contradiction between itself.  That is to be continued…

Reuniting Science with Myth

There was an usual book published late in ‘22 by Moiya Mctier, The Milky Way:An Autobiography of Our Galaxy.  One of the many comments on Ms. Mctier is about her unusual double major in Astrophysics and Folklore & Mythology from Harvard and that she is the only person to have graduated with those two majors.  She then earned a doctorate at Columbia in Astrophysics.  Ms. Mctier’s website says she grew up in a log cabin, not a modern escapist log cabin, but a hundred year old decaying cabin in the backwoods of West Virginia that lacked running water and electricity with only a fireplace for heating and cooking.  The book is very scientifically accepted as accurate, but it is written as if by the milky way itself, telling its own story.   The opening passage is rather remarkably written to introduce this concept:

“TAKE A LOOK AROUND YOU, human. What do you see?

Actually, don't answer that. Why would I bother listening to you when I know you'll get it wrong? You'll start naming objects and places, but that chair you're sitting in isn't just a chair. That book you're holding isn't just a book. Even the planet your kind is on the brink of ruining isn't just a planet. They're all me.

.

Everything you've ever seen or touched is a part of me. Yes, even you, you vain, filthy animal.

I made it all. Not intentionally, of course. I have no need for chairs, and I really couldn't have cared less about whether or not one of my worlds produced life, especially in a form that was so picky about where it sat. You humans just appeared one millennium, and then it took another several thousand years for me to actually notice you. I guess, in some ways, I'm glad that I did. (But if anyone else ever asks me, I will absolutely deny feeling any sort of affection for your fleshy species.) Before we get too far along, allow me to introduce myself. I am the Milky Way, home to more than one hundred billion stars (and yet you still think yours is special enough to have its own name) and the fifty undecillion (that's five followed by thirty-seven zeros) tons of gas between them. I am space; I am made of space; and I am surrounded by space. I am the greatest galaxy who has ever lived.”

Now  I never became an astrophysicist, but as I’ve noted my mother was and I followed its development with her until she died in 2021 when I was left to try to understand all of the exciting new discoveries without her guidance.  But my degree was in Religion, primarily centered on the theological development of Christianity.  So there is some small bit of similarity that attracted me to her.  

But it is from that theological perspective that I do begin to view the genres that I mentioned in my opening of this article.  History interpreted through theological development must always be aware that one’s theory can be challenged.  Science through the theological lens shows us not a “god”  but a creation that is the way it is but always continues to build on yesterday’s thought. 

Despite what many may perceive there is no Christian theology, singular.  It has been from day one a vibrant challenge to all contemporary ideologies that develop into the debates of the morrow.    But ultimately it began as myth that would develop into a theology.  Myth is not fiction, myth, like sciences,  builds upon itself to create a story of knowledge.  When the myth becomes history and creates a  conflict with discernible knowledge of facts.  As history religion is false to the facts, but also  false to itself.  As myth, it is an attempt to determine the perceivable universe to the best understanding that it can comprehend.  In this sense it was science of bygone days, it was myth that developed into non-science, because myth was the curiosity of the human to understand his environment and how he could live within it and attempt to understand how to survive within it.  There  are, of course, a great deal of similarities of myths that developed in the cultures of humanity.  It was because many of the observations would be similar.  The same “lights” (heavenly bodies) would appear to everyone.  People universally were able to understand seasonal movements in their cosmic observations no matter if they were inuit in the northern hemisphere, resided somewhere in the middle latitudes where environment seasons might be more apparent in their earthly observations, or in the south pacific where those who don’t live within that physical environment may not see much observable seasons, but those who do will be quite aware of the seasonal changes within the environment.

But even those cosmic observations will not be universally viewed the same.  The night sky on the same day will not be exactly viewed to be located in the same place from someone viewing them on a Spanish plateau, in the Tibetan heights, or amongst the Mayans who developed their tri-layered calendar.   The environment, both here on land where our species evolved and our cosmic observations were especially relative to our capability to survive. Whatever capacities our large brains had, it was not about giving us superior knowledge but because it enabled us to survive by giving us the ability to comprehend how to survive by understanding our environment and enabling an ability to adapt to our environment, in fact, to almost any environment, except antarctica.  Without that ability we would not have had the capacity necessary to survive.  Ultimately as we developed our cultures within the environment we were attempting to survive within and myth was not only the best scientific discernment of the cosmos which gave us an understanding of what might be occurring wherever we aboded, and the ability to prepare for the changes and be able to make necessary adjustments within our abode to continue.  We often think of “hunter-gatherers” as perpetual wanderers.  But all modern evidence indicate that is not true. They were able to both abode when it was environmentally sounder to gather and to wander when it was environmentally sounder to hunt.  Of course it was not exactly that clear cut in most environments where these early hominids aboded.  But out of this there grew the myths necessary for comprehension and rituals of behavior necessary to bind the community in the common cause of survival. 

Having said that religion has mythic elements, overall though religions most generally superimpose legends on top of the myth.  Despite general perceptions being led to think religious legend and myth are one and the same, if they are incorporated into religion, I assure you the story of Samson has nothing in common with myth.  It is just as much a legend as a Paul Bunyan or Pecos Bill.  Recently I wrote a column where I wrote about David and the origins of Judaism. David was most assuredly not Jewish, but to establish the Davidic line to the tribe, a legend had to be established of how an Ephramite was actually a Judean.  Part of that was merely fabricated when they altered his genetic line and transplanted it to a Judean genealogy. But to do that they created the legend of Ruth.  I don't think anyone would suggest that the book of Ruth was mythical.  But it is a legend that both served the political purpose of redesigning David’s genealogy; it also established some weird religious doctrine that a widow had to be taken into the family of the male relative.  Of course that was not actually a religious principal the Jews followed, but it did use the legend from the tribal matriliny of the man marrying into the tribe of the wife that prohibited a woman bearing a child of a male within  her own kin-tribe to the woman marrying into the patriliny of the Jewish tribe who had no other tribes to marry into since they had separated themselves from the other tribes of Israel.  I mentioned in that article some other historical distortions as well, so no need to repeat.  

The only reason to bring it up again is to show that legend takes the myths of a community and creates heroes and gods to support the authority of a king.  The superior hero (Odesseus, for instance) the interbred half god-half man (Hercules, Achilles) and the Gods who act as even more powerful super men (Marvel men with superpowers) with the authority to kill the father, wed the mother, rape the human, or intervene or alter human affairs are necessary to a religion.  It takes myths and imposes instead of a manner of attempts at comprehending how to survive within the environment, a community that is developed out of an understanding that respects the environment to insure the community’s survival; to the developing of  a religion that imposes these legends on older myths that transfer the respect necessary to survive into legends that illustrate the impunity of kings and command not respect but obedience to the authority of the king.  It transfers whatever myths may proclaim are god from being the very stuff necessary to survive that confers more of a gratefulness for the stuff that grants survival, into a command to be subdued by the man of power, or assumed power; that grants obedience to gods that are superior to man that grant that man of power the right to his own superiority.

So obeisance  that a religion requires is not really to subdue man’s survival to a god, but to a leader.  And because of this whether a man survives individually no longer becomes a necessity.  To accomplish this the god (man of power, king, corporate executive) creates a set of rules that are designed as a moral authority that if violated allows for retribution.  Only the man who follows the rules (morals) is worthy of survival and the community of survival of the whole becomes shattered asunder to the valuelessness of the disobedient as well as the obedient.    Lives  become expendable in labor that can be replaced, in battle in service against others, by lessened access to the resources necessary for survival, or simply by dehumanizing certain humans by grants of differing levels of humanity to certain others.  

Religions were not founded to encourage the morality of the people but to create an immoral pathway to increase control by those who wish to control.  And the large brain no longer serves its purpose to provide a pathway for humans to successfully survive within the environment by respect for the environment that allows him to survive; to a community being led by inferior humans who  use their brains to make their survival based on removing the ability for others to survive without the leader.  It is not that their brains evolved, they are still dependent on the environment but utilized to create a human culturelessness that supports their survival over the other members of the community.

Thus to return to the beginning of this article—the American continent was founded by an exploitive elite dependent on thousands of what they viewed as their inferiors.  When they united they temporarily overthrew the elite and then used their inferior brains to design a method for their continued exploitation by permanently structuring a divide in the proclaimed valuations of those they exploited.  Black slaves were only valued to be valued as three-fifths of a human.  The irony was that by making them less valuable as a human, their value to their masters increased more.  The masters were stupid because they became so dependent on the slaveforce the value of their own wealth became totally dependent on that slaveforce.  The smarter position would have increased the value of slaves as humans and decreased their value as wealth-producing property.  But their inferior brains did not quite realize that because of their fear that the blacks and the whites might once again unite.

But once again the overvaluing of the humanity of the whites created a different issue.  Whites laboring for masters who granted them greater human value made them less valuable to the masters whose whole wealth-producing value was not as dependent on their laborforce.  But being less valuable in producing wealth for their masters and granting the more value as humans who were only valued as an expendable commodity of interchangeableness made their value to themselves totally dependent on their recognized right of having a higher value than the slaves.

The end result was of course a race of people whose only value is having greater value than another race.  But the other race that’s humanity itself was devalued became more valued by themselves and they continually endured as  a race of Sisyphuses who continually pushed the stone up the mountain top to prove the value they believed they had into a continuous belief that they had as much value as anyone else.  Those that had no value other than the value of being proclaimed more human than those who proclaimed they had equal value to those whose only value was the value to devalue to devalue the other..

Well if that doesn’t make any sense to you, it does not make any sense to me either. But perhaps I’m really wrong.  Perhaps the owners were really smart, if their goal was to devalue everyone as lesser than themselves, you might say they succeeded by creating a paradox of human valuations into a permanent support system to accomplish their own need to control and survive from the labor of others. 

But as the descendent of an indentured family I refused to be cajoled into their ignorance. But what I have, in my lifetime, never figured out a way to inform other sons of the indentured that they really have no greater value to the master than the sons of the slaves and that  the only path from indenturedness is to once again unite with those whom they have themselves devalued in order to have any value, or to realize that in doing so they devalue themselves..  Instead, many who have felt their own value increasingly more worthless have united under the extreme caricature of the master.  As a caricature he values them even less than as ⅗ of a human, but only as flies to support his own ascendancy.  And that allegiance to this caricature of master is the essence of a caricature of a religion.

Moiya Mctier The Milky Way:An Autobiography of Our Galaxy

https://curiousmindsagency.com/moiya-mctier