[ANST - A clarification (was Rant)]

[Keith Hood]

Lord Breandan:

Please don't do anything you may regret later.

Human history has never been unalloyed.  Both good and evil have always been
intertwined in all human endeavors.  In the Crusades, I am sure there were
people really motivated by religious zeal as well as those motivated by hunger
for land or loot.  That mix always happens.  It does not cheapen the value of
the things legends can teach us.  Even if we kow the truth of history, that
doesn't mean we can't keep working for something better.


> 
> I have seen firsthand what happens to those who have all faith in their 
> legends and in the Right way to live ripped out from underneath them by some

> historian trying to astound the accademic community with his "new finding", 
> and it has directly (I kid you not) led to at least one death that I know 
> of.
> 

That is a dern shame.  Sorry to hear it.

I think there is a different way to look at this matter:  Legends are just
vehicles.  They are stories that convey, and reinforce, the really important
points.  

Find the central points of the legends, the ideas about what is supposed to be
right and good and noble, and take them as ideals, independent of the legends
they come from, and good and valuable of themselves.  Then whatever historical
research does to our view of the legend, people have the most important thing
still intact and usable in guiding their actions.

I think that's a pretty good capsule description of what the SCA should do: 
Learn and acknowledge the history, but live by the ideals from the legends. 
If enough people do that then a millenium from now, history will read as well
as the legends do.

Hope that makes sense.


      Tomonaga

------

A long bow and a stong bow,
And let the sky grow dark.
The nock to the cord, the shaft to the ear,
And a foreign king for a mark!

     --  Stolen from "The Song of the Bosonian Archers" --
               By Robert E. Howard, who should be
                 the patron saint of Ansteorra

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