Talyn: Aristotelian Offenses

[bellatrys]

You may recall that Aristotle when discussing the dramatic and narrative arts and the Suspension of Disbelief said that it's better to go with a Probable Impossible in fiction, than with an Improbable Possible (and then of course complicated it by pointing out that all that in part depends on the skill of the artist, the medium they're working in,

Comments

[anonymous]

Were patronymic surnames forced on the Bengali by the British, or was there a previous custom, I wonder.

well as the religions that shaped teh area are all deeply patriarchal, and arose and grew with the various empires (with its bastard child - administration! with its clerks and census records, laws and property ownership, boo! hiss!) it's likely. Child ownership having to err towards men when possible in case of divorce (whether by the law or by the knife) to make sure that each family was given what it considered its own or as near abouts so that everyone felt, if not happy with the arrangements then at least accepting of them, lest the clans get a-fueding and undermining the civil authority (which might just be our jason and his trumpet when it comes right down to it, out in the sticks) because the last thing a striving empire needs is a group of clans getting some good crotch kicking practice in on each other only to find shinier mutual interests waiting back towards civilisation, with clerks to pillage and their gold to ravage.

Which is pretty much what happened prior to the collapse of the Old empires afaik, which led ot the muslims empires, which themselves led to the afghani/punjabi sikhs (another bunch of fueding clans that intermingled shamelessly and took up comb and sword...) then the smelly stinky unwashed europeans who probably changed only as much as they needed, and even helped rewrite the files as the old men told them to, no realising because the bengalis say they don't intermingle, and the white man has trouble accepting cunning when it's not aimed at him...

Of course back in the days bengalis kept each to their own, just like southern negros and southern whites, like protestants and catholics, spaniards and native americans, why in my day...

Strange how the past always seems to change far less than the present, which just magically is, with no evolution or shifting from then to now, no momentum being carried over, back in the day everything was static and good and We didn't mix with Them no sirree.

Of course memories can lie, and be changed and misremembered and retconned, but babies don't cease to exist on a whim, not without trouble, and even the most dissonance proof conservative elder can't keep the idea that they had to kill babies and the idea that back in the day...always was as it should be now, if you young whipper snappers didn't go gallavanting about with your modern ways and disrespectful ideas...better to keep things quiet and civilised, sign here, say this vow, and...

...Of course a name change here... a name change there... Welcome sister/brother/kin-who-was-always-kin-or-else! everything kabiu, everything in its place, the old men's manchi to the past is affirmed and all is right with the world (if the young would just stop meddling!).