Amyrosegeden

amyrosegeden

friendly psa from a library assistant!

do not write on our books!!!!

your selfishness not only wastes an employees time (we have to spend 2-4 hours checking every page and erasing) but also the poor book will never look clean ever again, there’s no good way to permanently remove pencil marks (god forbid pen) and the eraser shavings get everywhere too.

sticky notes exist for a reason!! DO NOT WRITE IN BOOKS YOU DONT OWN!!!

thanks for coming to my Ted talk

Mat Reding

Can gods be wrong?

This is a very interesting question because the answer really depends on the followers and how they feel about the myths in relationship with their form of worship. 

For example: 

If you are a follower who believes the myths are true and the gods are exactly like the gods in the myths (jealous, petty, hot-headed, etc) then yes, they can be wrong. The reason why I'm putting this down is because there are people who take mythology to be akin to biblical truth and prefer to see their gods in this form. Seeing the gods in this form seems to be more common among T*k T*k worshippers but I have met some tumblr Hellenic Polytheists who also see them in this form so I don't want to accidently invalidate anyone's experiences with the gods in case this is how a worshipper wants to see them, since it works for them. 

However, if you don't see the gods to be just like the gods in mythology, the idea that the gods can be wrong may change. I personally don't see the gods as being able to be wrong because I believe that the humans interpreting them were wrong. In ancient Greece they believed Aphrodite hated women who were considered prettier than her. Today, Aphrodite will glare at me if I fall victim to the self-hatred the media has trained me to have in order to capitalize on my insecurities. Was ancient Greece wrong for seeing Aphrodite as a jealous goddess or am I wrong for seeing Aphrodite as an encouraging goddess of Beauty? It really does not matter because to me humans have the ability to superimpose their own beliefs on what they think the gods want and as times change, so do the gods. Maybe she was once a very petty and jealous goddess or maybe the misogynistic environment the ancient greeks had made it easier to control women and having a supportive goddess like Aphrodite on the oppressed side would have just been horrible.

Socrates was killed for telling the Athenians that he had a different way he saw the gods and the Athenians did a smear campaign against him claiming he worked with foreign gods when it was actually the same gods but he was just using his own experience which was different than what the Athenian government had approved of which is something Plato's Allegory of The Cave touches on, for me, with the shadows on the wall representing what the government wanted the citizens to believe. 

Oof I went on a little tangent there but my point is that if you choose to see the gods as being capable of being wrong, that's fine.

If you choose to see humans as being wrong when they interpret the gods, that's fine too.

In my opinion, It really boils down to what feels right for how you choose to interact with the gods.