{"id":64,"date":"2003-07-19T02:28:03","date_gmt":"2003-07-19T02:28:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/3500years.com\/zsallia\/?p=64"},"modified":"2003-07-19T02:28:03","modified_gmt":"2003-07-19T02:28:03","slug":"a-suggestion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jaeddy.com\/3500years\/2003\/07\/19\/a-suggestion\/","title":{"rendered":"A Suggestion"},"content":{"rendered":"

E-mail from John at Weekend Pundit<\/a><\/strong>:<\/p>\n

I’ve enjoyed all the speculation and “what-if’s” proposed by other readers that you’ve been posting lately and your responses seem geared to making everybody take a kind of laid back attitude. You seem to be in some sort of “whatever” mode regarding what you might be. In particular I liked the Yeti’s comment that perhaps you were some sort of “key”. So far everyone seems to be acting as if this were all benign, so let me get all dark and paranoid, since somebody’s got to do it:<\/p>\n

What if you are simply a Judge?<\/strong> Seems to me you’d be uniquely qualified to pass judgment on the human race as a whole.<\/em><\/p>\n

I take exception to that characterization, but not with any ire. Perhaps I would be qualified to pass judgment on the direction of cultural development in the western world, but the human race? I think not. Consider: my experiences have been mostly confined to broader Europe, the Mediterranean area, Northern Africa and the Americas. On reflection I have spent less than two centuries in the Middle and Far East, and that in bits and pieces. Hardly an all-encompassing worldview, to be certain.<\/p>\n

I understand that you might have assumed that I had traveled the world extensively since I have never offered any detailed accounting of my travels. This is partly by design and partly out of necessity, as I could not truly give anyone an accurate accounting of just where I was for the first ten or so centuries of my life. I have done some research and what I recall versus what is recorded in the historical and archeological texts fails to match up at all neatly. I could make some educated guesses, but that is all they would be.<\/p>\n

Finally, I existed in what would best be described as semi-civilized barbarism for a large portion of that time. Not that there was no social order, but my own place in that order was always very low and constantly shifting. As a barren woman I was at the mercy of the men surrounding me- unable to bear children I was either sport or burden, but seldom if ever considered exceptionally valuable. When food became short, or other dire circumstance arose I was always expendable, hence my prolific wanderings between clans and villages. Given the suspicious and superstitious nature of folk at that time I was often forced to live on my own, in some cases for decades at a time, scratching an existence out of the wilderness and meeting only the occasional passer-by who might shelter in my hut out of need or desperation. After that time I was still a dweller on the outer fringes, but civilization advanced to the point where it was easier for me to ingratiate myself: civilization leads to wealth, and with wealth comes the ability to afford such luxuries as myself. I became more valuable as sport, and less of a burden: a gritty calculus, but one that I accept. It allowed me the time and opportunity to prove myself to be more than what I had been before.<\/p>\n

So were I a judge, upon what should I pronounce judgment? What constitutes desperation? Or despair? A properly run brothel? A worthwhile civilization? And to whom would I render such a judgment? God? No matter what form of deity you choose to believe in I find it hard to comprehend why the Alpha and Omega would choose such a one as myself for that task.<\/p>\n

Forgive me my stridency. I have had those in whom I have confided seek to twist the fact of my existence in to some form that would concur with their own understanding of the world and reality. I do not resent it, but neither do I enjoy it. I simply am what I am and I have yet to find any great significance to my existence. In the unlikely circumstance that I was created to some purpose I can only assume that I have proven a disappointment to my creator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

E-mail from John at Weekend Pundit: I’ve enjoyed all the speculation and “what-if’s” proposed by other readers that you’ve been posting lately and your responses seem geared to making everybody take a kind of laid back attitude. You seem to be in some sort of “whatever” mode regarding what you might be. In particular I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-immortality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jaeddy.com\/3500years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jaeddy.com\/3500years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jaeddy.com\/3500years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaeddy.com\/3500years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaeddy.com\/3500years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jaeddy.com\/3500years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jaeddy.com\/3500years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaeddy.com\/3500years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaeddy.com\/3500years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}