Like so many words in English, pride has many different meanings, some good, some not so much, but the definition that applies here is this one: Pride [n.]: a positive emotional response or attitude to something with an intimate connection to oneself, due to its perceived value. (…) With every new queer face in the public eye (and in the comic books of DC), someone, somewhere, sees themselves for the first time. Someone feels less alone. Someone feels hope. And it is a glorious thing. - Foreword by Marc Andreyko
In the same vein of cave paintings having children’s handprints higher than their height suggesting them being lifted up or sitting on the shoulders of adults, there’s footprints in Australia dating to the Ice Age showing a group of adults and children walking to a body a water, and one child breaking away from the group to seemingly skip in a wavy path until rejoining the group
This is like 20 thousand years ago! And the joy and happiness of going to water made this child playfully skip along! It’s universal! Dancing their way back to their family!
In a language we will never hear, a culture we’ll never know, with thoughts and ideas we can only imagine! There are millennia of untold moments of happiness, of human connection and warmth that are gone forever. But they still happened! Did that family even notice the tracks they left? How could they have known that that one day their impossibly distant descendants would be able to see the imprints they made?
Another set of tracks in the same area shows three men hunting a giant kangaroo, running at incredible speeds, but one of them had only one foot! They jumped along on one foot, every so often an imprint from a stick appearing. How did they lose their limb? An accident? A fight? A predator? Was it completely gone or maimed? Was it from birth? Either way this person was cared for by their family and was able to heal and participate fully in life! They most likely felt grief when their family member lost the use of their limb! Who cared for them? Who gave them the stick to help them walk? What kind of joy did their family feel when they made a recovery? Did someone shape and carve the stick? They certainly worked all of their other wooden tools, something as essential that would have been too.
This was during the ice age when Australia became a brutally cold, dry desert. Their entire food system had to change. By all indications it should have been a stark and difficult life of little resources. But no! They worked together! They looked after their wounded and sick! The speed that these hunters were running at was incredible and means they were well fed and healthy! A millennia of helping one another and caring for one another and all we can get are tiny glimpses of these moments did they catch the kangaroo did they laugh and congratulate each other when they did how happy were they to bring it back to their families I just
There were people who survived trephination long enough for bone to regrow over the hole. Can you even imagine the care that must have required, in prehistoric times with no sanitation or tech or medicine? We have proof, in the form of human remains, that disabled people who couldn’t have walked or fed themselves survived for years in the Stone Age. We have cave paintings that were clearly made by an adult and a child together, one teaching the other.
The past was brutal, but that doesn’t mean everyone who lived in it was.
every english class ive ever had has reaffirmed my belief that english is one of the most necessary classes we have actually
actually most classes, and in general seeing people interact with media make me believe english classes are probably the most important ones i took
there really isnt a single walk of life where learning to analyze the written and spoken word (of any language) isnt important. this is how you learn to understand harmful implications in fictional media. news media. how you learn to dissect propaganda. how certain word choices (intentional or unintentional) can cause irreparable damage. how you learn to see through advertisements. how you learn the weight of people’s words. how you learn to exercise empathy if that is not something that comes naturally to you. i know im a bit insane academically but this is definitely one of the hills i willingly choose to die on
