Month: September 2015

There is a nation whose very existence is owed to a foreign population taking land by force, employing tactics ranging from bioterrorism to harmful and false treaties, whose proud and longtime original residents are now crowded into ghettoes in the worst parts of the nation, and that is just the ones that have managed to survive. The Geneva Convention was blatantly ignored for one reason or other, and the invading forces believed that it was their divine right to take the land either because their deity gave it to them, or because the people living on the land originally were followers of the wrong religion, or simply because if they could take the land then they were meant to take the land in a manifestation of political darwinism.

Settlements were established by the occupying forces in order to demographically secure the land for themselves, and enough time has gone by that they now consider themselves rightful owners and native to the land they had stolen, as most or all of them have been born in the occupied territory.

Further, once the land was secured the other nations of the world conspired to help them, by sending people to the new area to further secure it and prevent an uprising that would restore the original order.

No attempt has been made, nor will any attempt ever be made, to restore the birthright of the original owners of the land and resources, partly because of the perceived divine right of the interlopers and partly because of the conspicuous lack of surviving victims.

Now for the quiz:

To which nation am I referring?

A) Israel
B) Britain
C) United States
D) Canada
E) Tibet
F) Cuba
G) Hawaii
H) None of the above, that never happens.
I) All of the above, and more.

Goth
Goth is (among other things) an ordinal term.

Ordinal terms
Ordinal terms are words like ‘first’, ‘second’, ‘third’, ‘fourth’, ‘last’, and so on. Notice that often the number with which they are associated is corrupted or missing in favour of a latin root (in the instance of ‘second’, etc) or a corrupted version of the original Old English term (in the instance of ‘first’ and ‘third’, etc). After three they tend to be just the number with an appended -nd -th -st since most uses of ordinal terms are concerned with only the first three positions. Races, pageants, and other competitions where a group is graded and given relative ranking are the primary uses of ordinal terms. Some competitions even have extra terms for these places such as ‘winner’/’runner up’/’second runner up’ or ‘win’/’show’/’place’, since the difference in reward for these places is great.

Distilled
Essentially, ordinal terms are applied to a person or thing by a person or group who is considered to be in authority. They are not applied by the person or thing itself, rather the person or thing is submitting itself to be graded. After all, what individual would say that they are second or third at something if they could control the ordering criteria?

Extrapolation
Following the pattern put forth previously, i suggest that ‘Goth’ is a term not unlike ‘ninth’, a contraction of two other words (such as ‘nine’ + ‘th’) and an ordinal term. In the case of Goth, the terms are ‘God’ and ‘th’.

Conclusion
Goth is thus an interesting term, because it is at the same time an ordinal term and the antithesis of all ordinal terms (a quantum property!). It follows the pattern of ordinal terms but is not derived from a number or relative position. It is a term which is applied by an entity to itself when it refuses to be evaluated according to the rules of another entity (an entity could be anything from a high school science teacher to society as a whole). It is the ‘Go(d)th’ place because it exists in the same time and place as an entity of which it can never be an integral part. People can commune with their Godhead only indirectly, through meditation or other means, since direct communion would mean destruction of one or more involved parties. Those in the ‘Goth’ place can commune only indirectly with the society of those who would be ordered, through an art form or by attempting to enlighten the listed masses, to elevate them to a self-ruling, self-empowered, self-God state…

…the Goth state.