Aztec/Inca sacrifice so the sun rises again
anecdote · personal/scholarly reference ·
retold in 3 talks
Mesoamerican civilisations sacrificed not to correct anomalies (no rain) but to ensure the most regular things, sunrise, would keep happening, which Žižek reads as proto-ecological wisdom: natural regularity is not guaranteed.
As told 2
“They sacrificed so that sun will rise next morning. In some sense they were right.”
“they sacrificed people to sustain the very regularity of nature... sun will raise in the morning”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
Eric Miller1Matteotti1Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck1Joan Bennett1Melanie Klein1Podemos1Luigi Pirandello1Jonathan Swift1
alongside works
Every retelling 2
Mesoamerican civilisations sacrificed not to correct anomalies (no rain) but to ensure the most regular things, sunrise, would keep happening, which Žižek reads as proto-ecological wisdom: natural regularity is not guaranteed., illustrating Anthropocene,no natural balance,ecology
Ancient Aztecs performed human sacrifices not to prevent catastrophe, but to guarantee the most ordinary, regular event: the sun rising. This illustrates that the 'natural order' is sustained by symbolic ritual, not just natural law., illustrating religion-theology,ideology