[Aztlan] AD or CE?

[Reinaldo Morales, Jr.]

Mario,

 

CE and BCE are vestiges of the political correctness movement of past decades. By 1996, the Chicago Manual (14th ed., 8.42) had already noted that "A.D. has taken on a purely conventional significance, [thus] most scholars and scholarly editors have long since withdrawn their objections to the locution."


Both AD/BC and CE/BCE are Christian chronologies, but CE/BCE attempts to hide this. This locution assumes that the Christian calendar is "common" to all. Some of us respectfully find this a bit insidious. Chinese, Islamic, Hebrew, Buddhist, Hindu, and American Indian celendrics do not follow this. So, considering the minority status of the Christian population (compared to these others) it seems odd that a Christian calendar should be considered "common."

 

However, with the economic realities of the twenty-first century considered, we should expect that the Christian calendar is standard for negotiations everywhere the US dollar is used or accepted. This is a reality we can't avoid, and so it is practical to simply use the Christian locution. 

 

Imagine a loan from the US to a foreign government coming due in "2010." We wouldn't expect the foreign government, say, Saudi Arabia, to expect an additional 621 years to repay (Year AH 1 is AD 622). Although, we might cherish the interest.

 

I wonder how (or if) calendar adoption has been used in empire building, and if that has implications for our current global condition.

Dito Morales

www.DitoMorales.com  

> Date: Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:12:42 -0700
> Recently Ive noticed people writing letters to Aztlan and more than once they have posted different initials when writing a specific date,  for instance one article put 450 AD while another put 450 CE, what gives?   Mario Malo