If you have checked out Mythology Worlds recently, you may have noticed that the website's menu bar has received a huge update:
While there used to be several menus for the different mythologies ("Western", "Eastern", "Native", Storybook", and "Modern" Worlds), all of the various mythology categories have now been placed in a single menu, titled "Myths and Legends of the World".
Why did I do that, you may be wondering?
After some thorough navel gazing, I have come to realize that the way the Earth is divided between the "Western" and "Eastern" worlds is very arbitrary and, to be honest, quite outdated.
If you check out my multicultural cartoons on my Instagram and Facebook accounts (and even on this very website), it is clear with all this diversity that "Western civilization" and "Eastern civilization" are social constructs.
Rather than pussyfoot around with these categories, let's just abandon this binary division entirely!
Moreover, in relation to the U.S. of A. (where I happen to reside),
Europe is east and Asia is west.
I myself use "Occidental" in place of "Western" to make these artifically-constructed "cultural norms" sound mysterious and exotic; and "World Majority" or "the Majority World" instead of "Eastern" or "non-Western" to call attention to the fact that these societies are the vast majority of the Earth's land and people.
By definition, we're all native/indigenous to somewhere in the world.
A storybook is just that--a book of stories.
This means that every culture has storybooks.
As for "modern", everyone on this planet living today is modern by definition.
Even people back in the day saw themselves as "modern" in their own present days.
A couple thousand years in the future, our present day will be
"the ancient world".
With all this in mind, I have decided to place all of the mythology webpages into a single menu.
It also fosters inclusivity because every one of these cultures is placed in one category.
The unified menu itself is placed at the center of the bar so that it will be the central focal point of Mythology Worlds.
Placing all of the different mythology webpages into a single menu additionally serves to keep things simple so that the bar doesn't get cluttered.
On the "Myths and Legends of the World" master webpage, new buttons have been provided that link directly to each webpage from the master page.
It is very common for websites and other programs to receive updates, and this website is no different.
Remember...
Being human is not weird.
That update makes a lot of sense! And you are absolutely right about the arbitrary nature of “Western” and “Eastern” when describing countries. Great job making a stand on that and leading by example!