kahoku Wrote:Archer Wrote:If you yourself think that the descriptions of jinn are more accurate to your people than the (modern) image of demons, then why hold on to the label demon?
Because "demon" feels right? Because, if they are the same, it doesn't really matter which label I choose? Because Jinn come from a culture I'm not as familiar with as ours? Because the images I have of myself resemble a "demon" more than a "Jinn"?
Re a label "feeling right", IMO that's a terrible reason to use it. The point of calling yourself a demon (or shadow, or dragon, or elf, or sidhe, or anything) is
presumably to help you communicate with other people, in which case it helps if the terms are accurate.
For a really prosaic example - in football (soccer), if a forward gets a breakaway so he has the ball and it's just him against the goalie, it's known as a one-on-one (in the UK, anyway). On the other hand in (ice) hockey, a breakaway with no defenders is a one-on-0, while a one-on-one means a breakaway with the forward going against the goalie and one defender. To a lot of people in the UK who were football fans before hockey fans, it "feels right" to call the no-defender situation a one-on-one. But if they then try to talk about something that happened in a game, or get opinions on tactics or whatever, the conversation will make no sense because the person speaking "hockey lingo" has a different definition for one-on-one. (This might seem totally irrelevant, but if a forward gets a breakaway in a game, and his teammates scream "ONE ON ONE!!!" to let him know he's under pressure, if he hears that as "You're safe, there's no defence" . . . it's bad!)
In other words . . . if you want to facilitate understanding, then it's best for everyone to use terms appropriately.
"Jinn" and "demon" are patently not the same concepts; in modern English "demons" are associated with Christian mythology, the Devil, evil, horns, general unpleasantness, etc etc etc. While the root of "demon" might have meant something different in Ancient Greece, that's not where we are now and we're not speaking Greek.
You mention not being as familiar with the culture that originated the term "jinn" . . . but the modern cultural understanding of "demon" is not a chaotic energy being, it's that Christian/Devilish thing that generally does very bad things.
I guess I just don't understand someone actively choosing to label themself with a term that is inaccurate and misleading when they don't have to.
Now if you're people used the word "demon" for themselves, or your people are the same as those original entities called demons, that would be another matter and I could see the point then. But IIRC pre-Christian "demons" (or daemons, or daimons, I don't remember the suggested original spelling) were more like spiritual entities more powerful than humans but less powerful than gods, with none of the specificity of "chaos being".
I know I go on (and on and on and on and on . . . ) about this, but it just seems to me that "demon" is not remotely helpful as a label, and causes a lot of confusion when people try to compare the kin-type (chaos-entity) with the Christian demon (evil, Devil-like being), with the Greek daimon (spirit-being) with other concepts (in this case, jinn).