Those are different circumstances. That guy didn't mistakenly take his uncles tools. The guy in the example was allowed to borrow his roommate's bike and grabbed the wrong one by mistake.Thirty plus years as a police officer, and I've seen countless convictions on similar circumstances.
Taking material property without the express permission of the owner is a crime. The only exceptions are if you are an agent of the owner, or married to the owner.
There's a guy here in the USA, to use just a single example, who did prison time for borrowing a set of tools from his uncle's garage without express permission.
Those are different circumstances. That guy didn't mistakenly take his uncles tools. The guy in the example was allowed to borrow his roommate's bike and grabbed the wrong one by mistake.
* I'm sure we could likewise cite 'druids' and 'bards' where the original cultural context of a term was transformed into a generic fantasy term.
However, this does get to the earlier point made about how shamanism is typically framed as primitive in comparison to priest or cleric. The fact that shaman class is associated with the "primal" source kinda hints at how we generally think of it.4e's Primal Power did a good job taking the class name "Shaman" and offering a variety of images of how the abilities might work in the world.
As said above: add, don't subtract.
Much as @doctorbadwolf says, the fact that these words come from another language isn't really my point. Appropriation of new vocabulary from other languages happens. However, I discussed, for example, about how various indigenous cultures have pushed back against having the term "shaman" applied to their spiritual leaders as an inappropriate moniker and the cultural harm of "plastic shamans" that stems from Western misconceptions. In the case of "mana," its history in Western usage amounts to 130 years or so of Western misconceptions of Micronesian and Polynesian culture and language.Well, much of the english language is taking terms from other languages. So do we stop using "sugar" because it has Arabic roots?
At this point, we either need to make up thousands of new words to replace English words with, or acknowledge were speaking English and if a definition of a word fits what you're describing, you go with it. Might as well replace the numeric system while we're at it so we don't culturally appropriate Arabic culture.
Cultural appropriation is a very real thing. But because a word had it's origins from another culture, doesn't mean the current definition is cultural appropriation itself.
Also a decent alternative to Ki, though again the spiritual and social aspects of mana are lost.
As a GM I will appropriate anything that feels like it will work. To date, not a single Polynesian has complained.
That would be revealing the secrets of the order . . . . .Would they? To the best of my knowledge, they do not identify as “paladins” or use the title “paladin” as part of their order’s offices.
This comes across as very “I can wear a bindi if I want to!” style entitled.This is another one. I am not Asian, nor have I ever trained in any real martial arts or eastern religious practices, but if I believe ki/chi is real and I have it and can learn to use it, nobody better try to tell me I am appropriating anything just because I was not born into that culture.