Meridith Berson - Time Line

Meridith Berson - September 28, 2010

In class we were talking about how real time has no division, no experience of today as a separate thing from yesterday. I actually just had to read Aristotle's categories in another class and I thought that I could use this opportunity to relate them. The oral peoples that we are studying seem to see the earth a time in a different way. They lived for the hunts, the harvests, and ceremonies that celebrated different aspects of life. They were not preoccupied with time as we are today.

Aristotle's categories claim that there is a middle ground between every point. To get from point A to point B you must hit all the halfway's in between. I feel like the life that the Oral People's lived were defined by the halfway's. The points in between the ceremonies and the hunts were their lives full of belief and unity with the earth. I wonder if their relation to the divine parts of the earth is because they didn't live in point A or B, but in what comes in between.

Meridith Berson - Movie Reflections

Meridith Berson - September 28, 2010

The movie that we watched in our special religion class on Monday showed a clip of the women making beaded necklaces. Dr. Redick made a comment that the beads were text. In there own way they were recording their beliefs. He also mentioned the same thing for dancing. This got me thinking about text as more of a legacy then anything else. Books can explain the "why's" of a civilization, explain the details of the habits, but the other texts, such as the beads, show something that the writing text cannot do. It expresses who people were, what mattered to them, who and what they believed in, in a way that words are inadequate in explaining.

The dancing is a little different, but it is still a legacy. Although we can't see them doing it now, the fact that they danced as a community shows their union in a real way. Not just describing that they were united. I think it also shows that that beliefs are not something that can be described in a book but something that is experienced.

Meridith Berson - Superior Language

Meridith Berson - September 26, 2010

In Ong's book Orality and Literacy, Ong argues that human beings communicate through both writing and speaking but that the oral language is so much more important. He claims that only 106 languages have ever been written down and today only 78 of over 3000 languages that are spoken today have a literature. I think the Ong makes a good point. By far the spoken language succeeds the written in popularity and practicality. But I would like to argue that the written is what makes a civilization what it is. While oral language allows the people of the tribe to communicate with each other, it takes something in writing to communicate with those to come. Without writing, stories and histories that shape our past and continue to give humans a forward progression in evolution would be lost. As shown by Gutenburg's invention of the printing press, written word allows for education and power to those not predisposed to it. Everything we know about past civilizations, their inventions and history alike, are because of written records. The Rosetta Stone was such an amazing discovery because it allowed the archeologists to understand a people that they had not yet understood.

Oral language is important in the now. But to claim, as Ong does, that it is somehow more important, I must disagree with. I must admit that many stories are past down through families that define the culture. But they will eventually die out without any written record.

Meridith Berson - Sacred Sounds

Meridith Berson - Septemeber 19, 2010
I was doing some reading on the importance of music in the traditions of oral peoples and the reading explained how music was a show of caste, as well as that of worship, warning, gathering, and festivities. With emphasis on the drums, each culture had their own types of instruments and used them in different ways. Some instruments were seasonal and were only used on a few occasions, such as a flute after a good harvest. Drums were the most diverse and varied the most. Some used sticks to beat on the heads of the drums while others used their hands. Some drums even had ropes along the sides that allowed the musician to change the sound of the drum by how hard the squeezed it between their arm and their ribcage.
What I found most interesting in the article is how the instruments themselves symbolized things. For example, the heads of the drums were usually made out of sheepskin. The reason for that is because sheep are the most "talkative" of the animals. I thought this was really interesting how the drums which were used to replace the deficient words were in and of themselves supposed to symbolize speech.

Bibliography:
Clark, Nicole. "Music and Oral Traditions." Senegal Orientation. N.p., 08 Aug 2003. Web. 19 Sep 2010. .

Kelsey Brooks - Flower Tokens

While reading a passage in The Original Visions, I found it very interesting the different practices of the Indigenous Peoples. Specifically, the Neanderthals. The Neanderthals buried their dead very cautiously with flowers. They believed these flowers were tokens because they believed the dead should be buried with the beauty they enjoyed on Earth. I thought about this passage and what it meant today. Today, people send flowers out of instinct because it is the "right" thing to do. Many of us see the flowers as a token of sympathy instead of a token as beauty. Some Neanderthals believed the dead would enter a new form existence and the flowers would resonate more than they did in previous life. We have a more broad view today. The funeral takes place with the flowers surrounding the casket. Days past and we begin to throw the flowers away. Why do we not think of flowers as a token of beauty like the Neanderthals? Do people take more things for granted today rather than appreciate what we have?

Meridith Berson - Private Lives

The other day I watch a House episode that incorporated someone who blogged about everything. Her and her boyfriends fights, as well as medical decisions, were broadcasts via the internet to people all over the world. I have never been one for blogging because usually what is in my head is sovereign there. It's private and putting it out there allows for criticisms that seem based on just the issue, not who I am or who I am interacting with. But amid my own criticisms of this girl who broadcast everything, I began to relate it to being "lost," as discussed in class.
Whether we choose to broadcast our problems to a anonymous viewers or keep them between us and a couple of close friends, I think it goes to show how "lost" we are (as discussed in class.) As a generalization, our culture is extremely dependent on each other. From superficial "jokes" about needing a friends advice before buying something to problems with faith, family, and friends, we constantly ask each other for advice. It seems that we have fallen into a "blind leading the blind" type of scenario. Those who are able to keep their problems under the radar are usually those who are seen as having it the most under control and the most wise, when they may be the most lost, so much so they are unable to even begin to verbalize it.
Although we are all lost in different ways, our dependence on each other is blatant and obvious. However, I would argue it is not shameful. The fact that we are all lost give us a type of fraternity and interdependence that also makes life worth living. This brings me to the question of whether those that we trust we shouldn't also be friends with because a betrayal of friendship could so easily tip a scale and open your personal issues to the world.

Meridith Berson - Divine Song

Meridith Berson - September 12, 2010 (in lieu of the assigned reading "The Self and Divinity, pg 30 in "Original Visions.")
I was raised in a Christian environment where praising God was not so much an act of gratitude but a requirement for salvation. Whether or not that was what the leaders intended to teach or not is unclear, but it was the message that was relayed. The way that praise was done was mostly through singing, such as the Native North American Shaman. The singing was a sacred ritual that would allow them to tap into the divine, immaterial, world that as humans we cannot seem to fully grasp. The book makes a point to show that even when there was no healing to be done the Shamans still sang, needing a constant touch with something divine.
This leads me to a more open view of religion. Not one that demands something of the person, but like the Shaman's song, it is something with an addictive counterpart. The more you participate in forms of worship the more intoxicated with it you become. Questions arise and are answered or settled on, and the part of the mind that cannot be silenced with math and science strives on what little evidence and what great faith others have in a type of divine being, or a basic divinity of any type. My question is this: is the song that the shaman's sang to reach the divine a beginning to the worship we have now, something that has been passed down? Or is it a basic instinct to sing when words limit us to our simple vocabulary?

Colleen Cook-Dreams

The other day in class we were talking about the difference between subjective and objective selves. We talked about how when one is a subject they are aware of their emotions and feelings. Being an object is having senses that we are able to use to know the world around us such as having a physical body and being able to touch other objects. Dreams were brought up and we talked about how they may seem real to us because it is our objective self in the dream living but it is in a different world where our feelings may or may not be real. Is it our same physical self experiencing our dream? I don't see it as our bodies being in the dream as our more our mind making up these thoughts in our head. As we talked about this I was thinking about the night before where a few friends and I watched Nightmare on Elm Street. It was ironic that I had just watched this because the characters have extremely intense dreams that BECOME real. Somehow Freddy goes from just an illusion in their dream to actually taking their lives away from them. It was crazy to me how this was possible. Obviously, it was "just a movie" so it wasn't a true reality but it has much to do with what we talked about. What related the most to us talking about our physical bodies/minds being within our dreams was at the end of the movie where the main character realizes she can control her dream. She was able to capture Freddy's physical body and pull him out with her when she woke up from her sleep. He comes into her reality, her objective world, and is destroyed. Crazy!

Reading and Reflection: The BaMbuti Faith

Hilary Kolodziej- Native Africans
Today, I was thinking about the reading I did in the Original Visions text. There was one piece of information in particular that caught my attention. The author mentioned the Pygmies of the BaMbuti faith and their focus on optimism. He wrote how they remained positive, even in times of pain and death. By singing to the forest, they were certain the trees heard and understood their troubles. These songs reveal vulnerability and showed their "deepest self." Also, he mentioned that by remaining optimistic and cherishing every stage of life, they have successfully made family connections the most important part of their life.