The Most Damaging Idol of the Tribe Essay

the pain that the readers must feel as they witness as the tribe’s erosion under the influence of the

One could feel sorry for the tribe being written about and disapprove of our own culture when viewing it using the sociological perspective. Miner writes in one of the introduction paragraphs that “the magical beliefs and practices of the Nacirema present such unusual aspects that it seems desirable to describe them as an example of the extremes to which human behavior can go,” (Minor, 1956) Teeth brushing, dental visits, and hair drying are things that seem like normal behaviors. Even the obsession of women’s breast sizes are accepted as normal and certainly haven’t changed since the 1950’s. Minor’s description of these behaviors make them sound foreign and we feel sympathy towards the behavior’s in this “tribe”.

The Idols of the Tribe represent the illusions of human nature: it refers to the idea that our everyday problems arise simply because we are humans. For example, it is human nature to think that there is more

Any level of intrusion and unwanted exposure to another person’s culture will inevitably have a detrimental effect on your own. The Native American Indian people’s forced appropriation of western European culture has had such a negative effect on their culture that many tribes were entirely decimated. The American Indian people’s culture and society was built almost entirely around their connection to the land, which was taken away from them.

Live Indians were seen as problematic because they refused to die out and they were not wanted in society (61).

Often in tribalism, members of a group gather around an “alpha”. Members of a tribal group idolize these alphas and look to them for guidance in desperate times. Tribalism can sometimes be a good thing, or a bad thing. Popular examples of bad things are sexism, racism, homophobia, and ageism. Although humanity is very advanced

Since the very creation of humanity, humans have questioned the meaning and importance of their own existence. What is humanity’s purpose? How were humans created? Are humans inherently evil? In order to answer these questions, and the countless others regarding human nature, humans have turned to mythology.

The idea that society is a representation of the culture it is made up of is a longstanding theory that shows how humans define the world around them. How people view themselves in relation to others, their location, and what they cannot explain reveals a lot about social structure, gender roles, societal values, and what relationships are considered important. Because society and culture are so closely related, references to one can help with understanding the other. By looking at important cultural texts, readers and scholars can gain insight into the societies that adopt them and what is considered significant within those societies. Throughout the Enuma Elish and The Songlines, the influence of culture on how society is structured is shown

No guide exists to define human nature and ways of being. Instead, we must base our principles and thoughts on common ideas and values, socially determined rights and wrongs. When it comes to medicine and science, western ideals on allergy and eating habits often air on the side of caution, with recommendations placed prior to appropriate research that become heavily followed social facts. In the Muedan society, social facts outline the functionality of sorcery with a similar disparity of facts. Yet different in use, combined these social facts offer subsidence to the society. Western and Muedan societies use social facts to provide solace and guidance in an area of unknown, regardless of factual backing.

I find it significant that the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism in India, and the life of Confucius in China overlap with the life of Thales in Greece. Each of these great thinkers takes a different approach in seeking wisdom, but all three of them avoid using the traditional concepts of God as a primary element in developing their separate philosophies. These three independent value systems, nurtured by different cultures in separate corners of the world, surface almost simultaneously. This fact suggests to me that the process of civilization produces a need to find advanced values with which to control our primitive instincts. Such practices as infanticide, genocide, human sacrifice, and the inequality of women may have

It is an abomination for a man to take his own life. It is an offense against the Earth, and a man who commits it will not be buried by his clansmen. His body is evil, and only strangers may touch it” (Achebe 207). This example shows a more simple tribal system because there is only one leader that makes all of the decisions.

was the essences of the great tribe’s desire for greater power and submission to upturn certainty of their ideal future. If a tribe could oppose a civilization in war and rise victorious, it would be established as a powerful tribe and their reputation would spread which made conflict a tradition. The element of war then came to symbolize the divine strength of a tribe in the same manner in which it represented the pride of their existence. The belief that they could spread their power across the nation and take refuge upon those whom they feel to be their enemies, bringing acclaim to the powerful and dominant and fear to the powerless and conquered. However, the manifestation of fear had only done some conquering tribes a little good in reducing rebellion or opposition, as tribes had chosen to stick up for their blood over being chained down by implemented rules seeing themselves as a unity that exists in and outside an established law that came after them. Rebellion and revolt has also been a sign of strength, through fear and terror a tribe’s strength would be diminished however all that would become passion and righteousness when tribes seek to regain their power and free themselves from

In this wonderful world there are different type of religions and cultures that are all special in their own way. Some religions that are known across the world are Christianity, Judaism, but most religions beyond that will sometimes get lost in the eyes of others. Some religions that are huge, but don’t get enough attention unless it negative or over romanced are: Islamic, Buddhism, Hinduism, Rastafarianism. As an anthropologist having a emic and etic perceptive is needed as to get accurate, and authentic information, so emic mean looking inside the culture and having a personal experience with the people; etic means to look from the outside and see how a certain culture interacts , and what they portray to the world. My focus of this paper

A religious family in the story Why I am a Pagan by Zitkala-sa, talks about how this little girl was taught certain things that her family has always gone by. What she was taught, she now holds close to her life dearly, while also relying on it every moment of the day. Her life shows us a different view on cultural identity, how she was taught something important not only to her, but in everyone else’s as well. By showing her what the kind of men in her life mean the most to her. She says something about her religion, how it reflects her past, present, and future, along with what she stands for. She says, “I was taught long years ago by kind missionaries to read the holy book, these godly men taught me also the folly of our old beliefs.” (Zitkala-sa 2) In her culture, and

Friedrich Nietzsche, one of the most examined and well-known philosophers of the modern era, critiqued the modes by which ancient more historical philosophers used their rationale. In his work, Twilight of the Idols, Friedrich Nietzsche argues that “the most general, emptiest concepts” such as “being,” “the good,” “the true,” “the perfect,” and “God,” are mistakes that come as a result of philosophers placing “what comes at the end at the beginning as the beginning” (Nietzsche 18). This may be interpreted in several different ways, one being that he believes that ancient Greek philosophers such as Socrates and Plato, and the great Anselm of Italy later on, used a backwards logic taking abstract concepts that seem to be empty in order to make claims about physical reality. Also he may have thought that the Greeks placed too much emphasis on the soul, rather than embracing life, and what was in the moment. Rene Descartes, another famous philosopher and mathematician views on this subject would have diverged from Nietzsche’s ideas taking an approach defending the rational thought process being responsible for the conclusion of such big, broad, empty concepts. Friedrich Nietzsche, rather than Rene Descartes viewpoint on this concept of empty phrases being the basis for which we make rational conclusions on seems much more plausible, as it is based on a more exact, empirical basis.