Primal Religions 2025

 I find it ironic that skulls, at least in our culture, represent death when in most cultures, death seems to be accepted as something that's not final, in a sense. While it does seem to marry well with the concept of erasure, the erasure that death speaks to seems--to me, at least--to be that of a previous state of being, or a former self. This view of death is usually explored as a type of cleansing and a way to (for lack of more abstract terms) wash away the old to uncover the new or the reformed; a necessary destruction for the purpose of rebirth.  Skulls, however, are a phenomenon, usually reserved for the representation of decay and rot, which is why I find the conflict between this symbolism and this particular view of death so interesting. Out of all symbols that we use to represent death in our culture, why is the skull so prevalent? What makes it so representative of the American worldview that we landed on it as our, for the most part, definitive symbol of mortality...

  Required text reading  David Abram has a gift for depicting scenery in such a tangible, compelling, and beautiful way. I have thoroughly enjoyed every piece of this book so far that includes his descriptions. On page 32, Abram writes about different scientists and philosophers that have attempted to define the world as purely mechanical and mathematical, stripping it of its beauty and liveliness, naming every untestable perception of our senses as an illusion. He then begins to describe the reality of the world as he understands it. He says, “Our direct experience is necessarily subjective, necessarily relative to our own position or place in the midst of things, to our particular desires, tastes, and concerns.” This sentence struck a chord in my heart. I am a person who has been steeped deeply in the Western perspective of the world through a classical education, but I have always felt the way Abram does about the world. I cannot view it as a series of m...

  Outside Reading In this blog post I will be reviewing Lecture I Religion and Neurology by William James on the Varieties of Religious Experience. As always, I start by asking myself a question: Is there a link between Religion and how our brain works? Going further, how does language affect our brain, and then affect our religion?  James says that this account will be looking at people who are “most accomplished in the religious life and best able to give an intelligible account of their ideas and motives”. (20 of 571) So we are going to look at people who can speak. James goes on to say that we are going to look at people that are well-accomplished in their field and have classic writings.  “Every religious phenomenon has its history and its derivation from natural antecedents” (22 of 571) James says that Religion is built on top of stories. What then was it like to have the first stories in a religion? James then says that every believer has be...

  Free Choice that includes various readings Ong says that the book will be about oral vs literacy. When I read books I like to make myself questions, that help keep the bigger picture in mind or that the author has no doubt asked before.  My question is what is the difference? I will no doubt find out in further studies of the book. Is the medium still the message? I am taking my cues from our first reading on whether or not McLuhan was a semiotician. I wonder what Ong would have to say about that.  We started the class by talking about Primal and the word primal and what it means in this class. This is good because I had wondered that from the first class, but I was too shy to ask. Kip does a good job of making me think I am not as smart as I am! and I start to second guess if my questions are good ones. I will need to work on my self-confidence. Which has come a long way in the last year.  I wondered if Primal is an outdated word. Much li...

  You be able to write your blog by clicking “new post” in the appropriate class.   Make sure to start the blog with your name and the subject of the entry. Blog entries will be considered informal writing assignments and as such will be graded more in relation to content than style. Blog entries will contain questions and answers to questions, as well as reflections that relate to daily classroom discussions, completion of exercises, and reading assignments. Any questions the student has while reading or completing assignments should be written in their blog. Reflections may relate to connections the student makes between discussions in this class and those in other classes, between arguments raised in the readings in this class and those raised in other classes or from informal conversations. Students are encouraged to apply the ideas learned in this class to activities that take place outside of the class. These applications make great reflections. The stu...