Curses for Christmas

A passage in our readings stood out to me as rather bizarre, and somewhat different from most of our studies: The Burru people in Jamaica go from house to house at the end of each year, singing about the sins that the residents (or the business, or whatever it may be) have done. I'll comment on this practice itself in a moment, but first, I would like to draw attention to something else: It parallels a practice that is still continued in West Africa today, according to our textbook (Edmonds, p. 101).
It is quite remarkable that such a tradition would last so long. Most of the Rastafari culture, it seemed, was "recreated" to be as African as possible, but this practice never ceased - showing impressive cultural perseverance.

The practice itself is disturbing, in my view. It is said, at least in Africa, to be a way of "purifying" the town for the next year, but it seems to me more like a broadcast of gossip - especially because (at least in Africa), the residents are forbidden to retaliate. (It would be an ugly sight indeed if someone were wrongly accused).

Fire of Life?

Q: Watch the video [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZs4QMOsCEc] that gives a view of life in a small Rastafari village. Write in your blog about how this village participates in the system of symbols that we see reflected in our textbook. Don't give a laundry list of every kind of symbol, but pick out an element that you find striking. Interact also with what our textbook has to say about the symbol you have chosen. Is the symbol used in a surprising way or is it what you would expect from our book?

 Since I'm writing this blog rather late, I have the advantage of getting to see what others wrote.

There were a few symbols that got picked out and inspected quite well by others, I'll briefly summarize the main ones:

The turbans - these aren't mentioned in our book, but we do know that dreadlocks play an important role. It was interesting to see the dreadlocks covered up, and seemed to indicate that the tie to Ethiopia (represented by the turban "crown") is set higher than the rebellion against "Babylon", or western society (symbolized in the dreadlocks).

Another obvious case of symbolism is the scattered signs throughout the village. The editors of the movie chose to show three signs more specifically - probably to highlight a contrast they saw - one sign says "equality and justice for all", but the next sign has the word "black" written over the word "white", and as if to emphasize this, the last sign has a black "R for righteousness" (and maybe for Ratsafari?) over a white X which stands for wrong, or evil. I didn't see any other evidence, but the way this is presented implies the possibility of racism toward white people.

Thirdly, we saw a widespread use of the Ethiopian colors red, yellow and green. This was expected and is explained in our book, but the presence of the colors was almost overwhelming - even the houses were painted in them.

The symbol I would like to point out is the "fire of life". Apparently, these Boboshanti keep a fire lit at the top of the mountain at all times. This intrigues me, since it isn't a practice mentioned in a book, nor is it explained in this video. Wikipedia told me nothing about it, and google searches gave me two things: First, a book by Salman Rushdie titled "Luka and the Fire of Life", which has nothing to do with this, and second, a blog post by someone who took this class in 2008 (!).
I wonder how much work it is to keep this fire running, what symbolic purpose it serves (a fire on a mountain would be highly visible from a distance), and how it connects to other religions - like the continuously burning lamp in the ancient Jewish tabernacle and temple (“And you shall command the people of Israel that they bring to you pure beaten olive-oil for the light, that a lamp may be set to burn continually”. Exodus 27:20). Catholics and Jews generally continue this tradition and have a permanently burning oil lamp, called the "sanctuary lamp" or "everlasting flame". Is there a connection?

Curious.

While reading the excerpt from the Kebra Negast we were given, I noticed it was obviously written to mesh with the Bible (to a degree, at least). The Bible mentions Solomon, of course; but also, the visit of the queen of Sheba, after hearing of Solomon's wisdom, is biblical.
Things change a bit once we get into the details of the story. The Kebra Negast is unique in its suggestion that the queen bore a child by Solomon. It adds Solomon's dream: "...a sun had risen upon Israel, but it snatched itself away and flew off and lighted up the country of Ethiopia;..." (Chpt. 31). The text establishes that ultimately, Ethiopia is more important than Israel.
Our assignment was to find some "aspect of religion" that we observed in the Kebra Nagast. I noticed - quite simply - a claim to truth, what Geertz calls unique realism. ("...and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic."). The text is a justification or explanation for what its followers believe. While we in our class attempt to view many religions as legitimate in their own context and justified by their cultural functions, we also realize full well that the religions themselves do not consider cultural usefulness sufficient justification for their existence.
While it may seem self-evident that a religion makes a claim to truth, I find it worth pointing out - I have yet to discover the worldview and religion that justifies itself by saying that it "just happens to work" or something.

Diverse Signs vs. Diverse Things

Alright, readers: I'm going to take a risk and post an incomplete thought. Not because I don't want to write it out, but because I haven't been able to put my finger on exactly what phenomenon I am looking at. So bear with me. I apologize if this post contains dispersed reasoning. Feel free to continue or argue with my reasoning in comments.

I noticed something that appeared on first sight to be a contradiction in Augustine's writing. Take, for instance, the following passage:

Some people have been struck by the enormous diversity of social practices and in a state of drowsiness, as I would put it – for they were neither sunk in the deep sleep of stupidity nor capable of staying awake to greet the light of wisdom – have concluded that justice has no absolute existence but that each race views its own practices as just. (Augustine, p. 79)

Augustine is clearly affirming absolute justice, regardless of social or cultural differences. In other places, he seems to be saying the opposite:

Likewise we must take care not to regard something in the Old Testament that is by the standards of its own time not wickedness or wrongdoing, even when understood literally and not figuratively, as capable of being transferred to the present time and our own lives. (Augustine, p. 81)

The confusion is resolved quite simply by realizing that society, as well as the signs it uses to communicate things, are only sings, and the things underneath - what is morally right - remain unchanged.

I find this particularly fascinating in an age when cultural, ethical and religious diversity are recognized and widely taught - Augustine recognized very similar patterns, and interpreted them in the opposite way.

When we observe cultural diversity, we might think that these differences are always a diversity of moral concepts, which is based on an assumption that we are internally very similar (? Maybe), with generally good motives (that all aspects of cultural behaviour are good). The effective result is that we assume people to have greatly varying understandings of justice, but that most everyone has good motives. When something seems wrong or evil, the cause lies in a difference in culture.

Inversely, Augustine assumes that justice is the same in every time and place, and concludes that the differences in our actions must be one of communication and of signs - an action might mean something different culturally and thus have different moral meaning. Here, the result is that we are more free to act in ways that may appear immoral, and simultaneously, must be more on guard about our actions which might seem externally to be moral, that they do not internally come from bad motives.



Perhaps the core difference is that we ascribe cultures with total reign over their ideas of justice, whereas Augustine considers justice the unshakable part, from which societies might stray - he does not insist that one culture is better than another, but he does imply that certain aspects of a culture itself might be 'bad'.

Reading Right

Read book 2 of Augustine's On Christian Teaching as well as the very recent article on "How to Read the Bible" linked to on Moodle. Are these two accounts saying the same thing, or can any real differences be found in the positions? And finally, is the philosophy of reading the Bible represented in these readings a positive thing in your opinion?

There are certainly some differences in the two accounts. Augustine's focus actually seems slightly more compatible with modern thinking. He gives the reader himself more credit, asking him, essentially, to be scholarly - to know the historical context and the languages, to read carefully and with thought. He believes that by careful study alone, a person could become so close to God that Scripture essentially becomes obsolete.

Billings, on the other hand, considers it important that one studies in a group. He thinks a person must continue to study and meditate on the Bible. He suggests that a person will always have more to learn from it, but that this is not a bad thing.

I think, as someone said in a different blog (I can't remember who), that one reason for the differences is that they are writing to different cultures. They are also writing from different cultures. They see different problems with Biblical study and therefore offer different corrections.

Nonetheless, these are the similarities that stood out to me:

1. There is a correct way to read the Bible.
2. It is important that people read it correctly.
3. It must be read intentionally, that is, actively: One must think about it.

These three points converge at one central thought: That the Bible is true, and that we are capable of understanding it, to a certain extent. That may sound obvious, but it is actually quite radical. For what I mean is that both Augustine and Billings believe that understanding of the Bible is not merely personal - that there is absolute, unchangeable truth in it, which can be discovered by the most different people, if they read carefully.

Speaking of Language...

We have been looking at religions as "systems of symbols". There are several aspects in which I think Geertz's definition is loaded with assumptions that have been the unquestioned basis of our discussions; particularly the "sense of factuality" - implying that no religion is true.
Now, religions make many incompatible statements; thus, most must be at least partially wrong. And for the purpose of this class, I understand, we do not want to discuss what is true, or which religion is real, but rather their social effect.
I think that when we look at religions as systems of symbols, we are essentially looking at a language. A language - the words, the letters, the grammar - is a set of symbols, each giving something a sense of factuality by representing it. Have we not all experienced that, upon discovering a new word, we suddenly saw this thing wherever we looked? For some reason, I remember learning the expression "grey weather" at a young age. I suddenly became very aware of grey days. Did these days come into existence by the words? No. Did the words create a unique sense of factuality about something that doesn't exist? No. They did possibly bias my view of weather, but only to a degree.
What this means is that we must be careful to realize what we are discussing. I feel comfortable participating in class only because I limit my speaking to the cultural aspect of religion, the languages of religions. I can compare these, find out how they work, maybe see how they are related.
But I also know we are not even touching on the core of religions. As Prof. Smith said, the class might more aptly be named "cultural studies".