Man I have never felt more like having a multiple personality then ever after reading Our Time. Wideman leaps from different perspectives with the ease of a fawn frolicking in a meadow. It is a strange feeling, like in The Fly when the dude swaps heads with the fly so that his body becomes that of the fly , while the fly’s body becomes human. I’m talking about the original fly mind you, not the Jeff Goldblum remake (wasn’t good, wasn’t bad just Jeff Goldblum) where the lady walks into the lab and pulls the cloth of the body to reveal a ginormous fly head and then loses it and lets out that blood curdling shriek.
I also have to admit that writing this way is almost a kind of genius. Especially the parts where he is writing his brothers perspective right down to the way he feels “Choked up by the way he gets in Hospitals. Hospital smell and quiet, the bare halls and bare floors, the echoes, something about all that he can’t name, wouldn’t try to name, rises in him and chills him. Like his teeth are chattering the whole time he’s in the hospital.” It’s like writing in the fourth dimension. It even has it’s own space and time…weird I know.
Another thing is the impossibility of writing in another persons perspective. “ Do I write to escape, to make a fiction of my life? If I can’t be trusted with the story of my own life, how could I ask my brother to trust me with his?” For me this is easy, because as I have said too many time before, I have the unique ability to remove myself from the picture. I am as invisible as the air. However for someone who hasn’t been shown or that has stumbled across this ability then it would be tantamount to climbing Everest the day after you first conceived of doing it. With now practice or preparation you’d be setting yourself up for disaster.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Renato Rosaldo
Holy crap, they’re real! I can’t believe that somehow people out there really hunt people’s heads! Although I must admit the purpose behind it now illuminates at least the reason why this task is done. First I myself need to rid myself of the world that is forced upon me. I am an American citizen, and I have strong moral values. (none of which include headhunting…yet…just kidding)
Rosaldo first could not imagine how grief could equate to anger. It is clear that his picture of grief, like most of the “civilized world” equates to sadness. Now for some reason I was not surprised at this. My own bias is that of my upbringing. The things I see in this world are often on a powerful and emotional level, never do I perceive things at face value…unless the value is of course only found on the face…(I dare you to tell me what you think that means!) I found that by leaving yourself susceptible to the emotion that an experience brings about it is far easier to catch a glimpse the light at the end of the tunnel.
I also advocate experience. Although one would have to be Ilongot to fully comprehend the experience, because they are raised with the idea that taking a persons head gives them a place to “Carry his anger.” Rosaldo himself says “Only after being repositioned through a devastating loss of my own could I better grasp that Ilongot older men mean precisely what they say when they describe the anger in bereavement as the source of their desire to cut off human heads.” I agree absolutely with this.
As I think back to what grief means, I am reminded of the last three years. 2005, 2006, and 2007. In each of these years someone I know and or care about has committed suicide. This is particularly bad in that they have all done it in the same way and while in the presence of someone they supposedly care about. All three of them were men, and all three of them were either on the phone with ,or in the room with their girlfriends. I do not mean to draw any connections or inferences to the meaning of or between these happenings apart from the fact that I have personally known all of them. It hurts to see another year go by knowing that one more of your friends or a relative has taken their life and there was nothing you could do. Helplessness turns to despair, and despair turns to anger. Anger causes many things but is definitely in the process of grieving.
Here in America we place our anger in a casket and bury it with our loved ones. Grief is three days off from work where how you feel means nothing on the annual report.
I understand completely why the Ilongot cut heads off…it gives them something to do, rather than to sit back biting the bullet wishing it was you that had died instead.
Rosaldo first could not imagine how grief could equate to anger. It is clear that his picture of grief, like most of the “civilized world” equates to sadness. Now for some reason I was not surprised at this. My own bias is that of my upbringing. The things I see in this world are often on a powerful and emotional level, never do I perceive things at face value…unless the value is of course only found on the face…(I dare you to tell me what you think that means!) I found that by leaving yourself susceptible to the emotion that an experience brings about it is far easier to catch a glimpse the light at the end of the tunnel.
I also advocate experience. Although one would have to be Ilongot to fully comprehend the experience, because they are raised with the idea that taking a persons head gives them a place to “Carry his anger.” Rosaldo himself says “Only after being repositioned through a devastating loss of my own could I better grasp that Ilongot older men mean precisely what they say when they describe the anger in bereavement as the source of their desire to cut off human heads.” I agree absolutely with this.
As I think back to what grief means, I am reminded of the last three years. 2005, 2006, and 2007. In each of these years someone I know and or care about has committed suicide. This is particularly bad in that they have all done it in the same way and while in the presence of someone they supposedly care about. All three of them were men, and all three of them were either on the phone with ,or in the room with their girlfriends. I do not mean to draw any connections or inferences to the meaning of or between these happenings apart from the fact that I have personally known all of them. It hurts to see another year go by knowing that one more of your friends or a relative has taken their life and there was nothing you could do. Helplessness turns to despair, and despair turns to anger. Anger causes many things but is definitely in the process of grieving.
Here in America we place our anger in a casket and bury it with our loved ones. Grief is three days off from work where how you feel means nothing on the annual report.
I understand completely why the Ilongot cut heads off…it gives them something to do, rather than to sit back biting the bullet wishing it was you that had died instead.
Walker Percy
This one was a difficult read for me. I felt like the obvious was being over explained. In way Percy is directly proving what Nietzsche was talking about in On Truth and Lies in the Nonmoral sense. Everyone has a human brain. The “built in” mechanisms of our brain allow us to develop a scaffolding or web work of expectations based on our experiences. This allows us to fit comfortably inside this world we have created within our own perspectives.
Percy goes on to say in his example of the tourists in Mexico who stumble upon an unknown village by accident. They immediately think of their friend the Ethnologist. In order to get the feeling that their experience was real and that they had seen the “it” that makes seeing Mexico worthwhile, they sought out the perspective of an expert who would know for sure. “\They wanted him, not to share their experience, but to certify their experience as genuine.” So in other words they wanted to say “I told you so.”
I find this unsettling. As from my perspective, as I have undoubtedly spoken about before, I have the unique ability to remove myself from the picture and to see things in a “natural” light so to speak. I do not understand the concept of living up to expectation as I do not hold any other than to myself to do the best I can. I see things the way they are by leaving myself vulnerable. I do not feel the need to explain or to show off my understanding of what is to someone else, therefore the translation of emotion into words comes direct like a firing synapse within my brain.
I will admit, because I am human, that sometimes I do feel the need for acceptance. That is to say that they way I see things is in fact “the” way to see them. However that is a trap to easy to fall into. I tell myself that this is of course ONE way to see it, and that there are about…h lets say six billion or so ways of seeing it.
Percy goes on to say in his example of the tourists in Mexico who stumble upon an unknown village by accident. They immediately think of their friend the Ethnologist. In order to get the feeling that their experience was real and that they had seen the “it” that makes seeing Mexico worthwhile, they sought out the perspective of an expert who would know for sure. “\They wanted him, not to share their experience, but to certify their experience as genuine.” So in other words they wanted to say “I told you so.”
I find this unsettling. As from my perspective, as I have undoubtedly spoken about before, I have the unique ability to remove myself from the picture and to see things in a “natural” light so to speak. I do not understand the concept of living up to expectation as I do not hold any other than to myself to do the best I can. I see things the way they are by leaving myself vulnerable. I do not feel the need to explain or to show off my understanding of what is to someone else, therefore the translation of emotion into words comes direct like a firing synapse within my brain.
I will admit, because I am human, that sometimes I do feel the need for acceptance. That is to say that they way I see things is in fact “the” way to see them. However that is a trap to easy to fall into. I tell myself that this is of course ONE way to see it, and that there are about…h lets say six billion or so ways of seeing it.
Jane Tompkins
I feel like Charlie Brown…Good Grief. I don’t think anyone will ever truly understand the topic of White-Indian relations. It is of course the most least understood, and the most complex of human cultural relationships, but for gods sake just open your eyes and let the truth fill them. Now let me explain myself for a moment. I know that Tompkins is only trying to illustrate the difficulty in trying to illuminate the truth in a history. I know that she has done monumental amounts of research, as have the authors/ historians she had read and referred to. However the unfortunate side effect to all that research is the knots you will undoubtedly tie in the sequence of events. There are just too many sides of the story to tell. There is a different account of events for every person who either lived it, recorded, heard, sought, or pondered upon it.
There is a way to untie those knots and to weed out some semblance of truth. It is to divert attention from individual accounts and to focus upon human character. It is a known fact that a story will change most every time it is told and retold over and over. Things will be added or cut our, embellished or diminished, and this is all done in order to make the person hearing/reading it, believe a certain perspective to be more credible than another. It is a known fact that humans are capable of deception and manipulation. Taking these things into account, one can reasonably infer only from the facts, and not by the suppositions of another human being.
Looking back to Limerick we see that the lives of Whites and Indians are so vastly intertwined that in reality it was never a conquest but a symbiosis in which one side gained more than the other. Remember how terribly ironic it was to read how an Indian killed a white man with a manufactured firearm? That’s what I’m trying to say, that is what Pratt was saying in Art of the Contact Zones. Whenever a human person comes in contact with another, they will always impact one another. They will share in their victories and their defeats and they will argue and fight like any other human being would. Ultimately both sides are human and in the ebb and flow of time things changed in the way of the white man…that’ll last only until the next “White Man”
There is a way to untie those knots and to weed out some semblance of truth. It is to divert attention from individual accounts and to focus upon human character. It is a known fact that a story will change most every time it is told and retold over and over. Things will be added or cut our, embellished or diminished, and this is all done in order to make the person hearing/reading it, believe a certain perspective to be more credible than another. It is a known fact that humans are capable of deception and manipulation. Taking these things into account, one can reasonably infer only from the facts, and not by the suppositions of another human being.
Looking back to Limerick we see that the lives of Whites and Indians are so vastly intertwined that in reality it was never a conquest but a symbiosis in which one side gained more than the other. Remember how terribly ironic it was to read how an Indian killed a white man with a manufactured firearm? That’s what I’m trying to say, that is what Pratt was saying in Art of the Contact Zones. Whenever a human person comes in contact with another, they will always impact one another. They will share in their victories and their defeats and they will argue and fight like any other human being would. Ultimately both sides are human and in the ebb and flow of time things changed in the way of the white man…that’ll last only until the next “White Man”
Mary Louis Pratt
Arts of the Contact Zone was only slightly interesting to me. It is a part of a group of readings that I suppose are used to enlighten the mind to possibilities that most people never consider. That the things they see and hear require more speculation and diligence then when they are first experienced. Don’t take things at face value if you will. Pratts addition to this is directly the language and culture barriers that prevent proper communication.
A contact Zone to Pratt is anywhere two different peoples meet each other. She alludes to the impossibility to write about another culture objectively because of humanity. Because both are human they always impact one another in one way or another. Generally in superiority and inferiority complexes. Pratt uses the example of the Spanish conquest over the Incas. She is using a text written by Guaman Poma to explore this barrier.
Pratt is quick to remind us that the Incan had no system of writing. The letter was written by adapting the “representational repertoire of the invaders.” This is called transculturation. The Incans never had this system before, but found it useful to express their values which could not have been done before.
A contact Zone to Pratt is anywhere two different peoples meet each other. She alludes to the impossibility to write about another culture objectively because of humanity. Because both are human they always impact one another in one way or another. Generally in superiority and inferiority complexes. Pratt uses the example of the Spanish conquest over the Incas. She is using a text written by Guaman Poma to explore this barrier.
Pratt is quick to remind us that the Incan had no system of writing. The letter was written by adapting the “representational repertoire of the invaders.” This is called transculturation. The Incans never had this system before, but found it useful to express their values which could not have been done before.
Nietzsche
Truth. I have spent a good part of my life searching for truth in various forms. An accident of my upbringing first caused me to question not religion, but the people who follow it. Truth became a buried treasure with no map. However this is a little more complex an issue than Nietzsche writes about, if you can believe that, in Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral sense.
First lets look at the word Nonmoral so that we can determine just what Nietzsche is talking about. Nonmoral is classified by philosophers as being absent from moral behavior, that is to say they have no impact of acting in a good or in a less desirable way. That means that the kind of truth he is describing here is universal. It is accepted everywhere by everyone that has the ability to comprehend, and in fact is self-sufficient apart from mankind. Meaning oxygen is the same to fish who takes it from the water, as to a man who breathes it upon land. That is a universal truth.
Nietzsche is also questioning where the drive to find the truth came from. He brings this up because of two things.
One is Intellect. It is the tool given to us by nature to help us survive. Homonids are very fragile creatures with no sharp teeth, claws, or fangs to protect it. We have a brain that can comprehend, compute, and reason. That is our weapon in this world. “For this intellect has no additional mission which would lead it beyond human life.”
The second would be ego. Have you ever noticed, about yourself or others, that people have this tendency to always place themselves in the picture. It’s as if they cannot comprehend of anything existing outside their perception. This alludes to our own individual biases and inclinations. “ And just as every porter wants to have an admirer, so even the proudest of men, the philosopher, supposes that he sees on all sides the eyes of the universe telescopically focused upon his thought and action.”
Nietzsche explains this way by calling this a survival trait as well. He means that we literally see what we want to see, or create our own worlds for the purpose of comfort ability. I on the other hand explain this way by simply erasing myself from the picture. I know it sounds impossible but a few years back I had a dream. In this dream I did not exist. In no way shape or form, on any plane of existence, was there ever a Jacob Clifton. It is definitely an experience to live a world without you in it. Ever since then I have had the unique ability to separate myself from the world around me and view all sides of things, people, and events without that voice inside that determines what you will see and think before you have even taken into account that fact that what you see might not be real.
Nietzsche also criticizes language. Now I do not attempt to get into a huge semantic argument, however Nietzsche dies raise an interesting question. “Is language the adequate expression of all realities?” This for one goes hand in hand with my experience above, but also peaks another interesting point. These things we call words are really just referents. That is the words we use are just sounds used to describe what something looks, feels, tastes, sounds, or smells LIKE. “Metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities.” I suppose then that would be a suitable place to let you brain rest, after all is anything you’ve read really true, or are they useless symbols organized in such a manner that somehow derives meaning.
First lets look at the word Nonmoral so that we can determine just what Nietzsche is talking about. Nonmoral is classified by philosophers as being absent from moral behavior, that is to say they have no impact of acting in a good or in a less desirable way. That means that the kind of truth he is describing here is universal. It is accepted everywhere by everyone that has the ability to comprehend, and in fact is self-sufficient apart from mankind. Meaning oxygen is the same to fish who takes it from the water, as to a man who breathes it upon land. That is a universal truth.
Nietzsche is also questioning where the drive to find the truth came from. He brings this up because of two things.
One is Intellect. It is the tool given to us by nature to help us survive. Homonids are very fragile creatures with no sharp teeth, claws, or fangs to protect it. We have a brain that can comprehend, compute, and reason. That is our weapon in this world. “For this intellect has no additional mission which would lead it beyond human life.”
The second would be ego. Have you ever noticed, about yourself or others, that people have this tendency to always place themselves in the picture. It’s as if they cannot comprehend of anything existing outside their perception. This alludes to our own individual biases and inclinations. “ And just as every porter wants to have an admirer, so even the proudest of men, the philosopher, supposes that he sees on all sides the eyes of the universe telescopically focused upon his thought and action.”
Nietzsche explains this way by calling this a survival trait as well. He means that we literally see what we want to see, or create our own worlds for the purpose of comfort ability. I on the other hand explain this way by simply erasing myself from the picture. I know it sounds impossible but a few years back I had a dream. In this dream I did not exist. In no way shape or form, on any plane of existence, was there ever a Jacob Clifton. It is definitely an experience to live a world without you in it. Ever since then I have had the unique ability to separate myself from the world around me and view all sides of things, people, and events without that voice inside that determines what you will see and think before you have even taken into account that fact that what you see might not be real.
Nietzsche also criticizes language. Now I do not attempt to get into a huge semantic argument, however Nietzsche dies raise an interesting question. “Is language the adequate expression of all realities?” This for one goes hand in hand with my experience above, but also peaks another interesting point. These things we call words are really just referents. That is the words we use are just sounds used to describe what something looks, feels, tastes, sounds, or smells LIKE. “Metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities.” I suppose then that would be a suitable place to let you brain rest, after all is anything you’ve read really true, or are they useless symbols organized in such a manner that somehow derives meaning.
Patrica Nelson Limerick
The first fundamental obstacle when trying to write about history is the fact that there is often so much information recounted by not one individual, but rather by many individuals. When you are dealing with more than one account of they way events have transpired then it becomes incredibly clear that many people see the same thing in different ways. This is especially true for me. Limerick uses the example of white man’s conquest over the Indians. That’s one is a pretty well known fact as we are all bombarded with this story from the time we are children, albeit we hear the lighter side; of how the Indians are our friends and we have never hurt them. I could talk about that, but I won’t. something more interesting happened to me over this thanksgiving weekend that I think illustrates the point just fine.
In 2006 I was working at a Wal-Mart when I was assaulted by a customer. Naturally I defended myself and struck the man back. The gentleman originally did not want to press charges, then surprisingly a month later I found that he was in fact pursuing criminal charges against me for battery. Of course I knew the truth and I couldn’t believe that I was being prosecuted. One year and 6 months later I am finally getting to trial to determine my innocence or guilt.
In the previous year his witness list was comprised of only himself and his wife of 38 years. Then the week of the trial, surprise! Two more witnesses show up that claim to have seen the whole event transpire and even tried to stop me from “beating” this helpless older gentleman. One by one the prosecution parades its case to the stand. One by one it becomes clear that not one person saw the event as it truly happened. They all placed themselves at the seen, but all of their actions did not coincide with the story of the older gentleman who was suing me.
Now of course it begs the question of truth, which I have something to say about in a later post concerning our good friend Nietzsche, however assuming that the witness were in fact telling the truth then why wouldn’t they have a story that matched the event? The two surprise witnesses could accurately describe the situation but neither one could “recall” accurately a scenario that would even be physically possible.
Of course this was plainly found out by the jury and I was found not guilty. (yes truth and justice do exist!) This event, which has been so long in coming, shows how many accounts of the same event can muddle the facts and often skewer a perspective to believe something that is not necessarily true. Remember that when you’re not sure you should believe what you see, read, hear, and most definitely with what you are told.
In 2006 I was working at a Wal-Mart when I was assaulted by a customer. Naturally I defended myself and struck the man back. The gentleman originally did not want to press charges, then surprisingly a month later I found that he was in fact pursuing criminal charges against me for battery. Of course I knew the truth and I couldn’t believe that I was being prosecuted. One year and 6 months later I am finally getting to trial to determine my innocence or guilt.
In the previous year his witness list was comprised of only himself and his wife of 38 years. Then the week of the trial, surprise! Two more witnesses show up that claim to have seen the whole event transpire and even tried to stop me from “beating” this helpless older gentleman. One by one the prosecution parades its case to the stand. One by one it becomes clear that not one person saw the event as it truly happened. They all placed themselves at the seen, but all of their actions did not coincide with the story of the older gentleman who was suing me.
Now of course it begs the question of truth, which I have something to say about in a later post concerning our good friend Nietzsche, however assuming that the witness were in fact telling the truth then why wouldn’t they have a story that matched the event? The two surprise witnesses could accurately describe the situation but neither one could “recall” accurately a scenario that would even be physically possible.
Of course this was plainly found out by the jury and I was found not guilty. (yes truth and justice do exist!) This event, which has been so long in coming, shows how many accounts of the same event can muddle the facts and often skewer a perspective to believe something that is not necessarily true. Remember that when you’re not sure you should believe what you see, read, hear, and most definitely with what you are told.
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