Jack-o-Lanters

"For almost all Americans the meaning of [Jack-o-Lanters] is lost..." -John R. Stilgoe


This quote, and I guess the whole reading in general, makes me wonder how many customs or habits we have these days that are left over from the traditions of earlier cultures.  When thinking about that, it begs the question, what else in our lives have hidden meanings?  Why were these traditions forgotten?  If they were made to be forgotten by the existence of a new culture, why do the traditions still occur, meaningless or otherwise?  How did new meanings, like with the Jack-o-Lantern get assigned?  It also makes me think about the other customs we have in the present.  What will still be carried out in the future?  What traditions will survive?  Will their meanings be forgotten as well, becoming as meaningless and habitual as the Jack-o-Lantern?

Anne Hutchinson and the American Idea of Freedom

Growing up in America, it’s not uncommon to hear phrases such as “Stand up for what you believe in!” or “Speak your mind!” In fact, sayings such as these have permeated our lives from the day we were born. We have rights. We have freedoms. Our country has been working since it’s beginning to make its entire population equal, a fact we Americans pride ourselves on. But what about before freedoms were an inalienable right for all citizens of this land? Anne Hutchinson lived in a time when people were no allowed to challenge their governments. Yet, she did. She wanted change. She had an idea. She stood up for her beliefs. She was repressed. Anne Hutchinson and her story are an example of why freedom is important in America today.

Anne Hutchinson was a Puritan. She studied scripture, prayed, and went to church. She was just like everyone else. Where Anne had come from, it was a normal practice for those who studied the Bible to gather together outside of the congregation to discuss it more in depth amongst peers. Since this was a practice she was used to, she started to hold such gatherings in her home. Men and women of all classes came to her meetings for the discussion.

Unfortunately, the governor at the time, John Winthrop, felt that his authority was being challenged by Anne. He was in charge, and he didn’t like that she was sharing her ideas with other members of the church because her ideas may not have been exactly like his. So, he did what any authority figure does when those who oppose him have few rights: he put Anne on trial. He attacked her again and again about her beliefs and her teachings. She was apparently guilty of what she didn’t have the right to think. But, despite the odds against her, Anne persevered. In the true American spirit, she stuck to her ideals and to herself. With the government itself attempting to bring her down, Anne Hutchinson held her ground, holding steadfast to what she thought to be true. And she lost. She was cast out, made to leave her home and her people behind.

If the freedoms in place today had been a part of the system then, Anne Hutchinson would never have gone to trial in the first place. She would have had the right to believe things opposing the views of the government, and a right to share those ideas with whomever she chose. Its situations such as Anne’s that the founding fathers wrote the constitution in the first place. It’s because of people such as Anne Hutchinson experiencing a lack of rights that we have them today. It’s because of people who were repressed in the past that we don’t have to be. It’s because everyone has a right to think different things and share their ideas that freedom is so hugely important in America today.

God Made an Oopsie

In Religion 121 E, we were given the assignment of Interpreting Gen. 11, The Tower of Babel.  My first reaction was God was just insane, but that, I was told, would not earn me a passing grade.   Needless to say, I changed my interpretation.

Did God give the humans too much power?

It seems to me that God made a mistake in giving the humans all "one language" because it gave them too much power.  In doing so, he gave them the ability to work together (Gen. 11:1).  They had decided to build a tower with "its top in the heavens," which is God's domain (Gen. 11:4).  It would have been possible for them to be where God lives because of how they cooperated so well.  This is evident also when God says, "nothing that they purpose to do will now be impossible for them (Gen. 11:6)."  This implies that humans could do anything they want, anything at all.  They could have the same amount of power as God., who can also do whatever he pleases.  Nothing would be impossible for either party.  Seeing this, god realizes his mistake, and is quick to remedy it.  He "confuse[d] their language[s]" so that they could no longer share his power.  God accidentally made humans too much like himself.

An alternative way of answering the question could be that God was just upset that people were getting along so well, not because of how much they were accomplishing,  but because he could have felt just a tad bit left out.  Or he could have just been having an off day.  Although these are things that could cause humans to be upset, I think the idea that God realized he had given humans too much power is a more plausible explanation.  It accounts for the idea that God doesn't get upset for no reason, and it logically explains why he was mad that his creations were doing so well, which the other explanations fail to do.

If taken in relation to earlier Genesis accounts, the idea that God made a mistake becomes even more plausible still.  He's made mistakes before, like when his creations were wicked before the flood in Gen. 6:5.    Previous passages have sow that maybe God doesn't exactly know what's going to happen, such as when he was surprised Cain murdered Abel in Gen. 4:10, and that he could have accidentally given humans too much power and been surprised by the outcome.  And, earlier text also gives examples about how he's not afraid to fix his mistakes, such as with the flood in Gen. 7:6, making the confusion of languages as a solution to that problem more likely as well.

Truth

"Mrs. Hutchinson's behavior ... can be explained largely in terms of menopausal symptoms."
-Emery Battis

To be completely fair, most things can be explained in such a way.

Anne Hutchinson: Just Another Silenced Activist?

Upon reading the article by Marilyn Westerkamp, I was slightly upset.  I'm not necessarily sure what I expected other than sixteen pages of required academic reading (not quite my definition of exciting), but it was not what I got out of the experience.

"...her theology could be judged consistent with English Puritanism... (Westerkamp)"
So what was the problem?  She had followers who supported her, she has theological ideas that matched those of the clergy in charge, and she expressed herself intelligently.  So why was she a threat?  Why was Winthrop so upset with her?  Every society needs to be challenged, to be criticized, otherwise there is no growth.  If new ideas are not presented, the evolution if a community virtually comes to a standstill.  I do believe this is what happened to the Puritan way of life at this time.  With the defeat of Anne Hutchinson,John Winthrop basically showed everyone that thinking outside the box is a bad thing: those who have their own ideas and excommunicated, and killed by natives as an act of God.  Clearly.  He single-handedly slowed the reformation and forward motion of his way of life.  But them again, maybe that was the idea.

This event totally challenges the American idea of free speech, showing once again how the Puritans were extremely different in their political ideals.  If this sort of incident were to occur today, pretty sure many people would be incredibly upset, and also, I'd like to have more trust in our legal system than that, not gonna lie.

The Puritan Idea of Freedom

True freedom "is maintained and exercised in a way of subjection to authority"

-John Winthrop

When I stumbled across this quote in Jim Cullen's The American Dream, I was confused.  Isn't our idea of freedom today to not have to be subjected to authority?  I feel as though the Puritans, although they thought they were free, really weren't free at all by today's standards.  They believed that freedom was defined by giving themselves completely to God, but, with that idea, they lost any other freedom they may have had by giving into the idea that their destiny was preordained. If nothing you do is going to change the outcome of a situation and never could have done so, then you are not free.  You are a game piece with an already decided list of movements.  You have no actual choice.


The Puritans seemed to also be shackled by fear and judgement.   They lived in a constant fear that they might not be going to heaven.  Besides providing a constant state of anxiety, which cannot be healthy, they were forced by their fear to act a certain way, do certain things.  Simply because they were afraid of their destiny, they acted as though they knew what it was.  Their fear gave them no choice.  Therefore, the Puritans had no free will at all.  Even if one wasn't afraid of one's destiny and felt as though they could act how they wished, judgement from their peers would put a stop to that.  In essence, because of their beliefe in a preordained future, and also their fear of it, the Puritans had no free will as it is thought of in today's world.

There Are No Races

"There are no races, there are only clines." -Frank Livingstone

Race: "An arbitrary classification of modern humans based on any or a combination of various physical characteristics, as skincolor, facial form, or eye shape (dictionary.com)."

This, I suppose, would be my non-AmCon related post for the week.  So it turns out, one of my majors is Sociology/Anthropology, so I'm a bit passionate about some of the things involved with those fields, specifically Cultural Anthropology.  One of the things that is a common misconception about mankind is the idea of races.  Even anti-racism campaigns use the idea of them, even if it's with good intensions.  However, Anthropology as a field refuses to use the term.  Why? Because heres the thing: races don't exist.

A cline is a single trait that is mapped out over the entire species, showing trends in variation.  For example, eye color is a cline.  So is hair type.  Skin color. Height.  Facial shape.  Any single genetic trait.  These traits are mapped to show how the traits differ in people around the world.  Two clinal maps could be compared to see if perhaps there are any overlap in trends, to see if any groups of people share the same clinal distribution.  For the idea of race to exist, all clines would have to align a certain way, showing that certain groups of people all share the same clines and are therefore biologically blueprinted.  But they don't.  No such overlap has ever been discovered.  Basically, "clinal analysis tests the biological concept of race and finds nothing in nature to match it (Schultz and Lavenda, 95)."

A Rewritten Poem

A Student Explains Why She Dislikes St. Olaf 
Originally by Barbara Ras
Rewritten by Megan Danielson and Shelby Miner

Because leaves on the ground are orange and red, colors
anyone can dislike, even against the green
of the grass, where they say winter is coming, oh no snow,
because on a small campus there is nowhere to hide,
it's Boe Chapel, the Caff,
the hubbub in the bathroom when all the showers are full,
because I don’t have time for breakfast in the morning,
because there's something about the sound of a creepy organ in the church at night and the dream of a bed we won’t fall out of
that reminds me this is education, because of the simple pleasure
of having a microwave is not allowed, because sometimes meat tastes better than the vegan option,
because of hauling books to class
is as good as it gets when it’s raining and snowing and you have to walk
all the way to Old Main,
because one can actually only be so environmentally friendly
when you must empty your own recycling bin always,
because you can study forever and it actually might kill you,
because towns, cities, we’d just like a real one
because the school is right next to the Malt-O-Meal factory
and it smells like oatmeal which is incredibly unfortunate without
the time for breakfast, as we mentioned earlier, just a lot of homework,
an inconvenient blog, because I'm lost deep within the library
and can’t find my way out,
because even when my academic advisor cried
“I don’t know what you should take!”
because these people
come from the hill.

On Human Cruelty

How can one possibly justify the harming of another human without provocation? It is often a topic of debate among my friends whether humans are born naturally good/evil, or if they are just taught how to behave throughout their life. Usually, the consensus that is reached is the latter. However, the more I learn about the history of mankind, the more I’m beginning to disagree with such a conclusion.

Throughout the centuries, there has been endless bloodshed and cruelty carried out by all manners of people. Like most people, I’m no fan of war. In fact, I may advocate against it in most circumstances. However, I do believe that disputes need to be settled, and that a wronged party reserves the right to justice, if the reason for it is great enough. I’m a huge fan of self-defense, for instance. But, as I am beginning to understand more fully, most conflicts are not double sided. In fact, most harmful acts have no justifiable reason whatsoever.

Greed is indeed the worst part of mankind. It is for that reason, and that alone that most atrocious acts occur. Greed for money, power, information, land, or what have you, it all stems back to the same thing, no matter the justification behind it. Examples of such things include Columbus with the slaughter of an entire population during his quest for riches and recognition, the Puritan killing of the native people so they could have more land, or Cortez’s destruction of the Aztecs simple for money, slavery. All of these instances took place without any wrongdoing by the victimized party. The examples don’t stop there. Human history is wrought with such behavior. Even in more modern times, awful things still occur because of greed. It keeps happening. Children have been taught these histories, yet things still occur. So, is it fair that I’ve been starting to think that maybe humans are not born completely innocent after all? Or that perhaps they are born easily corrupted. Whatever the case, greed has run rampant among mankind. It always has, and I’m inclined to say it always will, but you never know.

Poems and Such

So.  It turns out that I really enjoyed A Wife Explains Why She Likes Country. It had a ton of really awesome imagery and some interesting comparisons.  However, some lines really struck me as though they should have rhymed with something, which is a bit odd. For instance, "because sometimes whiskey tastes better than wine"feels like it could be the right rhythm and such for rhyming to occur (Barbara Ras).  But I guess not.  Anyway, I just overly enjoyed how it all seemed to accurately describe something to the point of easily being able to see the pictures.  To me, that's a mark of a good writer.  Plus, I enjoy when people write about something like they love it because it makes the writing seem more passionate in general.

Being Concise

Political Freedom

Even a single voice can be heard if it’s projected loud enough.  It can rise above all other voices to express its own ideas and opinions; it just needs help to do so.  Americans have always valued political freedom.  Nearly everyone has an opinion on the subject of politics, and it all comes down to being heard over everyone else.  One could use a megaphone, for example.  In the days of standing on street corners to be heard, a megaphone would make people stop and listen.  It would make the speaker the loudest and most authoritative.  Political rallies or protests used them to speak to hundreds of people at a time, leading them with ideals of change and involvement.  Megaphones not only represent these events but also the idea of being loud in itself, the idea of being the one that people turn to look at, the one they have no choice but to hear.  They represent the freedom to shout what you believe as loud as possible.  They represent sharing individual ideas.  They represent political freedom.

Original Sentence: Americans have always valued their liberty when it comes to sharing their beliefs on their government, and, in today’s world especially, political freedom is one of the most noticeable aspects of life in the United States.  

Look how much better I got at life after reading the book on concision.  No big deal.  

Ground Truthing

"What I know is this: when one hungers for light it is only because one’s knowledge of the dark is so deep."

-Terry Tempest Williams

Besides thinking that this is just a wonderfully beautiful statement, I can't help but connect it to freedom, with our whole theme in AmCon and such.  I feel like, especially in countries where freedom is a rare concept, that it is almost appreciated more because those who have suffered without it recognize the gift it truly is.  I know that it may be a tad unpatriotic, but I believe quite a few Americans take freedom for granted.  With the recent talk of the Tea Party for example, they are all upset because they think the government is limiting our freedom.  And that may be the case, however, I don't think they really understand what's it's like to be without freedom.  They think they know what they're fighting for, but those rights, although incredibly important, are nothing compared to the people in other parts of the world who have almost no rights at all, the one's who have experienced "the dark," if you will.  One can not fully appreciate something they've always had.