If anyone were to ask me what SS 152 Introduction to Cultural Anthropology was like, studies-wise, I’d say “Baby mush” Seriously, despite the fact that the subject is so interesting it gives me an academic high, its plain kiddie stuff. For my own sake, I wish it’ll get harder later on.
But forget the studies, we spend half of class time watching videos…and man, are they in good taste. But they’re very, very disturbing, in fact, the hardest part for me in this whole quarter is to sit thru these excruciating videos…they just question you, your beliefs by showing u what other people believe and the extent they can go to in their faith. Yesterday the video was on cults, a history channel feature. It was clearly made for entertainment, and that was the most painful thing about watching it. It seemed like something out of the darkest episodes of the X files, only the scenes depicting rocking skeletons and Black Masses were supposed to be real. There was even the High Priestess of the
church of
Satan for God’s sake! It turned my blood cold, though I do remember I time when I adored this kind of stuff…voodoo, black magic, etc…it sounds crazy, and it was, but then I grew out of my dark early teens. These people…well, they’re living in a horrific world and they can’t get out.
One leader of these cults, when he saw that the government was after him for taking his members’ welfare checks, gave all his followers (over a thousand people went with him wherever he went) a punch made of Kool-Aid laced with cyanide and then put a gun to his head. Over a thousand people dead…lying on top of one another and they kept showing it over and over again…it was unbelievable, worse than any horror movie I’ve ever seen…at the end, I found that I just couldn’t stop trembling.
.
This is only one of the videos that show me how blindly we’re living….has anyone ever seen the movie ‘The Corporation’? we watched part of that too, and for the first time I knew what bliss ignorance is…but that’s just the thing, I’m not studying here for bliss, I’m studying for enlightenment, whether my teachers give it to me, or I find it myself. I’m not supposed to not care about what’s going on in this world…but knowledge can be too painful at times…
Ullas said
Wow! I would love to sit through such videos…the prime catch must be the gore and darkness but I would also want to know of a parallel world that exists, with entirely different concerns and interests. Would they understand if I told them that I am having problems getting tickets to Campus Rock Idols? Would they understand if I told them about my work deadlines? Their concerns must be something like becoming a tantrik of an even higher order or probably learning that technique which enables them to put people to sleep by looking into their eyes…the world is a queer place…there are strange animals we don’t know of, there are weird tribes which don’t know the c of civilization, there are strange cults which believe in their own scary traditions (which have often been found to be true) and there are people like us, who lead a blissful life ignorant of all the other species…
I don’t mean to imply that I am dying to trade places with them. I am only thankful to the creator that I am the way I am. Knowing voodoo is just as harmful as having nuclear bombs…it harms at the end of the day. I am happy I don’t know anything about them. Knowledge is fine but then there is so much else to learn about. I don’t regret not knowing black magic…I like my black coffee at the local cafe better.
aty2 said
It was an excerpt from a show on the History channel…i’m sure if u keep track of it u’ll find a lot of shows like this there. But the show itself…the commentary was very cliched, and i always got the feeling that above all, all these cults were being represented as savages…which lead to a lot of interesting info out, and let a lot of old crap in…
n yeah, its a fascinating and horrifying world out there, which no amount of cliches could define…but my reference to knowledge was not knowing about the cults or voodoo, but the knowledge about the atrocities that the cult leaders enacted…if u had only seen it even on the screen…over a thousand people lying on top of one another…an unknown number also set themselves on fire…another cult was muredred by its own leaders under their blankets as they waited for flying saucers to take them to heaven…