I wrote my Q&A this week on angels, so I thought I might blog about it as well (apologies, Professor Silliman, if this is repetitive!)

For most of my life, I always thought that angels were these sweet, beautiful, divine beings, and was never taught otherwise. Last semester, I was watching a documentary on angels and demons, that explained that in order to do evil, it would serve demons better to appear as extremely beautiful. Although it wasn't a conscious choice, I always believed demons in their purest forms would be extremely, for lack of better words, ugly. This completely altered my view of demons, the way our book and pamphlet have altered my ideas surrounding angels. When the angel was described in the handout we received this week as doing things such as torturing Muhammad into reciting, I was really taken aback. I thought an angel, from what I've been taught, would not have been capable of such things. I guess it just goes to show that mindlessly accepting what you've been taught isn't always going to reveal the true nature of the world - the way reading about something is never the same as experiencing it firsthand.

I thought it was really interesting in class today how we discussed the length at which people strongly believe that most of the change in their life is behind them after a certain point. A lot of people I know, especially before leaving for college, frequently expressed how afraid they were of the change, how they didn't want it, they wanted to go back to high school, etc. Even now, I have some friends who still lament over how much they miss high school. Yet, for a society that seems to fear change so much, we also seem to hold a lot of frustration towards mundane things. It seems that so many people in this society dread waking up, working 9 to 5, etc. Despite their unrest with their daily lives, they also don't welcome change, even if it could provide a better daily life than what they are currently experiencing. Humans are just fascinating creatures sometimes.

One of the concepts I had difficulty wrapping my mind around this week was female infanticide. I understand it is normal in patriarchal societies, as male babies are an economic advantage. However, when we were discussing it in class as a form of "birth control", I became stuck. Though we do have contraceptives available in the United States, the gender of any child can never be fully guaranteed. It made me think: even if contraceptives were available in these societies regardless, I feel as though infanticide would still be a widespread problem. I guess I just do not feel that infanticide as a form of birth control is the right way to phrase it.

I also wonder how society would stand if all parents made the decision to get rid of female infants. Eventually, there would be very few women, and then who would be there to give birth to the next generation? If there was a shortage of females due to infanticide, could that potentially be the basis for great societal change?

When we were discussing in class how the best politicians use enticement instead of force to get their points across, it made a lot of sense to me. I also can see how that would work religiously to gain a following. With the world evolving, it seems to becoming harder and more time-consuming to devoutly follow all of the rules any religion may have. I feel that perhaps one of the things that may draw so many to Wicca is that any practitioner can choose when and how they worship, and the rest of the time, they are free to live their lives as they see fit. In a way, I feel like Wicca as a religion entices people to practice in this way instead of telling any potential followers a list of rules they need to follow. I'm not trying to say that having many strict rules in a religion is a bad thing (it was actually very disconcerting to me when I began practicing that Wicca didn't have strict standards on how to live), I'm mostly thinking that perhaps it's becoming harder to find a balance between strictly obeying those rules and living in a modern world. 

Thoughts?

Well, this blog is a day late, but I was really excited to blog this week so I am going to post this anyways. I was really interested in learning about the words used in Analects and what a basic English equivalent is. I am attempting to learn Mandarin right now, and I am taking a course that teaches the 500 most frequently used words in Mandarin. The first thing I thought was interesting was the word tao, taught as "the way" in my course instead of just "way", was a common word used in everyday Mandarin. Then, the character for tao, 道, has the word for self, 自, in it. Like Matt said, we can't fully comprehend what exactly the Mandarin speakers mean by self. I would like to think that it means something similar to the concept of Self found in the Bhagavad-Gita, but I am no expert. However, it is similar to Self, then I would like to think it is nice that it is found within the word for "the way".

Any thoughts?

After defining everything Jesus was (and wasn't) in class, I have a much different image than that which was created in Catholic school. Jesus was taught as someone who seemed to be peaceful, holy, somehow on a completely different level than other humans. After talking about what he was really like, he seems much more realistic and likable as a person. I also feel like he was much more socially intelligent than I previously thought. To explain that, based on actions such as dining with the tax collector, I thought he was wise but also a bit naive to social workings. After talking about his rejection of patriarchy and his understanding of humans as social creatures, I feel I respect him much more than I did before, and not just because I was told that I should respect him.

First, though unrelated, I wanted to share this image I found on tumblr recently:

I just thought it was amusing considering how we've been talking recently of the bible as fiction.

I thought it was interesting today when we talked about how the idea of heaven as the Kingdom of God came from a need for a reward for enduring the toils of life as a Jewish peasant thousands of years ago, and how class influenced the ideas of the Kingdom of God to fit the needs of each class. It appeared to me like a spiritual coping mechanism to survive the difficulties of living in that time period. We seem to live much less spiritually now, if we're unhappy with our government, it seems like we'd be much more likely to host physical protests than search spiritually for an answer like Heaven.

Thoughts?