Culture and Religion – Page 3

December 10, 2022 Culture and Religion / Political Ideologies

How the means can discredit the ends

Napoleon Bonaparte was certainly a very intelligent, creative, and energetic personality, a great statesman, and an ingenious military leader. He did much good for many people in Europe. My wife’s grandma Anna grew up in a part of Germany that later became the “Département Ruhr”, the administrative unit of the Eastern Ruhr region under French occupation from 1806 through 1813. Anna and all her siblings never learned much of anything until the French came. They started a public-school system and taught all children to read and write – French, of course.

Napoleon also personally participated in writing a new civil code for France, which was a huge step toward civil liberty and public safety. His “Code Napoleon” is still today France’s civil law. It also became the model for the civil code of many other nations. And it is still amazingly “modern” today.

November 19, 2022 Culture and Religion / World

What is wrong with (wo)mankind?

If countries/nations do not produce enough people, their populations shrink. If they shrink beyond a certain point, they cannot recover, and the population of the country or nation will disappear. So, this is really crucial. If your population disappears, all other problems won’t matter much. Right?

October 22, 2022 Culture and Religion / World

White Men Can Pack

When I lived with the Yebámasa Indians on the Río Piraparaná in South-East Colombia in 1977/78, one day, a group of Indians from Síoro Jáiro, a place directly on the Piraparaná consisting of four palm-leaf malocas, decided that they wanted to travel to the mission town of Mitú by canoe. Mitú was approximately 300 miles by river from Síoro Jáiro.

September 17, 2022 Culture and Religion

The Meaning of Colors

Colors have always been used as symbols. And their symbolism differs from culture to culture. They can carry social, political, and religious messages. And since the messages differ from culture to culture, knowledge of culture-specific color symbolism plays an important role in global marketing and communication between people with different cultural backgrounds. Let’s check into the meaning of some of the main colors.

September 11, 2022 Culture and Religion

Civil Liberty and Religious Freedom

The Marines in the picture below are all bowing their heads. Are they all ashamed of something? Is this the military equivalent of “taking a knee”? No. Guess what! They bow their heads because they are all praying! Oy, oy, oy! Not woke.

July 9, 2022 Culture and Religion

Slavery

As a general concept, ‘slavery’ can be defined as the ‘ownership and/or complete control of one person by another person or by an institution or organization and the near complete loss of personal liberty and decision-making power by the enslaved person’.
Contrary to what many people think, slavery was not only endured by black people (sub-Saharan Africans) in America. And Africans were not only the victims. Black people, in particular West African governments, were instrumental in hunting down their own and selling them to the Arabian and European slave traders.

April 17, 2022 Culture and Religion

Terms and Concepts as Weapons of Culture War

Legend tells that Kung Fu Tse, the great Chinese philosopher and administrator, when he was once asked what he would do first if he could become the emperor of China, replied: “I would define the concepts.” Kung Fu Tse understood that if you want to control how people act, you must control how people think. If you want to control how people think, you must control how they speak. And if you want to control how people speak, you must control language, i.e. the meaning of terms and of the concepts they refer to.

April 9, 2022 Culture and Religion / World

Reverse Anthropology

By mid-April of 1977, I arrived by STOL aircraft on a piece of savanna in the middle of the tropical rain forest that was part of the Comisaría del Vaupés. From the “air strip” it was about a two-hour march through the teeming rain forest to get to the small settlement of Yebámasa Indians, I had selected as my study group. Of course, the Indians did not know that, and my sudden arrival was a surprise for them.

March 25, 2022 Culture and Religion

In Praise of the Average Person

I have often wondered, why many religions and almost all of the social ideologies humans have developed so far in their quest for “justice” always side up with the poor, the oppressed, the underprivileged, the disenfranchised. Not that these groups of people would not need some special attention and help. They certainly do. But it stands out that the justice doctrines seem to side up with the poor and the weak alone and have no good word to say about the average working person.

March 18, 2022 Culture and Religion / World

Sire, give freedom of thought!

Between 1783 and 1787, at the height of the German enlightenment, the German playwright Friedrich Schiller wrote the drama “Don Carlos”. Carlos is Prince of Asturias and, as the son of the Spanish King Philip II, “Infant” to the Spanish throne, i.e. the designated successor of King Philip. Don Carlos sides up with the Dutch insurgents who want national independence, individual freedom and a constitution. His friend, the Marquis de Posa, petitions the despotic King with the famous words “Sire, give freedom of thought!” and dies for the liberty of the Dutch, while Don Carlos is delivered to the Inquisition by his own royal father for his heretic views.