We have talked a lot about the different ways people are categorized and how those different categorizes interact with each other. We have talked mainly about race, ethnicity, class, gender and sex. Actually I feel that the theme of the class so far has really been about categorization. I found it very interesting today when Mary mentioned that people divided themselves into categories in order to be “read” and that there is a sort of comfort in knowing some defining characteristic of a person. That people are afraid of not knowing anything about a person, by not having reference point from which to judge a person. Perhaps it’s for this reason humans create stereotypes. In order to believe that we can understand a person just by recognizing a few select characteristics.
The idea of fearing someone by not knowing them made me rethink the clashes between the kinds categories previously mentioned. For example I have always considered the clash between heterosexual and homosexual culture to be based on concepts like morality or vice. It was my thought that the church was trying to make others convert in order to give legitimacy to their own beliefs. Now I believe it is more than that, that there is a fundamental human fear of change. That in the 1920s and 30s people were afraid that the congregation of homosexuals and immigrants would create new subculture within American society. Such subculture would then permeate into mainstream culture and this change would result in a re-organization of power.
I think that modern religion could have gotten its start from this kind of fear. That without a reason stay people would abandon their culture, so leaders of early society began telling stories that told the importance of ritual and family. If so the “facts” behind religion are meaningless as they are only created in order to maintain a cultural ideology as best as possible. Still, science, homosexuality, and other religions threaten the legitimacy of these “facts” and in turn threaten the legitimacy of the culture a religion promotes. In my opinion, the only thing to believe is belief itself; in other words there is hollowness within religion because is relies on controlling people in order to have legitimacy. Religion is a collective experience that defines a culture, not a set of laws or a moral authority.
I’m not saying in this post that I believe that religion is fundamentally evil. I’m trying to say that the interactions between different categories of people, including religion, have been and have the potential to be violent or infectious or destructive. That people should try and get past fearing what they don’t know, and try to understand what they can.
Here is a video of Richards Feynman talking about beauty. It relates to not being fearful of the unknown.
Also this might be a little rough, but i feel like if i don't start posting things right after i write them they never get posted.
Evan, Absolutely, post as you are thinking! Don't wait until you have everything sorted out. There is lots going in this post. Let me comment only on the very real fact that religious communities are powerful forces in how their members understand themselves and others. The major traditions are not monolithic, however; indeed they also change. Notice, for example, the variation between how Italian and Irish Roman Catholics are portrayed in this book. LDL
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