Further Adventures in Superstitious Thinking

This morning during my typical walk from where my car is parked to the building I actually attempt to do work in, I saw one of our resident ospreys land on the roof of the building I was walking next to. For anyone who has ever had the misfortune of being crapped on by a seabird, you completely understand why I moved away from the sidewalk to avoid walking under the building. I love when the ospreys use my office building as their launch zone, though. I'll take little breaks to walk down and watch them circle the harbor. I heard the osprey perched on the research building calling, so I assumed its mate was close by, and as I watched, the first bird flew to the next building and was joined by an additional osprey. Then, the first two were followed by a third flying over to them from the port side of the peninsula. Three ospreys! This is double lucky because it fufills my superstition about the Rule of Three, and I consider birds of prey to be fortuitous. The third osprey is probably the adolescent from a couple of nesting seasons ago. I'm hopeing the breeding pair nests nearby this year, and if we're lucky we'll get to see them quite a bit this summer.

Which brings me to my Anthropology class from last night, and a story I'd like to file under the old adage (paraphrased): "Better to keep quiet and have people think you're a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt". This week's lecture was about religion, which the professor admits is one of her favorite topics to teach, although her lesson plans put emphasis on the indigenous practices and beliefs as opposed to Islamic and Judeo-Christian religions. (Which I can see why - she is an anthropologist, not a theologian, after all.) So, it has more to do with traditional myth and superstition than modern western dogma. During part of her lecture, one poor misguided soul asked a question using the word "primitive" in reference to the cultural beliefs and practices relating to the Trobriand Islanders and the role of the community magician in the fertilization rituals relating to their agricultural practices. The look she gave him should have told him to shut it, but this one must be particularly dense, because when she questioned him on whether he understood the negative implications of a word like primitive when discussing cultural issues, he persisted. This caused the most lively debate I've seen in the class so far. The professor asked him if he remembered our first couple of class lectures, and some of the early reading that addressed the use of certain terms to imply the cultural superiority of western society over others. She asked him why he thought that American ways were better, and although he insisted he didn't think that, he kept vaguely referring to studies that prove western medicine and western technology work far better than indigenous or traditional practices.

Obviously, the kid doesn't know the history of "modern" medicine (or the upswing in what are commonly now thought of as eastern or "holistic" practices, such as massage, accupuncture, herbalism, etc.), or that Big Pharma routinely scours traditional cultural knowledge for sources and alternatives to synthasize as the ingredients in our lab created pharmaceuticals. He also doesn't understand basic agriculture, since we were basically talking about how the Trobriand Islanders have ritualized their fertilization techniques to enhance community cohesion (sort of like a good old fashioned American barn raising...). Helllllo - modern farmers compost too, dumbass! She ended the discussion by saying that by the end of the semester she hoped he came out of her class with a better understanding of the value of different cultural and religious beliefs and practices, and that just because it's "different" than the American way it shouldn't be inferred or implied that it is "less than" or inferior. I'm thinking "Don't count on it, sister".

At the end of the class we watched a film called "In the Light of Reverence" (narrated by Peter Coyote!), about the difficulties faced by many Native American groups in the post-reservation era as they try to preserve part of their culture by engaging in their traditional religious practices. This film made me alternately deeply sad and very, very angry at the ignorance and arrogance of many of the people featured. I understand that it was a film intended to be sympathetic to the native American perspective, and that bias was obvious. BUT - some of the white people interviewed came off as the most bigoted, ass-backward, and ignorant of their own country's history I've seen in quite a while. Or maybe that's me being the culturally insensitive one...

By the way, for those who may be interested, the reason I got a 99 on my outline/lecture, is because I broke my thesis statement up into two sentences, and it's only supposed to be one sentence, so I lost a point. I also didn't put the references cited in alphabetical order, so I lost another partial point (but it looks like she gave me back another half point for something, as she only took one point off overall). Now, in my defense regarding the bibliography, I didn't see anything in the AAA style guide to that effect (though it's possible I may have missed it), and the example outline she provided that she directed us to use as our template didn't appear to have the references in alphabetical order either. But I'm not going to quibble over petty little things like that - there were no marks off for the content, spelling or grammar, and she wrote "Excellent" under my grade, so I can be satisfied that I earned that grade!