Tonight we had our last meeting as a group before the trip. We discussed packing and ate Greek foods that some of us brought in, but most importantly, we watched a movie I love: My Life in Ruins. It's a great movie, set in Greece, and watching it tonight I remembered the last time I saw it I ended up sad because I wanted so badly to go to all of the places they showed in the film, but I didn't really believe I ever would. This time I nearly cried looking at all the places I'm going to see in just 2 more months! My Life is Good. :)
Friday, April 13, 2012
Thursday, March 8, 2012
The View From My Front Yard
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Claude Lévi-Strauss
"Anthropology, however, urges and analogous view if, ever so little, direct knowledge of societies most different from ours permits an appreciation of the reasons for existence that they have provided for themselves, rather than their being judges and condemned for reasons that are not theirs. To an observer who has been trained by his own society to recognize its values, a civilization intent on developing its own very different values appears to possess no values at all. It seems to the observer as if something is happening only in his culture, as if only his culture is privileged to have a history that keeps adding events to one another. For him, only this history offers meaning and purpose [...]. In all other societies, so he believes, history does not exist: at best, it marks time."
[speaking about animistic/spiritualist religions] "All these beliefs may be naïve, yet they are highly effective testimonies to a wisely conceived humanism, which does not center on man but gives him a reasonable place within nature, rather than letting him make himself its master and plunderer, without regard for even the most obvious needs and interests of later generations."
"However, natural selection cannot be judged solely by the great advantage of self-reproduction that it offers a species; for, if this multiplication destroys the indispensable balance with what is now called the ecosystem, and which must always be seen in its totality, then population growth may prove disastrous for the particular species that once viewed it as evidence of its own success."
"Above all, we must never forget that while at the beginning of human life, biological evolution may have selected pre-cultural traits - for example, erect posture, manual skill, sociability, symbolic thinking, the ability to vocalize and communicate - determinism very quickly began to work in the opposite direction. Unlike most sociobiologists, geneticists fully realize that every culture - with its physiological and technological constraints, its marriage rules, its moral and aesthetic values, its greater or lesser openness to immigrants - exercises upon its members a selection pressure that is much more lively, and whose effects are felt much sooner, than the slow motion of biological evolution. [...] The cultural forms adopted in various places by human beings, their past or present ways of life, determine the rhythm and the direction of their biological evolution, rather than vice versa. Thus, far from having to wonder whether culture is or is not a function of genetic factors, it is the selection of these factors, their relative dosage, and their reciprocal arrangements that are one effect among others of culture."
[speaking about animistic/spiritualist religions] "All these beliefs may be naïve, yet they are highly effective testimonies to a wisely conceived humanism, which does not center on man but gives him a reasonable place within nature, rather than letting him make himself its master and plunderer, without regard for even the most obvious needs and interests of later generations."
"However, natural selection cannot be judged solely by the great advantage of self-reproduction that it offers a species; for, if this multiplication destroys the indispensable balance with what is now called the ecosystem, and which must always be seen in its totality, then population growth may prove disastrous for the particular species that once viewed it as evidence of its own success."
"Above all, we must never forget that while at the beginning of human life, biological evolution may have selected pre-cultural traits - for example, erect posture, manual skill, sociability, symbolic thinking, the ability to vocalize and communicate - determinism very quickly began to work in the opposite direction. Unlike most sociobiologists, geneticists fully realize that every culture - with its physiological and technological constraints, its marriage rules, its moral and aesthetic values, its greater or lesser openness to immigrants - exercises upon its members a selection pressure that is much more lively, and whose effects are felt much sooner, than the slow motion of biological evolution. [...] The cultural forms adopted in various places by human beings, their past or present ways of life, determine the rhythm and the direction of their biological evolution, rather than vice versa. Thus, far from having to wonder whether culture is or is not a function of genetic factors, it is the selection of these factors, their relative dosage, and their reciprocal arrangements that are one effect among others of culture."
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Savannah
For the time being, I will add my favorite picture I've taken in my favorite place: Historic District Savannah, Georgia.
Beginnings
I've started this blog so that I can have a place to put all of my pictures and journal entries from my travels. So far there are no travels, but I am planning a 6 week study-abroad to Athens, Greece in June. This will be the first of what will hopefully be a long list of places I will visit in my lifetime.
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