Anti-depression Blog

So since today's class (1/31/2010) was so depressing with all the talk about how our world is sucking and getting worse and the talk of death and what not, I figured I would post a video that never fails to make me laugh. I know the song is cliche but the guys in it are soooo funny. So here it is:

Now that you've watched the random video, I'm gonna state my reasonings for why I think the world is actually getting better rather than getting worse for the fun of it. I think we can all agree that there are a lot of things that aren't necessarily desirable about our world but, as humans, it's natural for us to overlook the good things and accentuate negative things. Yes there are people starving in 3rd world countries, but we're making more efforts and more advances towards helping those people all the time.

One thing that is really near and dear to me that I personally think is a fantastic thing that we've never had before is all of out medical advances. My younger cousin has been in the Cincinnati Children's Hospital for almost 3 years now. She is one of 12 people in the world that has Combined Immune Deficiency Syndrome and without all of the medical advances we have now, she wouldn't still be alive today. We may not have a cure for cancer yet but there are a million other advances we've made that are so incredible. So I think that's a pretty awesome reason to prove that times aren't quite as bad as people think.

"That Guy" Who Keeps Showing Up

Something that resonated with me in class today (1/28/2010) was the resemblance of Viracocha to our stereotypical view of what Jesus was like when he was on earth. Viracocha was described as "a man of medium height, white and dressed in a white robe like an alb secured round the waist, and that he carried a staff and a book in his hands." Now I don't know about everyone else, but to me this sounds extremely similar to what we think of as Jesus: A guy with shoulder length brown hair, white (even though he was actually from the mid east), often wearing a white robe with a rope for a belt, often times seen with a walking staff and the book was most likely symbolism for the bible.
So what causes these similarities? I searched through the wonders of Wikipedia to find the reason (or at least some supplemental information) for these happenings. Turns out wikipedia has more info on the moralistic qualities rather than physical so this post is going to take a bit of a left turn. So off we go!
According to wikipedia, a Christ Figure is a literary element that is common in many stories. Such a figure should display more than one (but not necessarily all) of the following qualities: performance of miracles, manifestation of divine qualities, healing others, display loving kindness and forgiveness, fight for justice, being guided by the spirit of the character's father, death and resurrection. Often times the Christ Figure is also a martyr. I think Viracocha kinda met some of these qualities but wikipedia had a loooong list of stories that follow this pattern including To Kill A Mockingbird, The Lord of the Rings, The Green Mile, and, my personal favorite, Harry Potter!
If you want to see a full list of these stories/movies, you can go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_figure .

Gods Share Names With Massive Orbs?

One subject that really interested me today (1/24/11) was the Roman names of the gods. I'm sure everyone noticed that many of the gods shared the same name as a majority of the planets in our atmosphere. At first I thought the gods were named after the planets until I took a second to think about a logical timeline and realized that gods and myths were thought of long before the planets would have been named- logic can sometimes take time to arrive.
Anyways, I did some outside research on this and found some answers that may or may not have been part of these myths. On Answers.com I found an answer to the question "Why are the planets named after gods?" which stated that Romans noticed that the planets moved across the sky much faster than stars so the romans naturally believed that the planets were actually the gods moving around the sky going about their godly business. I don't know about the factuality of that statement but it kinda makes sense to me.
Then I found a site that explained WHY certain gods received their names. The examples include gods such as Venus, Mercury and Mars and all other planets ASIDE from Earth. Now you might be wondering "Why did they exclude Earth?", well that is because the ancient Romans didn't know that the planets they could see in the sky were the same thing as the mass they were living on. They most likely didn't realize Earth was a planet as well. The reasoning behind the god/planet connections made a lot of sense to me. Mars is the god of war and the red planet. War=blood. Blood=red. You get the picture. Venus is said to be the planet that shines the brightest so it is considered the most beautiful and Venus is the goddess of beauty and sex. Mercury is the planet that moves across the sky at the fastest rate so it seems natural that Mercury would be named after the messenger god.
If you want to check out the link to a site that has some additional explanations or whatever else, you can go here--> -http://www.syvum.com/cgi/online/serve.cgi/squizzes/astronomy/planets_gods.html
So that's what I learned from class today!

Flying by the Seat of Your Pants Wonder

In class today (January 19th), we talked about how different cultures explain our creation or why they explain it. I've thought about multiple versions of creation/evolution but never truly thought about how cultures reach a certain conclusion. I think it would be interesting to see what I could come up with if I had never been exposed to any theories, but unfortunately I have already been exposed so I doubt I could come up with an original explanation.

Though myths tend to fit into "how things are" today, I have absolutely no idea how they came up with them! How in the world did anyone ever decide that a massive vagina randomly showed up in the sky and "creepers" started crawling out?! Did someone actually see this mass vag? Did an ancestor turn senile and unknowingly made up the story? Or did someone simply have a sick mind? I don't know, probably never will. And that's ok.

So for the sake of argument I'll state the argument that I think ancient cultures made up some of these wild stories because people were asking and they had no answers. Though the stories make sense in comparison to nature and whatnot, I still think they pulled them out of their rear ends and periodically flew by the seat of their pants to come up with explanations.

Heroes, Anthropomorphizing, and Whatnot

Today (1/14/2010) we talked about anthropomorphizing in class which made me think about how my family is with dogs. I don't know if this is quite the same thing since I think dogs can have emotions, but I'm just gonna roll with it! My family is full of dog lovers which has resulted in me living with 14 dogs so far throughout my life. In my family we pretty much treat our dogs like they're additional children. They eat table food (along with dog food), they take baths, they sleep in our beds, they receive Christmas presents, etc etc. My mom believes that our dog Cooper knows when he gets sleepy and he crawls into bed and she thinks certain things hurt his feelings. I don't have any scientific proof that Cooper has emotions or an opinion on many things but I still think it's true.

Talking about heroes made me think about how if it weren't for Lewis and Clark, us "westerners" might not be where we are now. Lewis and Clark were heroes that often times are overlooked for whatever reason. I don't really know who my heroes are but I think someone I really admire is my younger cousin Kenna. Most of you probably don't know who she is but if you're interested, just look up Kenna Emmons. I guarantee you'll find some mind blowing stuff. She's a pretty great kid.

So yea... that's my take on class today....

First Post

Well, this is my first post in this blog for my Mythology class. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to post one yet or not but I will, just in case.