Thursday, December 08, 2005

This post reminded me of how I can't get the concept that Jews walk to synagogue out of my head, even though I'm perfectly aware that many take cars. I think it's because when I was younger, sometimes we'd see well dressed people walking on the streets. I don't remember, but maybe it was explained to me that they were Jews and they had to avoid working on the Sabbath, and because it was the first piece of information I had, it's really hard to get rid of.

By using a bunch of random ideas I partially cribbed from Boyer, I'll attempt to explain this. Now, I imagine myself to have a template of a 'normal'(a black Christian American) person. All different groups have items added or subtracted. My template says "people go to church" and Jews are "people who go to 'church' by walking". So I have a sort of base that may or may not be examined, and different groups are thought of using this 'base'.

This is interesting, although I'm still at the point of my development in which I have a hard time conceiving of people having different goals. This is why I am often angry at people who are against equality(I mean equality that actually exists and can be measured) because I simply can't understand emotionally why you'd be against equality. As I feel that 'normal people' are for equality, so anti equality people seem really deviant.

But I don't get angry at "Jews have to go to temple on the High Holidays" because they are carrying out a shared goal "enjoy holiness and community" in a different way. I also don't get as mad at people who live in other countries having different goals, such as our goal is "don't die" so a widow throwing herself on a husband's funeral pyre is against that goal, but I guess I feel that if you're not in America, you're not required to have the same goals as the rest of Americans, but that Americans should share the same goals.

Trying to explore my mind is hard. I haven't done any work today- my stride is off because I threw up in the morning and fell asleep after class. At least my religion paper is slightly more done.

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