Why do we do the things we do? Anthropologists will tell you that, by and large, humans act in accordance with their beliefs. What’s more, we often conflate belief with truth; that is, we accept many claims as true ..
. even when evidence is lacking or contrary to the facts. Matthew Richard taught cultural anthropology in Georgia for 23 years.
He lives in Rockport. In short, our beliefs are meaningful to us – they’re “real” – and we are motivated to comply with the propositions that inhere in them: Real men don’t cry. Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.
Smoking is cool. Blue is for boys, pink is for girls. Quitting is not an option.
Defend the Motherland. Wives, submit unto your own husbands. It’s necessary to acknowledge that the worlds in which different societies live are distinct, not merely the same world with different labels attached.
Consider the following observation by the 20th-century Irish poet William Butler Yeats: “Once every people in the world believed that trees were divine and could take a human or grotesque shape and dance among the shadows; and that deer, and ravens and foxes, and wolves and bears, and clouds and pools, almost all things under the sun and moon were divine. ..
. [A]nd when a sudden flight of wild ducks, or of crows, passed over their heads, they thought they were gazing at the dead hastening to their rest ..
. ” Of all the creatures in the world, we alone dwell in a world of meaning. Other than philosophers, few people giv.