A Darker Side of Humanity

Humanity is capable of truly terrible things, and Bartolome wastes no time in proving that in his Journal. The Destruction of the Indies shows a gruesome depiction of what can only be described as the predecessor to the Holocaust. The atrocities described in this book are truly staggering, mind-blowing, disgusting, aweful, horrid, and many more terrible things that I will not bother to list.

 Throughout this journal, Las Casas provides numerous (perhaps too numerous) accounts of the Spaniards comeplete disregard, and lack of respect for human life. At one point in the book, Las Casas describes a scene where a Spaniard's dogs become hungry, and so in an effort to appease the hungry pups, he takes a human native child, cuts off its arms and legs, and feeds the live babe to the animals. The complete lack of value for human life shown in this passage left me utterly appalled. Did they really value their dogs more highly than their fellow man? Being Xenophobic is one thing, but the mass genocide described by Las Casas is something else entirely.

At one point in the book, Las Casas describes a situation where one of the Native leaders escapes torture, and flees to a nearby island where other natives are living. The Spainards chase after the man, over the course of several islands, and when they finally catch him, they burn him alive. Whether they chased the man out of pure sport, or out of a feeling that they might lose pride if one 'got away', I do not know, but this example goes to show how adamant Las Casas makes the Spaniards out to be in their intent to kill/ enslave every last native.

I recall learning about the pilgrims arrival in America, and how the natives helped them to grow them survive the winter, and celebrated a Thanksgiving, and when I got older I remember looking back at what I learned in retrospect and thinking, 'there's no way things went that peacefully...'. Even so, I never would have imagined that it would have been this violent. How the Spaniards could have committed these heinous acts, and then go on to call themselves Christians is baffling, I wonder what the Pope of the time would have said if Las Casas had been writing to him instead.

I'm sure that some of this story is exaggerated, but I'm also sure that not all of this is false either. Books of today profess how barbaric the natives seemed to be, but this book shows that the pilgrims and Spaniards were not so civilized in their relations either. The truth usually lies somewhere in between; maybe both sides were guilty of committing crimes against one another. I say this because I am sure that the Natives did not take this as nicely as Las Casas made it seem that they did.

While I have to say that I did not find this book particularly enjoyable, I do think that it is important for people to read. It recounts a history of humanity at one of its lowest, most horrible points, and hopefully by reading it, we will understand the mistakes that our predecessors made, and be able to learn from them. 

Gilgamesh, the Arrogant

When I first heard we would be reading the Epic of Gilgamesh in this class, I was a bit excited. I had heard about this story from many people, my past teachers, television, even my mom had mentioned it a few times over the years. The fact that it was written more than two thousand years ago also piqued my interest, and so I wasted no time in opening it up.

            I immediately found after reading the first tablet that Gilgamesh was a very prideful character, to the point that it was actually damaging to the people. From the very beginning we see how tyrannical of a ruler Gilgamesh is, the people complain to the Gods about how he has sex with women on their wedding day, how he harasses the men to no end etc. When the Gods responded by creating Enkidu, I figured that this Epic was going to be a tale of how a proud, stubborn ruler meets his end at the hands of his own vices. I could not have been more wrong.

            Not only did Endiku not defeat Gilgamesh, but he ended up befriending him! The prideful ruler’s tyranny then continued to ensue, or so it is assumed.

            And now that Gilgamesh had a friend who’s skill was close to that of his own, what was the first thing he decided to do? No, not hang out at the pub and buy his friend a drink! That would be the normal, friendly thing to do. Gilgamesh decides to take his newfound friend on a quest to kill a vile ogre, whose power is believed to be second only to a God. Here is where Gilgamesh’ prideful hubris shows again: The Elder Council, as well as his new friend, Enkidu, all told him that embarking on such a quest was a fool’s endeavor, and that he best not go through with it; to which he responds with witty sarcasm, and a hearty laugh.

            So he embarked on his quest, and succeeded in killing the mighty Humbaba. Did he do so with grace and majesty? No. He did it in the most pride ridden way possible. He severed the beasts head, and then cut down an entire forest of Cedar trees in celebration. As if killing the guardian of the forest, Humbaba, was not bad enough, now he needed to further insult the Gods by cutting down the forest itself as well? This episode shows that Gilgamesh will stop at no end to flaunt his achievements in the faces of others, be they mortal or not.

            The next example of Gilgamesh’ pride is shown when he speaks to the Goddess, Ishtar. Ishtar asks for Gilgamesh’ hand in marriage, and he refuses; very impolitely of course. He doesn’t merely respond with a no-thank-you, but he proceeds to go on with a fifty-three line tirade of vulgarity and slander directed at the Goddess Ishtar’s cruelty toward men, when he himself has done those same things to women as shown in tablet one!

            Gilgamesh is an insanely arrogant character, but in my opinion that’s also what makes him a good character. In my eyes, he’s that character who is loved for his arrogance and cruelty toward others.

Greetings Mosaic I Class!

Hello Honors Mosaic I class! My name is Eric Ralph, and like most of you (well, probably all of you), I am a student at Temple University. I am from Northeast Philadelphia, not too far from Franklin Mills Mall and the Northeast airport. For high school I attended Archbishop Ryan, I’ve been in private schools for a majority of my life, so when I first started attending Temple last year, the large diversity among the student body was a bit new to me. I graduated high school in June of 2011, and am now a sophomore here at Temple.

            My major is Applied Mathematics, so as you can probably imagine, I enjoy math quite a bit. To me, there is nothing better than sitting down and enjoying a nice cup of hot cocoa with a side of calculus. My hope when I graduate is to get a job where I will be involved with statistics, I'm not very clear on specifics yet.

            My goals for this class are fairly straight forward, I want to be able to better analyze and critically think about what I am reading. I feel my abilities in math related classes are very strong; however my reading abilities are in need of some fine tuning. Hopefully this class will be just what I need to help with that.

            The Body Ritual among the Nacirema was quite an interesting article. I actually needed to read the article twice, because is was not until after I read it through for the first time that I realized what Samuel Morris was really referring to. So the first time that I read it, I was of course surprised at the seemingly barbaric rituals and torture that the Nacirema were putting themselves through, but after realizing that Nacirema was just America spelled backwards, everything seemed to come into perspective. The holy-mouth-man was the dentist; the lalipso was the hospital, etc. After realizing this, I found the paper to be very humorous. I must admit that Morris came up with quite an interesting way of teaching us not to judge a society by its culture, no matter how demented or unnecessary some of their customs may seem to outsiders. Overall, I thought the article was very interesting, and it’s unique, albeit twisted, outlook on American Society to be both entertaining and enlightening. You have to wonder though, what he would have said about daycare in his article if he had put it in. He would probably have said something along the lines of 'The parents abandon their children on a daily basis.' Which, like the rest of his article, is completely misunderstood when it is taken out of context.

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Hello people of Mosaic I!