Understanding Religion, Totemism, Culture and Women (Essay Sample)

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Religion
Sigmund Freud is has dealt with the nature of religion and origins of religion. He has several publications both books and essays. His main regard concerning religion is that God is only but an illusion. Freud believed that religion is mainly based on the graving need for the ‘father figure’ hence God has been considered the ‘father’ in most religions. Freud was originally a Jew and first encountered anti-Semitism in 1873 and he was expected to feel inferior himself because he was a Jew. He was completely estranged from his religion but did not have desire to alter that.
Freud suggests that religion can be compared to neurosis in that they are similar end products of human mind. He refers to neurosis as "an individual religiosity" while religion as repetitive rituals therefore defines religion as a "universal obsessional neurosis”. In Totem and Taboo, which Freud published in the year 1913, he analyzes what he refers to as tendency of the primitive tribes that promulgate regulations against incest within the groups named for the totem animals and objects, and also create certain taboos in regard to people, actions and things. He notes that the ancient taboos today still play very significant role in the society while totem has been long abandoned and actually replaced by newer and newer forms.
One of the core ideas of taboo and totem, Freud elaborates; "This view of religion throws a particularly clear light upon the psychological basis of Christianity, in which, it may be added, the ceremony of the totem-feast still survives with but little distortion in the form of Communion." Freud goes ahead to refer to religion as a certain illusion which may be one of the most important items in the invention of civilization, (Sigmund Freud, 1927). He argues that religion defends against superior crushing force of nature and therefore religion was to correct shortcomings as a result of civilization. Freud describes a man’s need for religion as "a sensation of ‘eternity’, a feeling like of something unbounded and limitless. He suggests that this feeling is ‘oceanic’ and a wish fulfillment which he relates to a kid’s need for parental protection.
Several responses and criticisms emerged against Freud’s work. Kristal, 1949 said Freud had correctly exposed irrationality existing in religion but he (Freud) did not substitute anything beyond "a mythology of rational despair”. Alfred Aldar believed God was helpful to human therefore he did not agree with Freud.
According to Clifford Geertz (1965), religion is a powerful system of symbols which can establish very long lasting motivations and moods in human beings by actually formulating certain conceptions of an order of existence. These symbols help in interpretation of the reality and also shaping of behavior. The symbols are considered sacred and can synthesize people’s character, tone and their quality of life. Symbols in themselves have message on how human beings ought to live.
Symbols are intended to persuade human that there is a correlation between how we actually live and the nature of the reality. In all areas of human beings lives, there is always something that can cause pain, in such scenarios, the symbols won’t take away the actual pain but rather makes it possible for human beings to be able to endure the pain with assurance that there exist answers for this. Christian cross in this case is the perfect example; Christians are assured that every suffering has an ultimate positive meaning at the end of it all. The cross does not explicitly explain the reason for the current suffering but claims the divine purpose of the same.
Religion according to Geertz makes motivation and moods more realistic. The importance of a ritual is actually sending human beings back to life situations and circumstances with a mind that the broader view of life is good, true and perhaps fulfilling. These symbols and rituals enhance man’s commitment to nomos, which is how the society teaches about life and its experiences. In comparison of the views of Freud and Geertz, the understanding presented by Geertz is more useful.
Another historian named Jonathan Smith did research about religions. His researches included Hellenistic religions, Maori cults and theory of ritual. Smith was a graduate from Haverford College with B.A in philosophy in the year 1960. According to Smith, religion must be historical, anthropological, an exercise of imagination as well as conventional. He argues that religion is a product of geographically and historically situated man’s ingenuity, curiosity and cognition – simply explained, as thee end result of the human labor, the ordinary ways in which human beings create the world which they live in.
According to Durkheim, Totemism refers to a system of belief where every human is believed to have spiritual connection with an existing human being for example a plant or animal referred to as a ‘totem’. The totem in most cases is believed to interact with a specified group to serve as a symbol. In Jonathan Smith’s "The Bare Facts of Ritual”, he tries to connect two symbols, events, texts or thought directly to one another hence raising a possibility of some secret interconnection of the scholar’s faith article.
In attempt to illustrate building blocks of ritual, Smith illustrates using an illustration and I quote "Leopards break into the temple and drink the sacrificial chalices dry: this occurs repeatedly, again and again: finally it can be reckoned on beforehand and becomes part of the ceremony”. In this excerpt, it is clear that the ritual will have advantage over the accident that occurred. Smith also uses the excerpt "At Athens, Lysimache. The priestess of Athene Polias, when asked for a drink by the mule drivers who had transported the sacred vessels, replied, "No, for I fear it will get into the ritual.””
Upon entering the temple, one is required to use marked-off space, a ritual not an accident. If such an accident occurred in the temple, it would be treated as a miracle or interpreted as blasphemy. Smith explains that a place where gods and men are held to be very transparent to one another was called sacred. Here, all communications whether noise or static decreased to increase exchange of information. In the first excerpt leopards were considered as a sign and therefore incorporated in the ritual communication while from the second excerpt, if the notion of the temple is taken seriously as a sacred place, then the ordinary will become significant and therefore sacred.
Feminism can be used to refer to a collection of ideologies and movements with the aim of establishing, defining and defending equal political, social and economic rights for the women while phenomenology can be defined as the study of the structures of consciousness or experience. Research reveals that the quality of suffering experienced by women is very different from that experienced by men. Women are also believed to suffer more than men according to female lawyers. The explanation for this is that men find pleasurable the very objective condition or event that is painful to women.
The most cited example is the phrase "sexual harassment”. For the man it is very pleasurable while for the woman, it is very embarrassing, disgusting and at the same time very painful. Similarly, for a man some experience can be offensive yet at best stimulating while a woman finds the same experience dehumanizing and even to some extent life threatening. It is believed that men are obliv...