The Anthropology of Religion

[@MichaelKilmanAuthor]

Great video. Wonderful to see another anthropologist with a short and accessible videos on KZbin! Looking forward to seeing more.

[@kathyrithika9273]

i love the way he expresses

[@charlesnunno8377]

This is fascinating.

[@sloaiza81]

Masterpiece.

[@michellenicolettehorvat2309]

Grand!

[@abhinavkarn1]

Great Video!

[@ReubenNathaniel]

Beautiful.

[@charlesnunno8377]

Dancing is a form of Ancient "Liturgy." It is a wordless sermon. Fascinating. But that is what I am seeing when I watch them. Instead of going to Church for 2 hours, they dance half a day.

[@filipigo]

Thank you for sharing, Mike!

[@anavanstraten6186]

Wonderful!

[@samanthasalter6964]

How good. Currently writing an essay in NZ on your ethnography, a witch hunt in new guinea. thanks for the videos

[@takeastand2822]

I enjoyed this

[@screenstorming]

I observe that many people in modern culture tend more toward skepticism and despair, and/or hope disconnected from actual inquiry, dialogue and effort to understand and transform the problems increasingly affecting everyone or most people -- like the disconnect between how systems like formal education, mental health, and institutionalized religion tend to work as one size fits all and superficial barriers to the kind of deep transformative learning and collaboration to shift conditions that are getting worse for many people globally. I think when people are worshipping superficial things aka stuck in passive passions and responding in the moment, that's for sure something to transform. But this isn't enough in a broadly miseducated society, including the ways of thinking about the world often emphasized in higher ed, linear thinking and very narrow conceptions of knowledge and so on. The way I see things especially now is that we're all part of an evolving global story where people are playing God in many ways and yet we've been taught we're powerless beyond our immediate lives or outsourcing to dieties, governments, institutions and professionals (articles Compensatory Control: The Appeal of a Structured World, Decolonization of knowledge, epistemicide, participatory research and Higher Education for example, and Pedagogical Violence by Matusov & Sullivan laying bare how schooling suppresses agency.) But the way modern systems and roles have been set up there are huge gaps in many people's access to needs and aspirations as well as opportunity to meaningfully contribute. And I think something needs to change or the default assumptions of "nothing can be done, leave us alone" and "I don't know what to do" based on schools killing creativity (Ken Robinson) and forgetting wonder and inquiry and asking why many levels deep like kids often try to do has put humanity in a bad place. The good news is that many people are working on and finding better ways to do things but the problem is these efforts are often fragmented and obscure. I'm curious how that analysis can circle back to religion and spiritually topics. I see a lot of connections but it's complicated to convey what I see in short text. That said I think these videos are very informative and a valuable piece of the puzzle. Thoughts and dialogue on this welcome. :)

[@cristianleon7533]

i agree that many people are working on ways to connect, be spiritual, find deeper meaning, but its a lot of individual work. I would love to see more emphasis on this in classrooms and start building communities of inquiry into the spiritual and meaningful.

[@MeMyself-jz9ms]

“Feel the texture of life, not just to label it and put it in a box…”

[@michaelpudney]

Tricks to make the body secrete feel good chemicals which help bond the participants together as a 'family'. the things that induce the chemical response are deemed sacred culture and are refined and added to over time. In our culture these tricks are used in advertising.

[@williamjohns9322]

White man stop dancing and go make tea! I didn’t expect to LOL when watching this video. Thanks for sharing Michael

[@Ofinfinitejest]

Interesting video, but there are two problems with this set of assertions. The first is the chaos of expanding and diverting definitions. If you want to assert that the definition of religion is "ultimate meanings, values and purposes," then you simply are going to need a new word for beliefs in the supernatural, and the worship of this. We do need that word, and without it we produce the chaos of unclear meanings and automatic misunderstandings. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it's by no means clear, and never demonstrated, that all human beings must have "ultimate meanings, values and purposes." It's utterly unclear what "ultimate meanings" even means. There are endless examples where people who claim ownership of such beliefs can't say anything about what they are, and we are left to assume or not that something other than a place-holder word for emotional comfort is at work. This becomes very "Zen," to put a cultural context on it, but also we have communication that has broken down into nothing that can be shared or has utility in any objective sense.

[@screenstorming]

Yes I see the problem with communication breakdown getting really out of control. Even a decade ago I observed that it seems like everyone has their own culture going on inside their own mind and I think that's become far more severe of a problem, without people developing skills at negotiating what's being discussed by the words in a given conversation. I observe that there's a kind of false IMHO dichotomy in play between acknowledging shared objective reality -- like we're on a planet with billions of people and a shared ongoing history of events of scenes in the world and people navigating them -- and the ideas that reality is socially constructed. It's true people's default sense of reality is heavily influenced by social influences, but this is also where a lot of religion and education influence people in often very deliberate and oppressive ways. It takes work to get out of the bubbles and learn about other people's experience of a shared environment and figuring out how to share the planet for example without continuing the long history of wars and oppressive control and people abandoning each other for example. I see a lot of this as both/and like looking at parts of a puzzle that can be actively assembled and figured out even if that involves cognitive dissonance and epistemic friction. But many people avoid those things and therefore are stuck in the artificially limited "social reality" people with control in mind prefer.

[@Kuto152]

I do not believe any of your postulated criticisms that you laid out are of any real validity. Understand that the description of the connotation currently used for religion is an inadequate explanation and or account of the phenomena. The point simply was the definition of religion as utilized by western cultures presents itself to be a narrow or low-resolution definition of the term. It fails to capture effectively the totality and edifice of what religion as a global phenomena is. A definition must not be too wide or too narrow as the popular one is. It must be applicable to everything to which the defined term applies (i.e. not miss anything out), and to nothing else (i.e. not include any things to which the defined term would not truly apply). If serious academics of religion are to hypothetically continue to exercise that low-resolution definition as a consequence of the reasons you put forward we ultimately devolve into the realm of terra incognita. The "belief in the supernatural or worship of this" fundamentally fails to encapsulate the anomaly in its totality. With regards to the proposal that humans need "ultimate meanings, values and purposes". This is merely an overture for the instanton of belief systems. ....-It's self-evidently the case, that beliefs themselves functions or act as mechanisms that both structure behavior and perception. You cannot pursue, act in relation too, or look at anything consciously or unconsciously without a hierarchy of values embedded in accordance to your value systems. These ultimate belief or value systems instantiated in culture are moral guidelines that act as nested, conceptual and practical systems enshrined into our social and or personal lives which we inevitably need to orient ourselves by in the face of existence or life.

[@screenstorming]

@@Kuto152 I agree the definitions of terms are worth figuring out better. I find that people these days have quite varied current definitions or loose meanings for terms like religion and that does make things complicated. Like I watched a lecture video about leadership and the professor said if he asked all the students what leadership means he'd get different answers from everyone because that's been his experience. I find this to be the case with terms like dialogue for example. I think it's worth distinguishing between religion as institutional or organized belief and practice systems, and an individual's own process of figuring out personal beliefs and practices with or without significant participation in organized religions or groups. And yeah by default people have some version of this from experience growing up and navigating life, often called culture. However also I've experienced and I think is widespread, my current beliefs, values and so on not being very well articulated and at periods in my life kind of losing the richness and depth of purpose and motivation or affective energy that I've had to endeavor to bring back or construct through learning missing knowledge and insights and not having processed past experience well or not knowing how to construct what I call a "whole story" sensemaking and life navigation framework. For example at one point I spent a lot of time over six months playing video games because that was the only way I was managing to feel a sense of engagement and efficacy and flow states. Other times I tried to fill in what was missing by returning to college or scouring degree programs or psychiatric diagnoses. Part of this is basically about figuring out one's identity in the world like one's differences and range of capacities and what is worth viewing as possible in life or at a given point in life. And many people are navigating life in these relative low consciousness modes vs building up or accessing ways to have more of an inner life, spirituality or active sensemaking process. Named religions, professions, diagnoses, categories, subcultures, groups, relationships etc can serve these purposes to various degrees but they can be insufficient. For many people it can take a lot of searching and/or figuring out to get to states of feeling connected with one's whole self and the universe or other people or some broader context. I think often people are stuck managing some of this and not other aspects, like being true to one's self and sense of purpose and meaning but not finding compatible others *or* joining groups or frameworks or work situations or education processes that mean engagement with others and the world but at the cost of making the most of one's self. Figuring out both when culture itself is so in flux and often polarized to the point of absurdity can be complicated. I think the article Affective energy, authentic power, transforming communities: Toward a phenomenology of collaboration by Darrin Hicks (2020) freely available on ResearchGate for example is somehow relevant to this even though it's not about religion per se. There's something about having an 'authentic' fit to one's life situation and social and work contexts. I think there's so much more to unpack in all of this too and I'm interested to do so. Any thoughts on that?

[@MeMyself-jz9ms]

@@screenstorming I’m going through this process very incompletely, having had a large number of significant life changes recently, culminating in a realisation that I have been deconstructing from orthodox (small “o”) Christianity for decades and now make it a moral imperative to identify as post-Christian. Despite the negative label, I’m finding such a homecoming and release into a matrix of belief within a sense of wonder at my place within the physical universe that feels so life affirming and freeing. I’m experiencing joy and am so much more at peace with myself and able to come to terms with reality as I allow all the baggage of Christianity to fall away. What a wonderful relief it is to be free of all that guilt and expectation.

[@Arch_Mikey]

what gives life meaning (value): we are not in this thing alone

[@General_Ictus]

Is.... is that how Copernicus' name is pronounced???? Ya learn something new every day!

[@flibflob2785]

Maybe they were just dancing because dancing is fun

[@Ludspaw]

Hamamasim, dancing does make happy

[@FacesintheStone]

You know what’s going on with the birds! ❤ the ancient people knew this. The bird on the head is the same as the eye of the forehead is the same as the snake on the head. It’s all about awareness. Check out the artifacts my friends 🗿👍

[@rashid8646]

The focus on the word "belief" here is silly. Faith is a better word to explor.

[@mwesch]

I agree that faith is more interesting. I had to focus on belief because that is how most standard definitions of religion begin.

[@vocalsvideos458]

Not true, not every human feel bad because we will die

[@markgamble7699]

All religions must be accepted as one and the same for all to be accepted… (Order to Understanding)…

[@richardfinlayson1524]

Yeah well there is quite a difference between taking psychedelics and going to church too.

[@larryparis925]

Yes, going to a church has got to be one of the most mind-numbing experiences one can have. Talk about destroying the intellect.

[@larryparis925]

@@josephpchajek2685 It appears your default position is that going to church is a good thing. I'm saying that it's simply indoctrination into a body of beliefs that are not based on reality. Being a "believer" in a religion is a combination of enculturation, emotion, rituals, and myths. I have nothing against a "traditional" society following a religion, but in this day and age - in any industrialized society with educational institutions, we now know better. Going to a church, or a mosque, or a temple, is not going to benefit me - or you, or anyone - as much as reading a good book, being compassionate, loving one another, and appreciating reality.

[@lesleykanofski6582]

It's a way of life with wisdom and proper judicial systems including trade between tribes ... Mass migration is also a speciality with our Melanesian family with Australian Aborigines walked out of Egypt when Pharoah Let My People go when we were released with the Israelites and Australian Aborigines were lead to our promised land Australia © LPK🐸🇦🇺 Greetings from my Goupong Ugarapul Frog Tribe South East Queensland Australia 👑🐸🌈🐉🇦🇺