Dream

So, I just woke up and I'm posting this so that I don't forget. I've already forgotten some of this dream, but the part that I vividly remember is this:

I had decided to drive to Jamaica, so I did. Once I got to Jamaica, I was in this beautiful wooded area with stray dogs around (there are a lot of those in Jamaica). After peeing into the ocean, I set out looking for logs to take home with me. I found two logs about five feet long each, six inches across. I put them in the back of my Trailblazer, but I was worried about how I would get them on the plane (despite the fact that I had obviously brought my car). So, as I'm putting these logs into the car, my friend AJ, the old executive director of the FSU First Responder Unit comes up behind me. He starts telling me about how I'd be good for some officer position in the First Responder Unit next year, and he tells me that I need to speak to the Unit Coordinator about it. At some point, though, he changed into Commander Harmon Rabb, Jr. (played by David James Elliot) from that awesomely horrible TV show "JAG". So, then Admiral AJ Chegwidden (played by John Jackson) (also from "JAG") comes up behind me, and I guess he's supposed to be the Unit Coordinator. He starts out talking about how he wants me to take the new position of Health Officer or something, but then at some point he switches to talking about how he wants me to be a male model for Victoria's Secret. I would have to wear underwear and some sort of stylish neckpiece.

And that's as far as I got. Weird, huh?

:(

My girlfriend Kelly is in Paris right now, gallivanting around with her French friend Amelie, and I'm all along back in the lousy U.S. of A. She called last night and somehow I missed it, so I'm down about that. But oh well. I guess I need to get used to the occasional missing of her calls, since she'll be gone for the next seven weeks, and this is bound to happen again.

---

I have an interview tomorrow for a job as a server at Ruby Tuesday. I've pretty much got an in, because I worked for one of the managers there at another Ruby Tuesday last summer.

Booo :(

So long, 4.0 GPA.

That Organic Final that I should have studied more for? Yeah, I didn't do so well on it. I still managed a B+ in the class, but my 4.0 has officially been trimmed to a slightly less awesome 3.96.

Oh well. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

In other news, my girlfriend Kelly left today for a 7 week trip to Europe. So, I'll be alone and bored for awhile. At least I've got school, work, and friends to keep me occupied. It should be alright.

P.S.: You know the blue pants that EMTs all wear? With the straps on the side to hold the trauma scissors? I have to buy some for my EMT Class, right? Well, they're 61 freaking dollars! I'm so pissed.

Interesting Thought

So, I've just realized that I am a horrible studier.

Actually, I shouldn't say that: I've known that particular fact for some time. I'm really bad at time management and concentration. I believe myself to be the most easily distracted person I know (barring my friend who's been diagnosed with ADHD). Furthermore, I have a big problem with promptness. I am consistently "that guy" who's coming into class, slightly winded, five to seven minutes late.

The realization I came to the other day is that I must be an F'ing genius. Despite my ineptitude at studying and keeping my shit together, I have a 4.0 GPA. How can I maintain this with minimal studying? I must just be really good in all of my classes.

I know I sound like a major dick wad saying all of this, but please understand that it's more out of fear than pride. What the fuck am I going to do once I get to medical school? At some point, I've really got to grab myself by the balls and get to work.

P.S.: I should be studying for an Organic Chemistry final right now.

A really good paper from a really long time ago

Witches and the Extirpation of Idolatry in Postconquest Peru

by Mickey (29 Sept 2005)

Following the discovery of riches for the taking in the New World, the Spanish government embarked on a massive campaign to conquer and colonize the Americas, a process that lasted centuries. Historians have long debated Spain’s motives for the conquest of the New World, and the true reason probably falls somewhere among gold, more souls for Catholicism, and political power. However, regardless of Spain’s reasons, the government realized that it had to find a way to deal with the indigenous populations of the Americas. Its solution was to institute a caste system, preserving European society at the top, and forcing the other castes into submission by cultural hegemony, the strategically indirect denial of certain rights, mixed with strong persuasion, that gradually pushed the natives towards their new place in Spanish-dominated, New World society. However, Spain made a significant error in believing that they could enforce a European-style society in a land previously completely remote from anything European. As this paper will demonstrate, this mistake manifested itself, for example, in the attempt by Spanish officials to enforce strict, European Catholic morals on people whose religion was starkly different and became even more complex through the process of transculturation, in which Andean and Catholic religious beliefs became mixed into something completely new. The ineffectiveness of this policy can be seen the well-known Extirpation of Idolatry, in which Spanish priests used strict European interpretations of Christianity and European concepts of demonology to conduct absurdly ineffective campaigns to weed out witches and idolaters.

As previously stated, the Spaniards believed that they could establish in the New World a society exactly the way they wanted it. They establish castes based on race and birthright, with the peninsulares and creoles (whites) at the top, and anyone with at least one black or indigenous parent in castes below them. The Spanish government passed laws outlawing intermarriage of the races, and made very clear the roles in society that each caste was to carry out. Caste mobility was virtually impossible, unless by some virtue, a woman was able to marry into a higher caste. However, despite all of the extensive measures taken to ensure the purity of the white classes, transculturation still took place. The law about interracial marriages was commonly broken, and this gave way to all kinds of influences between the castes. Whites, natives, and blacks shared food, art, ideas, styles, and more. Above all, however, they shared religious views. This paper specifically concerns the influences of Catholicism on indigenous Andean religions and the creation of many new hybrid faiths, unique to the New World. In this way, transculturation made the religions of the native peoples more complex and less orthodox.

The Andean religion as it was in the pre-Columbian era was quite different from any European form of Christianity. Middle-ages-style Catholicism was very much rooted in the concept of the universe as being two interminably warring realms, that of virtue and that of vice, ruled by God and Satan, respectively. Therefore, Europeans were constantly warned by religious figures that the Devil may be anywhere, attempting to tempt weak humans into helping him overthrow God’s kingdom. However, the Andean peoples saw the universe in quite a different light. They had no concept of two realms, one good and one evil, but instead, they believed that evil must not be defeated by good, for good and evil must coexist in order to preserve universal harmony. This idea of harmony is expressed through the native word anyi, which means balance and reciprocity. The natives perceived that this balance must be maintained; otherwise all would not be right in the universe. Natives believed that what caused anyi to be disrupted was disease, but to them, disease was not only relative to the individual, but also relative to society. If ever this societal disease got too out of control, according to native legend, a creature called amaru, a giant snake, would come out of the ground and move all around the world destroying things, and thusly cleansing the world. However, for smaller scale diseases, the Andeans relied on curers, skilled medicine men that were held in high esteem in the native society. Curers were trained in the art of using medicinal herbs, but also led their patients through spiritual cleansing to restore the anyi in their lives. In this way, curers were a sort of multi-talented priest/doctor, working to heal both the physical and the spiritual.

At the same time of the conquest, Europe was undergoing the infamous Inquisition, in which fears of witchcraft and devil-worshipping seized the continent. Women all across Europe were being accused of being witches, and some (either voluntarily or under torture) confessed to actually being witches. From these “witches’” testimonies, an image in the collective consciousness of Europe began to form of the devil and his witches. The devil became a figure (most often a goat or cat) that sought to gain followers (most often women, because they would more easily succumb to his will, supposedly) that he could use to help him overthrow God. The devil’s followers were often initiated into his service through acts of sexual perversion, and were rewarded with promises of worldly gain, as well as the knowledge of how to both cure and cause disease using herbs and such. As mentioned before, the Spanish attempted to transform indigenous culture in the New World by imposing their Catholicism on the natives. The commonly accepted idea was that native religions, such as the Andeans’, were heathen pagan faiths, and therefore idolatry. It followed then, that if idolatry existed in the New World, then the devil must have some hand in it, and if the devil was at work, he must have witches following him. In addition, Andean curers were quite proficient in the use of herbs to heal, so they must be able to use them to harm. Moreover, Andean sexual morals were looser than Catholics’, allowing women to engage in intercourse before marriage, and according to Europeans, all witches were morally deficient. And so began the American version of the European witch hunt, which was not very effective since the Spanish were attempting to apply their definitions of witchery to people who had never even heard of it.

The witch hunts (or the Extirpation of Idolatry), as mentioned above, were an attempt by Catholic priests (called visitadores) to rid the Andean region of all traces of native religion by accusing practitioners of witchcraft and idolatry, accusations based on European thinking, with complete disregard for the fact that natives knew very little about the system behind their accusations or what exactly they were being accused of, even. The Extirpation was a series of campaigns into the wild areas of the Andean region, away from the main Spanish towns with the goal of eradicating “idolatry.” Each time, this was conducted in a very similar way. A group of visitadores would enter some native village, and search it for any sign of native religion: monuments, burial grounds, sacred caves, etc. They would proceed then to desecrate these huacas, as they were called, and afterwards erect a wooden cross about three meters tall in the spot where the huaca was. They would then say a prayer and leave, moving on to the next sight of alleged “idolatry.” This was the purposefully repetitive manner in which the Extirpation was conducted. It was completely absurd to think that such minimal acts would actually have any effect on quelling something as intangible as religion. It has even been argued, however, that the visitadores at times knew of the futility of their quests, but continued them anyway as a means of gracefully withdrawing from a losing battle. The process of transculturation was so widespread that attempting to keep pure Catholicism intact was impossible in the New World.

When the Spanish conquered their portion of the New World, they attempted to keep the people under lasting control by indirectly (through hegemony) forcing them into lives of subservience to the European, Catholic way. Despite efforts to enforce racial segregation and quell practices of native religion, the process of transculturation was too powerful to keep a race of pure Europeans fully intact in the New World forever. Thusly, the witch hunts and the Extirpation of Idolatry that pervaded the Andean region in the postconquest years were futile and only really amounted to imaginary victories for Catholicism.

Works Cited:

Chasteen, John C. Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2001.

Mills, Kenneth. "Extirpation." Idolatry and its Enemies: Colonial Andean Religion and Extirpation, 1640-1750. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1997. 267-285.

Silverblatt, Irene. "Peru: The Colonial Andies." Witchcraft and Sorcery of the American Native Peoples. Ed. Deward E. Walker, Jr. Moscow, Idaho: University of Idaho P, 1989. 311-321.

God damn, this place is beautiful.