Analytic Essay 3 Final Draft
docx
keyboard_arrow_up
School
Rutgers University *
*We aren’t endorsed by this school
Course
WAR, PEACE
Subject
English
Date
Feb 20, 2024
Type
docx
Pages
8
Uploaded by MajorAtom1374
Sinha 1
Parth Sinha
Professor Flynn
Expository Writing 101
9 November 2021
Religion Maximalism
Religion has always been a special form of awareness of the surrounding world, and has been preserved through traditions and books that are practiced as rituals. Rituals have formed structure and order in our world which helped define their place in the world, which in turn led to
many different forms of worship. The incorporation of religion into a person’s life displays how belief can impact every facet of someone’s well being. In Karen Armstrong’s “Homo Religiosus”, she introduces various life lessons and examples that are a result from religious teachings throughout history, as well as its impact within those past eras. She argues that religion
and ritual requires faith as well as customs and practices that affect one's physical and mental behaviors. Conversely, another text written by Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein, both American academics and professors, go into depth about the perception of data in their article “On Rational Scientific Objective Viewpoints Mythical, Imaginary, Impossible Standpoints” by examining structural forces of power like class and sex, and how they are viewed and perceived in a society driven by data which can be presented in order to create an emotional response from the viewer, giving out perspectives. However, Armstrong’s ideas about ritual may have an impact on how people may come to a conclusive perspective that they might reject. Rituals are imperative for the preservation of the dominant perspective and are able to change people’s
Sinha 2
views because of how rituals are able to touch people on a personal level, that can help form a deep connection with the individual.
There is a deep connection that religions and rituals have on the person that may be personally relevant to them that could change their perspective. Armstrong explains how religion
and ritual has an effect on one’s physical and mental behaviors that can help create not only a change in the person, but a change in people's cognition. Armstrong discusses how religion is able to have this effect on the public by comparing it to another type of expression, such as art. She describes images painted in an underground labyrinth dating back from 30,000 BCE and how paintings of different animals, such as an ox, deer, and a jumping cow, must have had some religious meaning that are clear reflections of the person’s thoughts, “Like any work of art, a myth will make no sense unless we open ourselves to it wholeheartedly and allow it to change us. If we hold ourselves aloof, it will remain opaque, incomprehensible, and even ridiculous” (Armstrong 6). Regardless if the art is religious or spiritual, it is able to change opinions by instilling values and detailing experiences throughout history. In this sense, religious art is communication by projecting a blend of imagination, allowing people from different cultures and
different eras to communicate their thoughts, in which people could find gravity in and connect with their ideas that may influence the way people think and live. People use religion to find a deeper meaning that spares them from existential angst. Without a practical sense of the belief in religion, there is no way anybody is able to follow that religion. D’Ignazio and Klein set up this example by explaining how feeling and emotion presented in data are able to affect the person through physiological means that can bring out meaningful results. They recall a data analysis technique called a sort of joy, which consists of counting and grouping within a data set. The experiment consists of a group of performers that say names from the MoMA, which all start off
Sinha 3
with male names, until eventually a female name is called, which demonstrates the highly gendered nature of the collection, “This feeling is affect. It comprises the emotions that arise when experiencing the performance, as well as the physiological reactions to the sounds and movements made by the performers, as well as the desires and drives that result” (D’Ignazio and Klein 16). They show the connection of how effective data is able to create an emotional response from the viewer and showing people a perspective that they should follow. Emotions and affect have a correlation with how ritual and religion has an effect on a person. People who follow religion are swayed by increasingly larger social groups that are held together by common
beliefs that help establish that feeling of connectivity with one’s self and religion because they want either want to be liked and accepted or they want to align with their views because they found themselves a purpose within those larger groups, which can ultimately have an impact on their decisions.
However, in most cases, there is a discrepancy in how people believe religion is to be followed and practiced because some may not follow it due to the lack of conclusive evidence surrounding religion. D’Ignazio and Klein both mention data visualization in their text, and how seemingly “neutral” visualizations are usually part of a “partial perspective” of a “dominant controlling group,” because it is essentially showing clarity without any persuasion, which is impossible because persuasion is found in everything, especially in religion. D’Ignazio and Klein
quote Donna Haraway, a feminist philosopher, who defines the “god trick”, and comments on what neutrality and total objectivity is by stating, “because it makes the viewer believe that they can see everything, all at once, from an imaginary and impossible standpoint. But it’s also a trick
because what appears to be everything, and what appears to be neutral, is always what she terms a partial perspective” (D’Ignazio and Klein 5). Data visualization essentially pokes holes in those
Your preview ends here
Eager to read complete document? Join bartleby learn and gain access to the full version
- Access to all documents
- Unlimited textbook solutions
- 24/7 expert homework help
Sinha 4
beliefs because people may begin to realize that there may not be enough foundation in the religion that can help convince them to maintain the dominant perspective. Instead, they believe in the religion because of the impartial perspective they are being tricked into following. Armstrong perceives religion as something crucial to humans from a very long time dating back to the Paleolithic Era. She argues that religion is essentially the “seeing is believing” mentality, but it sometimes may not be enough evidence for everybody to be in accordance with. She sets an example about how the Brahmin, believers of Hinduism that conceptualize the ultimate reality
in the universe, during the tenth century concerned the nature of the ultimate reality and how one
needs to be able to observe such in order to be able to witness the Brahman, or the highest being, “Authentic religious discourse could not lead to clear, distinct, and empirically verified truth. Like the Brahman, the atman was ‘ungraspable.’ You could define something only when you saw it as separate from yourself. But, when the Whole [Brahman] has become a person’s very self, then who is there for him to see and by what means?” (Armstrong 15). Though not exclusive to Hinduism and the Brahmin, like with every other belief, religion is found on the basis that if nobody was there to witness such a higher power, they would not have been able to record their thoughts and their beliefs. Contrary to D’Ignazio and Klein’s argument, Armstrong uses this example to show that religion has no empirical truth to it and that it is all based on what
people say and what they have seen with their own eyes instead. She explains how the Brahman claimed an exclusive truth, that such is only understandable if the individual were to see it themselves, while D’Ignazio and Klein show that an individual will feel like they would understand everything if they look at how religion is presented by other people.
Though not disconnected from the idea entirely, religions do tend to function through the concept of universal objectivity, which helps maintain the dominant perspective and helps
Sinha 5
convince people to change their minds. Religion has a base to it that people gravitate towards because they know that it aligns with what they say and what they subconsciously believe in, and
that affects how they stick with those beliefs instead. D’Ignazio and Klein both discuss how believing in their own data and presenting it to the public will allow people to trust their information. “But this choice also functions as what Hullman and Diakopoulos call provenance rhetoric designed to signal the transparency and trustworthiness of the presentation source to end users. Establishing trust between designers and their audience in turn increases the likelihood that viewers will believe what they see." (D’Ignazio and Klein 11) The way information is presented to the public, they will perceive the data and create associations that will help them obtain insight that will sway their minds towards the data, contributing to the dominant perspective. However, that is not always the case, there could be discourse and it may be hard to trust those whose belief system is different from the individual’s perspective, as they might have beliefs that are strongly tied with another perspective. Similarly, Armstrong provides examples and makes connections between the universe and God by mentioning ultimate reality as a supreme being. Though religions are expressions of faith, certain beliefs that allow people to cope with uncertainty, ultimate reality is a belief that streamlines objective facts about the universe with a higher being. In her text she discusses how the Chinese referred to ultimate reality as the Dao showing how that some of their beliefs were based on reality and the way of the cosmos, “Because it comprised the whole of reality, the Dao had no qualities, no form; it could be experienced but never seen; it was not a god; it predated heaven and earth and was beyond divinity ” (Armstrong 9). Those who follow such a belief show that their perspective on the such will most likely keep them from turning away from it because of how practical it may seem to them. The people who referred to ultimate reality as the Dao were many people who
Sinha 6
observed the actual workings as well as accurate simulations of the universe, which allow the majority of people to follow into that belief, the dominant perspective.
However, people seek out publications that reflect their established beliefs so that they can find further evidence or reason to believe in their perspective. In order to be able to shake someone of their belief, another belief or religion needs to be presented to them that has more base and neutrality to it that can help the other individual convert and adopt a new set of religious doctrines or habits. Armstrong mentions the Animal Master and how religion is ultimately the product of practicing a set of rituals and it is designed to give reason and purpose to those who follow it regardless of any factual evidence, “Like art, religion is an attempt to construct meaning in the face of the relentless pain of life… They have created religions and works of art to help them find value in their lives, despite all the dispiriting evidence to the contrary” (Armstrong 5). Publications in this sense are not needed as people who follow these beliefs follow them for the reason that they speak to them on a personal level that can alter a person’s perspective. People have different experiences that would allow one person to follow one religion and another person to follow another. D’Ignazio and Klein similarly touch on this idea by talking about the depiction of indigenous place names in Canada. They explain how each
area that was colonized on the map were renamed, so they use the map to exemplify how people,
specifically native americans, may refer to that publication to further confirm and fortify their beliefs, “Cartography, then, becomes not a straightforward representation of “what is” in some absolute sense. Rather, Coming Home is a map of relations, conversations, and shared investments across differences in the landscape.” (D’Ignazio and Klein 23). They set up this example of how people seek publications in order to confirm the information that they are looking for by comparing it to a map that is under terms of engagement that recognize
Your preview ends here
Eager to read complete document? Join bartleby learn and gain access to the full version
- Access to all documents
- Unlimited textbook solutions
- 24/7 expert homework help
Sinha 7
Indigenous sovereignty and respect Indigenous homelands. Conversely, Armstrong’s example shows how people follow such beliefs because they see something in the religion that helps sway
their minds towards those beliefs, regardless of any base evidence or publication that proves otherwise.
Ritual is paramount in religion, it is supposed to help develop an understanding pertaining to their beliefs and what they value. It can have an impact on people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Without having ritual in any type of belief, the belief will hold no personal relevance to the individual and will help maintain the dominant perspective, giving them more meaning and fruitfulness to their point of view. It is essentially impossible to be human without rituals; rituals provide meaning to people’s everyday life. Therefore, it is important for people to consider rituals and how it may be able to help them gain insight on whatever their faith may be, because not only do they mark time, they create time by defining beginnings and ends to social eras. Works Cited
Sinha 8
D'Ignazio, Lauren F. Klein. “On Rational, Scientific, Objective Viewpoints from
Mythical Imaginary, Impossible Standpoints,”
Data Feminism
. MIT Press, 26 July 2020, pp. 5-17
Armstrong, Karen. “Homo Religiosus,” The New Humanities Reader,.
Knopf, 2009, pp 2-23