Smells and Bells

In The Deepest Sense , on page 59, the author mentions dancing mania – a disease that made people dance in the streets for hours. She talks about the different remedies people used to believe in before telling us what the actual cause of the illness was – diseased fungus in bread, which created burning sensations, hallucinations, and convulsions.  Even though we know what the actual cause of this was, if you didn’t you would try to come up with some sort of answer for it. Most of the time, if something bad happened people would have blamed God and thought God was punishing them. If they found out that the disease was coming from their food, it would be considered worse because eating is one of the closest actions you can do to be close to God.  However, this disease (or word of God) made people lose control of themselves, which is the opposite of what religion wants you to do. Multiple aspects of a variety of religions is practicing self-control: abstinence until marr...

I am not really a believer in paranormal activity, but I like to keep an open-mind about what others think. I don’t like to shoot others beliefs down, especially when it comes to ghosts, because everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I found a video that talks about why people might have thought they had seen or experienced paranormal activity with a more scientific explanation. Some of the reasons they gave were: misperceived self-representation, sleep paralysis, and grief. With misperceived self-representation, your body experiences sensations, and it doesn’t read as ones created by yourself. This is also what causes schizophrenia. The brain of schizophrenics tell the body what actions to do, but it doesn’t tell the body to expect it. So the brain perceives the actions as someone else – someone imaginary. With sleep paralysis, your body is paralyzed but your mind is partly awake. So if you feel a sensation, you are not fully able to place who or what it is or where it’s coming fr...

"The Deepest Sense" by Constance Classen talks about in the Middle Ages when the sun set, everywhere - inside and outside - would be dark. People learned to place their furniture along the walls of the house in order to move around the room safely.  While I was studying abroad in Prague, Czech Republic I took an Intercultural Communication course. One of the excursions in the class was to a simulation where a group of us walked through a series of pitch black rooms pitch, so it was like we were blind. We were led through these rooms by listening to the voice of a blind man. We had to walk through a "kitchen" and find different appliances along with walking through a "park" and guessing what each of the statues were. None of us did very well, which is understandable because we aren't used to living a life in the dark. Our blind guide made it appear easy to walk through each of the rooms and "see" using his hands. For the blind, the se...

As we were talking about connections in class I couldn’t help thinking about how much of a social creature humans are and how we need connections to survive. Human beings would not be able to survive if they didn’t have connections.  This relates back to when Diane Ackerman talked about how nurtured babies turn out better than ones that aren’t. Babies are taught how to make connections since birth, this is because it enables them to survive. Having social connections allows humans to reproduce, hunt, and protect themselves.  There was also the question of if the need for the connection comes first or finding the connection. I believe that the need for the connection comes first because they need it for survival. Humans are constantly on the lookout for connections because that is how we evolved.  I’m not sure about connections to nature or God, but I think that comes from the need to feel like you’re a part of something and that you’re included in the w...

Pixabay photo One of the main reasons people say a blessing before eating their food is to take a moment of mindfulness. It’s important to take breaks and be thankful and grateful for what you have.  It doesn’t have to be a religious blessing to pause and be thankful for your life. I was recently at a sporting event on campus and they played the National Anthem before the game started. I thought that this could also be interpreted as a moment of mindfulness. Everyone is silent and calm. There is no way to tell if everyone is thinking the same thing, but even just taking the moment of peacefulness allows the mind to rest and be still.  Taking a pause before the game allowed to players to gather their thoughts and mentally prepare before the game started. Mindfulness before the game starting probably allowed the players to perform better during the game, just like how eating the food would’ve felt and tasted better after pausing.  Mindfulness can enhanc...

Symbolism plays an important role in religious ceremonies because people cannot have the divine being where they want him all the time. So they start creating ways to be in touch with God. Such as in Christianity, eating bread is symbolized to be eating God-made flesh. There are similar rituals in Judaism where they eat the food of God. A big difference between taste and the other senses is that the object that is being sensed is internalized, whereas all the other senses use an external sensation. Taste cannot extend anywhere like the other senses can. This allows the humans to have no barrier between the divine (symbolized as food) and themselves. This is the closest they can get to God, but internalizing Him.  This thought of getting the closest they can to someone by ingesting and gaining power from it led my mind to wander to the thought of serial killers that also happen to be cannibals. I know that it might be a stretch, but there are some similarities. I...

Would rabbis and priests associate the same thing to the same smell? This question got me thinking. Got me thinking about how people form different associations to different things, whether it's objects, certain types of people, or smells. Associations come from people's experiences and everyone has different experiences. Children who have gone through traumatic experiences will have very  different associations than children who live a sheltered life. An example might be a child who was abused by a man who smelled like pine trees will create a negative connection with that smell. However, a child who was taken on happy family camping trips might create a more positive association with that same smell. To answer the question, I don't think they would. I don't think that rabbis and priests, generally speaking, would associate smells in the same way. They grow up associating the world around them to the religion they practice and making sense of their world through...

Personal Photo In Diane Ackerman’s chapter on vision, she talks a great deal about the nature. The beauty of nature, how certain species use light to attract mates or shed light on predators, and how we and other species depend on light to be healthy.  At one point she talks about a trip to the beach in California with friends. She says:  “Nothing need be said. We all understand the visual nourishment we share. … The cottony blue sky and the dark-blue sea meet as a line sharp as a razor’s edge. Why is it so thrilling to see a tree hold pieces of sky in its branches, and hear waves crash against a rocky shore, blowing spray high into the air, as the seagulls creak?” (Ackerman, 240). It made me think about how people can call looking at the beauty of nature a religious experience. Had I had one? When I was in Ireland I visited the Cliffs of Moher . I felt like I could stare at them for hours, even days, because I was so in awe of them. They were so powerfu...

Pixabay https://pixabay.com/en/baby-boy-child-cuddle-cuddling-84639/ In A Natural History of the Senses , Diane Ackerman talks about how she visits the hospital to touch and care for prematurely born babies. Lightly rubbing and touching the babies cause them to grow faster, have better temperament, and have fewer physical problems. She gives examples how this is also the case in other species, such as mice and monkeys. In my Psychology Senior Seminar, we also talked about how touched and nurtured babies grow up with fewer mental and physical problems. We read A Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog by Bruce Perry, which contains stories of children who have gone through trauma. One story was about a young girl (5 years old) who was in and out of the hospital because she wasn’t gaining weight. The mother as a child was in the foster care system and never learned how to nurture. She loved, fed, and clothed her daughter, but didn’t touch her as a baby or showed that she cared. This ...