The Invisible Hand of Religion

Many have criticized Jonathan Edwards' belief and lectures about how there is slim to no chance for salvation in the afterlife and that God is actually a punishing being. However, I believe that Edwards' had an ulterior motive in promoting a sense of fear in his lectures. This motive was to arouse more attention for Puritanism. Around his period of time, people had started to lose interest in religion, as a result people such as Edwards started the Great Awakening, in which they brought attention back to religion. The way Edwards went about accomplishing this was through fear. Now the question is: was it justifiable to use fear just to promote religion? Personally my answer is yes. This is because religion usually has a way of guiding society with correct morals, because after all, that is what religion is supposed to teach. Now while some morals taught by religion may be flawed such as the Puritan belief of intolerance of other religions, the pure morals, such as the Puritan belief in the importance of education live on. As time passes, the flawed morals become forgotten, yet those that remain true, live on to guide future generations with the "Invisible Hand of Religion". Another example of the invisible hand is Karma. Prevalent in Hinduism and Buddhism, is causes a practitioner of the religion to always think before acting, or doing wrongs. To conclude, although the use of fear to promote attention for religion may have been a flawed means, the cause it fulfilled completely justified the use of it. This brings to attention another question, however. What morals, if any, would the world have without any religion at all.

The Real Reality

The title may appear redundant, I know... But through Sherman Alexie's collection of short stories in The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, this statement's meaning can be found. In the collection of stories, Alexie quickly figures out that the societies of the Indians and white people are completely separate. His realization of this, and how through the society of Indians he would only be stereotyped and shunned from the other society, is shown by his constant stereotyping of his own people. While Alexie realizes that he cannot live in isolation from the white society, his Indian classmates are not able to realize this. They live in their own reality that the two cultures can remain isolated from each other, for example Alexie recalls that one of his classmates said that they didn't need a school reunion because "'My graduating class has a reunion every weekend and the Powwow Tavern.'" He acknowledges that to be successful, he needed to merge his own culture with the other and this result in him being where he is today. One thing that Alexie surreptitiously implies is that the reality of the Indian's situation is that either they must assimilate or be constantly barraged by stereotypes. He also points out that his Indian classmates have not found this truth about reality yet, and are hence living in a false reality where they isolate themselves from the other culture. However, even though Alexie realizes that he must assimilate, he maintains as much of his old culture as possible, one purpose of this is to show other Indians that they can also assimilate without losing their cultural identities. In The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, Alexie describes how he found two different societies, one progressing into the future, and one in which ". . .they look back toward tradition."

How Heritage Helps

Does heritage determine who we are as people? 

Heritage is thought of to be a major factor of a person's character. Many stereotypes circulate due to people's heritage, and are used to generalize about a population. These generalizations will never be able to determine who people of a certain population are, because most of them are not true. However, this leads to another thought - what is true about this population? There must be some similarities. While heritage cannot be used to characterize a person, it should at least be a small part of who that person is.

As the world becomes increasingly uniform, enticed by popular culture, it is important for people to hold on to their cultural differences to keep the world unique. In the book, The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls, Walls and her siblings try to escape their heritage by getting away from the crazed lives of their parents. However, after finally escaping, Jeanette cannot find peace in her new life in New York. She must move to the country to try and find a similarity of how she grew up, to be at peace with herself. Just as Walls holds on to pieces of how she was raised, people should not forget how they were brought up. Still, Walls was not defined by her childhood heritage. Growing up, it was her choice to work hard enough to escape her old life, while another person in her position might've just accepted that life and might've become just like their parents. Although, heritage cannot be used to describe a person's character, it should be remembered to differentiate oneself from the conforming culture of the world.

The Harlem Renaissance is a great example of how heritage should be used. It was a flourishing of arts of African American heritage. No single person could be defined by the Renaissance, but it showed cultural differences. People must stop fearing stereotypes and celebrate their cultural differences freely. Walt Disney once said, "Our heritage and ideals, our code and standards - the things we live by and teach our children - are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings."(Disney) Heritage isn't for generalizing about a culture, instead it allows for the opposite - to be different.