sweet as sugarcane

the cycle of life

“As early as the 1920s, researchers giving IQ tests to non-Westerners realized that any test of intelligence is strongly, if subtly, imbued with cultural biases… Samoans, when given a test requiring them to trace a route form point A to point B, often chose not the most direct route (the “correct” answer), but rather the most aesthetically pleasing one. Australian aborigines find it difficult to understand why a friend would ask them to solve a difficult puzzle and not help them with it. Indeed, the assumption that one must provide answers alone, without assistance from those who are older and wiser, is a statement about the culture-bound view of intelligence. Certainly the smartest thing to do, when face with a difficult problem, is to seek the advice of more experienced relatives and friends!”

“It is not uncommon in the Bible, and in Jewish life, for people to be given new names, even during their adult years. Although for most of his life, Abraham’s name was Abram, subsequently the letter hei was added, a symbol from G-d that Abraham ‘shall be the father of a multitude of nations’. Even now, when a person is very sick, his or her Hebrew name is sometimes changed to make it harder for the Angel of Death to find the person. Sometimes the name Hayyim, the Hebrew word for life, is added to the sick person’s name.”

Jesus christ that’s horrible. Some of those tactics are literally straight out of Gaslight, the play that we get the term from.

“It is easy to love your neighbor. It is difficult to love the stranger. That is why the Torah commands us only once to love our neighbor, but on thirty-six occasions commands us to love the stranger.