Complexity of the Concept of the Sacred

Complexity of the Concept of the Sacred Understanding the concept of the Sacred is a complex phenomenon. Assess keeping in mind over 4000 years of the sacred. Since the beginning of Humanity, Man has been trying to make sense of the world around itself, trying to fill in the pieces to questions it does not know the answer to. The human journey can be seen as a quest a search for knowledge, comfort and ultimately for understanding. Perhaps the greatest of humanities question have involved faith and the notion of a divine god/being. Beliefs about god have traveled a long road to todays understanding of the notion of God, the divine and sacred. God as a work in progress began first with the many gods of the polytheistic faith systems, with each god having limited domain of power and responsibility. For early human beings, such gods felt familiar and relatable. They didnt see a big gulf between the divine and the real, this is what made it so approachable, understandable and ultimately follow able. The concept of sacred was simply something that was beyond normal (Armstrong, 1993). According to Stormonth Phelp (1896) the word Sacred is derived from the Latin origin word Sacer, which means dedicated or consecrated to the higher beings i.e. gods or anything divine. The word is often used interchangeably with Holy; however there are minor differences with the concept of holiness in that it is primarily used in relation to relationships and persons, while sacred is used in relation to happenings, places or objects (McCann, 2008). This need for completion has led to various mythos to have formed over the years, culminating in the concepts of the Sacred/Profane dichotomy aptly explained by French Sociologist Emile Durkheim. The sacred is the boundless spirit of the religious and divine experience. Religions throughout their history have included very mixed beliefs and manifestations of those beliefs, but they all have something quite universal and explicit, regardless of their nature, through which the religious experience is differentiated from all others and that is that the sacred is something above and beyond the believers. Therefore, the sacred is highly subjective in its nature and Bastide concisely put it: if I were to give a definition of the sacred, it would cross my subjectivity, my own experience of the sacred and not a general definition (Desroche Bastide, 1974). To begin understanding the concept of the Sacred, it is best to understand what is considered Sacred and what is considered Profane. In Durkheims theory of Religion, both these concepts are the central tenant. The Sacred, according to Durkheim is an ideal, something that transcends everyday existence and is both awe-inspiring as well as fear inducing, and something potentially dangerous as well as extra-ordinary. Sacred in his view refers to things that have been set apart by man as requiring special religious treatment and veneration. One key point to note is that Sacred can be anything, from the earth to the moon, a bird, an animal, a rock, a tree to a god. The sacredness comes from a community marking them as such and once they have been established as a sacred, they are embodied in religious practices, sentiments and beliefs. The profane, on the other hand is anything that is simply ordinary, it embraces practices, persons and ideas that are in the end seen with everyday mundane attitudes of familiarity, utility and commonness. Both the sacred and profane are highly interrelated due to the extreme levels of emotions they invoke in the people that believe in them and according the Durkheim, the concept of Sacred and the profane varies amongst society to society (Durkheim, 1974). Durkheim expanded upon his notions and expressed religion as a management of the sacred, the means by which a system is generated to warrant the execution of the sacred in the community. Various sociological theories suggest that at the centre of any religion is the sacred and religion is nothing but a social phenomenon in its origin, content and purpose (Desroche Bastide, 1974). Sosis Alcorta (2003) are major proponents of the adaptive value theory of religion, having somewhat similar views as Durkheim, stating that religion evolved to enhance cohesion and cooperation between groups. Membership in a group setting allowed for a greater chance of survival and reproduction as well as advancement as a group. They also suggested that the costly-signaling theory suggested why rituals were such a major part of religious practice, stating that it was to ward of those trying to cheat the system i.e. be part of the group without offering anything of value. The reason why understanding the Sacred is such a complex phenomenon, is that the Sacred is highly subjective in its nature, malleable to suit the purpose of its time and context. Whenever a natural disaster occurred, such as an earthquake, flood, drought, the older civilizations took it to god/s being angry and their primitive understanding of nature took to slaughter being a worthy sacrifice to please the deities, resulting in the ending of their suffering. As our technologies advance, so does our understanding of nature and with it a steady decline in the extreme acts humans once used to do. However, humans, being the product of an evolutionary engine, are still quite prone to carrying out irrational behavior so as long as they believe and have faith in the sacred (Shermer, 1997). Armstrong (1993) was also quite clear in her works, stating that after having looked at over 4000 years of recorded human history that the notion of god was never unchanging, with what people considered god, going from polytheistic to monotheistic to atheistic, depended upon a multitude of factors. Today there are 12 classical world religions, those included in most religious definitions namely; BahaI, Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, Shinto, Sikhism, Taoism and Zoroastrinism, however if one was to delve further in, they would note that these twelve within themselves include numerous sects and factions with their adherents considering different things as sacred i.e. what might be sacred for a Shia Muslim, might not be for a Sunni Muslim etc. In todays information age of the 21st century where knowledge is expanding at an explosive rate, the words used to define ones understanding of the sacred is ever expanding, with countless expansion in our understanding of human consciousness and with religions ever changing due to the changing socio-political landscape, there is very little doubt that the notion of what is sacred is and always will remain a complex phenomenon. References: Desroche, H. (1975). Religion (Sociologie de la). La grande encyclopedie, 16th vol.. Paris: Libr. Larousse. Durkheim, E. (1974). Regulile metodei sociologice. BucureÃ…Å ¸ti: Ed. Ã…Å ¾tiinÃ…Â £ifică. Armstrong, K. (1993). A History of God. Ballatine Books Stormonth, J Phelp, P.H (1895). A Dictionary of the English Language, Blackwood sons. Retrieved March 19th, 2017 from https://books.google.com.pk/books/about/A_Dictionary_of_the_English_Language.html?id=NmogAQAAMAAJredir_esc=y McCann, C. (2008). New Paths Toward the Sacred Thus, Paulist Press Shermer, M. (1997). Why people believe weird things: Pseudoscience, superstition, and other confusions of our time. New York: W.H. Freeman. Sosis, R.; Alcorta, C. (2003). Signaling, solidarity, and the sacred: the evolution of religious behavior. Evolutionary Anthropology

Poetry Analysis: “Love is not all” Essay

Poetry reveals the emotions of the speaker. It will give happy thoughts if the speaker is happy but the opposite if the speaker is sad. Poems exist because of emotional certainties and uncertainties. That is why poems are more ideal and complex rather than other forms of literary pieces. The poem entitled â€Å"Love is not all† by Edna St. Vincent Millay discusses the meaning of love. The whole poem wants to say the truth about love – the destiny of people and how humans treat love at all. There are also different emerging figurative languages throughout the poem, which discusses the problems and dilemma of being in love. Therefore, the theme of this poem is love as it unravels the sadness and deepness of affection through metaphorical justification of the speaker’s emotions. The speaker of this poem wants to convey one thing – love is not perfect. He wants to justify his emotions through the different experiences in his life. Based on the message of the poem, the speaker is a man who wants to share his distress, defeat, and fall in loving his woman. The speaker compares love to a drink, meat, roof, floating spar, air, and medicine. These things symbolize many concepts that strengthen the idea and context of love. Drink and meat symbolize life, roof symbolizes shed or shelter, a floating par symbolizes life saver, air symbolizes breath, and medicine symbolizes cure. â€Å"Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink / Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; / Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink / And rise and sink and rise and sink again; (St. Vincent Millay, 1-4). † All these ideas give life to humans but the point of the speaker is not to strengthen the idea of love but stating that love is not about living but dying. The poem is an irony of love as a source of life and comfort. The speaker wants to share that love is not as ideal as it can be. It is not like giving all the good things to obtain happiness because the speaker feels that love is like facing to death. The speaker wants to shed tears as he describes his experiences in love but he could not. â€Å"Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, / Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; / Yet many a man is making friends with death (St. Vincent Millay, 5-7). † This part of the poem emphasizes the paradoxical concept of love where it could not provide life or saver to one’s body. Love is not selfless but selfish based on the description of the speaker. Therefore, it can be said that affection is not feeling like in heaven but almost in hell according to the speaker. Love gives you happiness when you fall in love but it gives you death when it breaks your heart. This is what the poem is from the beginning up to the end. â€Å"I might be driven to sell your love for peace, / Or trade the memory of this night for food. / It well may be. I do not think I would (St. Vincent Millay, 1-4). † However, in the end of the poem, the speaker himself accepts the fact that he could not fight against his love because his affection revolves around his woman. It only means that the speaker loves his woman so deeply that he could accept and endure the pain and sorrow but will not ever maker her suffer after almost killing the man by breaking his heart. In conclusion to this, the poem shows its main point in the beginning. In this case, the succeeding lines are only justifications of speaker’s emotions. In the end, the struggles and sufferings of the speaker still fades after feeling that he could not take any revenge against his woman because behind all the hatred and anguish against love, he still has his affection towards his love that no one could ever contain. Reference St. Vincent Millay, E. â€Å"Love is not all. †

Role and Functions of Law

Roles and Functions of Law Tanya S Kleinschmidt Law 421 March 25, 2013 Walter M Pence III Roles and Functions of Law Law is vast and diverse, which makes it overwhelming and confusing. The main purpose of the law is to create order in society and business. Law can be defined as â€Å"the body of official rules and regulations, generally found in constitutions, legislation, judicial opinions, and the like, that is used to govern a society and to control the behavior of its members, so Law is a formal mechanism of social control† (Sixth Form Law, 2012, par. 4).The following will describe the function of law and what role it has in society and business in addition to looking at how law affects a specific industry. Because American law is so diverse, it is broken down into several categories. Those categories include; Criminal law versus Civil law, Substantive law versus Procedural law, and Public law versus Private law. Please note that these categories are broad, and they are no t mutually exclusive. An act or transaction can be classified in more than one legal category (Melvin, 2011). First, laws, primarily statutes, are considered to be criminal or civil.Criminal law protects society. It is between private parties and society. For example, if someone is brought up on murder charges they would be tried in a criminal court of law. Violations of criminal law could result in penalties of fines or imprisonment to violators if convicted of the crime and proven to have intentionally committed the crime. Civil law is between private parties. Civil laws are created to compensate parties who have experienced losses because of the other parties’ actions. Examples of civil law could be divorce and accidental injury cases. Next are the differences between Substantive law and Procedural law.Substantive law is a statutory law, which deals with the relationship between people or people and the state. Substantive law is used to define, regulate, and create peopleà ¢â‚¬â„¢s rights and obligations. They deal with the structure and the facts of the case to determine the type of crime and the severity. It also defines the rights and responsibility of the accused. For example, there are several degrees of murder, depending on the circumstances and the intent; there are different levels of punishment. On the other hand, Procedural law is a set of rules that govern the proceedings of criminal lawsuits and civil proceedings.It elaborates on the steps of how the case should proceed as well as assists in determining if the case requires a trial. These laws ensure fair practice and consistency in the due process (Diffen, n. d. ). Last is the summary of Public law and Private law. Public law governs the relationship between individuals and the government. It includes constitutional law, administrative law, and criminal law. Domestic violence is an example of Public law. Private law, also known as common law in some countries, governs the relationships be tween individuals. It includes civil law, labor law, commercial law, corporations law, and competition law.An example of Private law would be a contract for services. If someone renders a service according to the request of the client, but the client is not happy with the results and refuses to pay for this service. This agreement is legally binding and the rules of transaction are governed by the common law of contracts (Melvin, 2011). There is much to digest once reading about the categories of law and to think this is just skimming the surface. In addition to these categories the Congress is given power via the Commerce Clause to â€Å"regulate Commerce among the several states† (Melvin, 2011, p 32).If Congress chooses to regulate certain persons or products, the federal law is supreme to the state law that tries to regulate the same persons or products. In the case of Cipollone v. Liggett Group, the state law regulating advertising for tobacco products were preempted by t he federal law (Melvin, 2011). It is important to know how state and federal laws can affect society and business. One industry, which is under constant scrutiny, is Appraising. Appraising has both state and federal laws to abide with, and they are constantly changing.Appraisers are required to obtain certain standards that are set forth in the Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice (USPAP), which is published by the Appraisal Standards Board of the Appraisal Foundation. If an appraiser fails to comply with these standards there could be punishment of fines, lawsuits, or loss of license. In conclusion, it is important to know the basic roles and functions of law in both society and business even though it is vast and diverse. Laws are needed to create balance and order within society and business, and they can be broken into broad categories to obtain the basic knowledge.Another way to enhance ones knowledge of the roles and functions of business is to do research on p rior cases or laws that pertain to a business of interest. References Diffen. (n. d. ). Procedural Law vs Substantive Law. Retrieved from http://www. diffen. com/difference/Procedural_Law_vs_Substantive_Law Melvin, S. P. (2011). The Legal Environment of Business: A Managerial Approach: Theory to Practice. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin. Sixth Form Law. (2012). What is Law? Retrieved from http://sixthformlaw. info/01_modules/other_material/law_and_morality/0_what_is_law. htm

Pope Leo III - Charlemagnes Pope - Pope Saint Leo III

Pope Leo III was also known as: Charlemagnes Pope Pope Leo III is noted for: crowning Charlemagne Emperor and establishing the precedent that only the pope could confer the imperial crown. Leo was also physically attacked in the streets of Rome by supporters of his predeccessor. Occupation Role in Society: PopeSaint Places of Residence and Influence: Italy Important Dates: Elected pope: Dec. 26, 795Attacked: April 25, 799Died: June 12, 816 About Pope Leo III: Rather than keeping the papacy independent of secular authorities, Leo deliberately took steps to ally with Charlemagne and his growing empire. Attacked in the streets of Rome by supporters of his predecessors nephew, Leo sought the aid of Charlemagne and eventually crowned him emperor, establishing an important precedent. As pope, Leo was adept in diplomacy and managed to keep his Carolingian allies from exerting any real influence on matters of doctrine. He died in 816. For more about Leo, visit your Guides Concise Biography of Pope Leo III. More Leo III Resources: Concise Biography of Pope Leo IIIImage of Leo crowning Charlemagne Leo III on the Web Pope St. Leo IIIFairly substantial bio by Horace K. Mann at the Catholic Encyclopedia.Pope Saint Leo IIIConcise collection of useful data, heavily hyperlinked, at the Patron Saints Index. Leo III in Print The links below will take you to a site where you can compare prices at booksellers across the web. More in-depth info about the book may be found by clicking on to the books page at one of the online merchants. by Richard P. McBrienby P. G. Maxwell-Stuart Chronological Index Geographical Index Index by Profession, Achievement, or Role in Society