Shinto Blog Assignment on "The Weeping Demon"

            For my blog assignment I decided to watch “The Weeping Demon” section of the movie “Dreams” in Kurosawa’s film. The start of this clip was very slow with a man doing nothing but walking for the first 4 minutes in a dark black desert full of fog (totally scary-movie-esque). Then out of no where a creepy guy comes in who is wearing ragged clothes claiming that he is a demon, but was once a human. He talks about how this area used to be a beautiful meadow but because of radiation from bombs and missiles it is now a wasteland full of abnormally large dandelions and weeds. He also talks about how this radiation made the humans become demons.

            I think the main point of this clip was showing an instance in which human interaction had a negative impact on mankind. Because of the bombs dropped all the wildlife in the area perished. There is also no food in the area so these demons revert to cannibalism, which shows how much these people have deterred from normal behavior. I believe this ties with the Shinto belief of sin; sin being anything that causes an imbalance.

Because of human’s this area was bombed and now the humans there are “demons with horns”.  Because these demons revert to cannibalism they have to suffer the ultimate punishment, immortality. They have to live this life disgusted with their appearance and what they have become and live with the pain of their horns “which is more painful than cancer”.

            This movie reminded me a lot of the movie The Hills Have Eyes. The Hills Have Eyes had a similar story line which centered on people that used to live in a town that was used as a test site for the atomic bomb. Because of the radiation from the bombs these people had many medical problems and generations after their children were all severely mutated. These people also reverted to cannibalism and throughout the whole movie you could see how tortured these people were. Both stories speak a similar meaning; that human influence can be very negative on nature and sometimes causes an imbalance. 

Taoism Blog Assignment on the Tao of Pooh

I loved this book! It is great for Westerners to read to get an idea of the religion. The age group of people who would be reading this book is going to familiar with Winnie the Pooh so it really makes it easy to follow. It also leaves an impact and makes the reader remember what this book is trying to tell when we have something to relate it to.  These characters also serve as a standing point for the reader to project themselves to (for example I can see myself somewhat as Owl/Rabbit because they are always over analyzing situations).  It’s kind of funny how I grew up watching Winnie the Pooh but never made the connection (obviously at that age how could I?) about how Pooh was so free and not worried about the different troubles the characters ran into. This can be shown with Hoff quoting Piglet saying, “Pooh hasn't much Brain, but he never comes to any harm. He does silly things and they turn out right”. This emphasizes the concept of P’u- the uncarved block that is so simple, yet will eventually lead to things working out.

            The Busy Backson critique was very surprising (and my favorite part of the whole book). As Americans, who push the phrase “time is money”, this critique was a stab at how our society runs. "Everything has to be filled in, it seems- appointment books, hillsides, vacant lots- but when all the spaces are filled, the Loneliness really begins" (pg. 147). The world has become so distracted with things that do not pertain to religion or family (working, going to school, how to loose that freshman fifteen, planning the best way to support a future family) that we loose track of some of the basic concepts of life. What Hoff said is right, you cannot save time, you can only spend it. So if time has to be spent, why not do it in a relaxing way? Sure we can’t drop our lives and leave everything for faith/destiny to rule, but at the same time it is pointless to feel like we have to control everything. Time is always rushing by, whether we like it or not, so why not have fun while doing it? So "if you want to be healthy, just watch  what a Busy Backson does and then do the opposite" (pg. 95). This critique is one that has really impacted me because I am definitely one of those people that is always trying to get as many things done within a short period of time.

For our class I feel Taoism was easier for us to comprehend. The ideals that Taoism enforces is something that I believe everybody wants to incorporate in their life and is therefore a good solution to the problem of American culture. Like in lecture,  Professor Rasnic talked about how if you were given a huge sum of money (enough that you could live your life without having to work) what would you do? And if you thought I would take some crazy beach vacation- this was an indication that you have too much going on with your life. You need to relax. Although the extreme to which this ideology stretches about not planning anything is something that OCD Westerners cannot do, but it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to imply some of these ideals to a moderate level. It could help our people to be more satisfied with their life and in the long run help resolve medical problems that are stressed induced.