Cosmic Creation Myths Across Cultures Essay Example for Free

Cosmic Creation Myths Across Cultures Essay The two creation myths selected to compare and contrast centers on the Norse culture of Iceland Vikings and the Genesis creation of the Hebrew origin of Christian culture. Both creation myths originate with a hollow abyss where anarchy or war cultivates. The Norse myth relates a struggle in the middle of the blistering realm of Muspell and the murky, icy realm of Niflheim inside the hollowness named ginnungagap and where nothing could cultivate. The Genesis struggle was involving God and nothing, seclusion, and the craving to generate something wonderful. There are exactly nine categorizations of creation myths and numerous utilize more than one notion. Genesis cosmogonies utilizes both the deus faber and ex nihilo ideas. The account frequently deemed the ex nihilo myth, implying out of nothing is the story in the first book of the Old Testament, Genesis, of Gods creation in six days by communicating into existence light and blackness, moon and sun, animals and plants, birds and fish, stars and earth, God then creates Adam in His image from the dust and inhales life into him and Eve was molded from one of Adams ribs, consequently joining deus faber (the maker-God) with ex nihilo motifs. The Nordic creation myths incline to merge accretion/conjunction, exudation, and sacrifice ideas. It introduces the combining of fire and ice in an arbitrary linking of components. When the tepid breath of Muspell encounters the chill of glacial Nieflheim, ice dissolves and the subsequent water droplets come to life, generating the wicked gigantic Ymir. As the titan slumbers, perspiration from his armpits produces the first man and woman. These added titans mature to loathe Ymir and the creation story goes on with the slaughter and disfigurement of the dreadful giant. The Norse culture consist what we call Vikings. They had a pantheon of 14 main gods and conceived the cosmos as separated into three levels: Asgard, Aesir, is the higher level and land of the main gods, fertility gods, and where light elves also existed. Midgard is the middle  level where men, giants, dwarves, and dark elves lived. Niflheim is the lower level, better known as the underworld, where the evil dead died a second time in the fortress city of Hel. Running through and ultimately reaching above heaven is Yggdrasil, the enormous ash tree that apparently existed before the beginning. The Genesis creation myth is comparable in that the world was shapeless also emptiness, and obscurity laid in the deep. God soul was touching above the top of the seawaters when, he generated the skies and the planet. The scriptural writers considered the universe as a horizontal round formed planet in the axis, an illicit world for the lifeless underneath, and paradise overhead. Underneath the planet stood the waters of chaos, the intergalactic ocean, and nest to mythological ogres conquered and killed by means of God. In Genesis, the earth was formless, empty, and dark, and Gods Spirit moved over the waters preparing to perform Gods creative Word (Fairchild, 2013). God initiated speaking his creation into existence. The first day, he generated luminosity and parted it from the blackness, calling sunlit day and obscurity night. The second day, God made the sky to detached the seawaters. The third day, he formed the waterless earth, called land, and congregated the seawaters, naming them seas. The Divinity as well formed flowers and plants on this day. God created the sun, moon, and the stars to give light to the earth and to govern and separate the day and the night on the fourth diurnal (Fairchild, 2013). These elements would also serve to establish days, seasons, and years. On the fifth day, he formed each existing organism of the oceans and of the skies, sanctifying them to flourish. Also formed the creatures to saturate the world on the sixth diurnal. Adam and Eve, believed to be the first man and woman, were also created in his reflection on this day to communicate. He blessed them and gave them every creature and the whole earth to rule over, care for, and cultivate (Fairchild, 2013). Finally, on the seventh diurnal, he completed his labor of conception and relaxed, consecration it and formulating it consecrated. The Norse story did not have one maker of good, but multiple elements and events that emerged from one evil giant in this creation myth. The cattle stroked off whole Alps of rime, gradually licking rime of other two additional existences, the god Buri and his spouse. They had a son named Bor, and his son was named Odin, who became the king of all  the gods (Distant Train, Inc., 2011). Ymir was malicious and wicked and when Odin along with the divinities may well no more endure Ymirs wicked deeds, they united to kill the giant. Ymir’s huge body formed the earth, his blood became the sea, his flesh became the land, his bones the mountains and his hair the trees (Distant Train, Inc., 2011). He and the additional deities shaped the heavens with his cranium, sustained up by four immense columns. He created the sun and moon from flashes from the blistering pits of Muspell and placed them in the sky. The ice began to melt in the new world of Ginnungagap from the illumination of the sun and moon and vegetation began to grow. The largest tree, called Yggdrasil, grew from the center of the world and became known as The Tree of Life. Its roots penetrated into the bottom of creation and its leaves reached the very top of the sky (Distant Train, Inc., 2011). To his satisfaction of the newborn earth, Odin baptized it Midgard, meaning The Middle Land. However, Midgard needed tending to while the gods ascend to Asgard. Odin discovered two collapsed trees, an elm and an ash, which Odin removed from the dirt and shaped the incipient male and female. Odin breathed life into the beings, gave them reason and feelings, hearing and sight (Distant Train, Inc., 2011). Similar to the Genesis story of Adam and Eve, Odin called the male Ask and the female Embla and from them, launched the whole hu mankind. In summary, the Genesis creation story identifies God as the writer of conception. In Genesis 1 we are presented with the beginning of a divine drama that can only be examined and understood from the standpoint of faith. How long did it take? How did it happen, exactly? (Fairchild, 2013). It is impossible to definitively answer these questions, but these inscrutabilities are not the emphasis of the conception account. The point, is for ethical and religious epiphany. Verse 26, God states, Let us make man in our image, in our likeness The story goes that a serpent tricked Eve into eating the fruit from the forbidden tree and she offered it to Adam and he also ate from it. As a result, Eve and Adam were expelled from the Garden of Eden, men will labor over the earth, women will experience excruciating pain bearing children, and all humans will die. Readers from Western cultures tend to rank â€Å"metaphysical or spiritual† cosmogonies like the account of Elohim-God speaking the world into existence in Genesis higher than â€Å"physical, natural, or elemental accounts of creation by  accretion, excretion, copulation, division, dismemberment, or parturition (Leonard McClure, 2004). If, however, we are self-conscious about our culture’s assumptions about what is â€Å"normal,† we see that at least as many cosmogonic myths have presented creation as part of a natural process as have conceived it as an exercise of divine and creative will. Ranking one kind of myth as lower or more primitive and our own myths as higher or more cultured derives from a cultural bias. To study myth effectively, we need to free ourselves as much as possible from the prejudices we inherit from our cultural surroundings. References Distant Train, Inc. (2011). Norse Creation. Retrieved from http://bigmyth.com/download/NORSE_CREATION.pdf Fairchild, M. (2013, January 4). The Creation Story Bible Story Summary. About.com Christianity. Retrieved from http://christianity.about.com/od/biblestorysummaries/p/ creationstory.htm Gill, N. S. (2012, April 13). Creation of the World Norse Mythology on the Creation of the World. About.com Ancient / Classical History. Retrieved from http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/creationmyths/a/11083199Norse.htm Ginzberg, L. (2012, April 13). Legends of the Jews, By Louis Ginzberg. Legends of the Jews. Retrieved from http://ancienthistory.about.com/library/bl/bl_text_jewslegends1a.htm Leonard, S., McClure, M. (2004). Myth Knowing: An introduction to world mythology. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. Shmoop Editorial Team. (November 11, 2008).The Myth of Norse Creation Myth. Retrieved June 20, 2014, from http://www.shmoop.com/norse-creation-myth/

Spanish Painters :: essays research papers

Spanish painter, the country's greatest baroque artist, who, with Francisco de Goya and El Greco, forms the great triumvirate of Spanish painting. Velà ¡zquez was born in Seville on June 6, 1599, the oldest of six children; both his parents were from the minor nobility. Between 1611 and 1617 the young Velà ¡zquez worked as an apprentice to Francisco Pacheco, a Sevillian Mannerist painter who became Velà ¡zquez's father-in-law. During his student years Velà ¡zquez absorbed the most popular contemporaneous styles of painting, derived, in part, from both Flemish and Italian realism. Many of his earliest paintings show a strong naturalist bias, as does The Meal, which may have been his first work as an independent master after passing the examination of the Guild of Saint Luke. This painting belongs to the first of three categories—the bodegà ³n, or kitchen piece, along with portraits and religious scenes—into which his youthful works, executed between about 1617 and 1623, may be placed. In his kitchen pieces, a few figures are combined with studied still-life objects, as in Water Seller of Seville. The masterly effects of light and shadow, as well as the direct observation of nature, make inevitable a comparison with the work of the Italian painter Caravaggio. Velà ¡zquez's religious paintings, images of simple piety, portray models drawn from the streets of Seville, as Pacheco states in his biography of Velà ¡zquez. In Adoration of the Magi, for example, the artist painted his own family in the guise of biblical figures, including a self-portra it as well. Velà ¡zquez was also well acquainted with members of the intellectual circles of Seville. Pacheco was the director of an informal humanist academy; at its meetings the young artist was introduced to such people as the great poet Luis de Gà ³ngora y Argote, whose portrait he executed in 1622. Such contact was important for Velà ¡zquez's later work on mythological and classical subjects. In 1622 Velà ¡zquez made his first trip to Madrid, to see the royal painting collections, but more likely in an unsuccessful search for a position as court painter. In 1623, however, he returned to the capital and, after executing a portrait of the king, was named official painter to Philip IV. The portrait was the first among many such sober, direct renditions of the king, the royal family, and members of the court. Indeed, throughout the later 1620s, most of his efforts were dedicated to portraiture. Mythological subjects would at times occupy his attention, as in Bacchus or The Drinkers.

Advertising and Society

Advertising and Society Introduction: Advertising is said to be like glue that holds cultures together. It allows us to share a common experience incorporated by brands, images, logos, and even silly jingles. We define who we are by what we buy and wear because we know that others judge us by what we buy and wear. And advertising influences those judgments. Today because of advertisements conditioning and trendsetting, judgments are made on what clothes people wear, what shampoo and kitchen cleaner they use, not on whom we really are.This leads to a certain degree of social discrimination and emotional insecurity especially in younger population. In advertising, socio-cultural dimensions came in 1920’s. Agencies and publicists no longer sought only to convey objective facts about the products but they also link products with a lifestyle, permeate them with glamour and prestige, and persuade consumers that purchasing an item could be, as historian Alan Brinkley describes it, â €Å"a personally fulfilling and enriching experience. †(Alan Brinkley, 1991; 648. ) Historical background:If we recall the history of advertising the first thing that came into our mind is the old papyrus from Thebes dating back about 3000 years ago. History of English society showed that the spread of information in an organized way began with the development of newspaper. Newspaper started carrying advertisement in mid 1600’s. The industrial revolution in 19th century resulted in great commercial growth and provided a great support to advertising. With the development of the technology after the Second World War many changes took place in advertising.As more and more advanced systems got introduced, they changed the whole scenario of the society. Although these developments in advertising are of great value but on the other hand they also generated huge criticism. The aim of advertising in society is to sell the goods in a particular kind of economy. It is because of advertising which is a major form of modern social communication that one can understand his society in new ways. Overview: In this chapter on advertising and society, the author aimed to examine ifferent critiques and key concepts related to advertising and its impact on society. To support his argument author used different theories and researches that supports or negates advertising’s impact in relation to society. The main approaches that the author discussed in the chapter are pluralistic positions, Neo Marxist positions and cultural critiques. According to author the pluralistic positions focused on the usefulness of consumptions and options available for the consumers and the economy.Neo-Marxist views argued that advertising flatters to deceive. It undermines use value into exchange value. Its representations incorporate the meanings of the dominant ideology. On the other hand cultural approach emphasized on the harmful effects of commodifications. To discuss about th e main critiques that he took in order to fulfill his objective the author examined studies by different researchers about these approaches. The first study mentioned was by Sinclair who saw the critiques in terms of an opposition between optimistic and pessimistic views.According to Optimistic view advertising is used as a tool for functioning of economy while pessimistic saw the advertising in relation to economy as a destruction of social and cultural values. To further support his argument two more important perspectives were discussed in the chapter i. e. , Capitalist pluralism and political economy Theory. Capitalist pluralism argued that advertising is an optimistic tool for providing information about goods and services where as Political economist regard advertising as working tool under the power of media institution or in other words media monopoly.These perspectives of capitalistic pluralism and political economy were further discussed by Doyle in 2002 who pointed out th at there exist a strong relationship between the advertising expenditure and economic wealth by arguing that although advertising contributes to economic growth it doesn’t mean that it also contributes to the well-being of the society. Then he discussed about the role of advertising in developing ideas about the imaginary world. To elaborate his point the author added the analysis by Cronic in 2000. who argued about the imagination of audience and their relationship and said that they cannot be discovered.Moreover he discussed the post modern and cultural critiques of advertising which were based on the modes of consumption. Then he put studies by Matterlart in 1991 and Kenway and Bullen in 2001 which emphasized on the domination of public space and consumption of advertising where as Jameson in 1991 and Baudrilland in 1988 argued about post-modern ways of criticizing advertising. They said that there is a lack of distinction between the real and imaginary world. The main cru x of their studies was that advertising creates hyper reality.In order to relate advertising with other different phenomenon’s he discussed about discourse, ideology, myths and representations. According to author there is an interrelationship between discourses, ideologies myths and representations. For discourses he took the example of car advertisement that how they used technology as a discourse in relation to different environments Moreover he added myths as false ideas about consciousness of ideology as in advertisements of beauty products. According to him advertising not only affects our consciousness but also alter our perceptions about the social world.Fantasy is also an important factor in advertising which is all about idealization and mythmaking. In view of author female representation is an important factor in advertising. To highlight he took the example discussed by Goldman and Papson in 1998 on women representation in advertisements of Nike. They argued that most of the advertising comprised of the representation of women as a sexual object or product. In Advertising stereotyping of genders are also found. At last author has put a light on the children advertisements when there is gendered representation.According to different studies particularly by Johnson and Young (2002) in this chapter argued that gender differentiations increased market targeting. Analysis: Ever since the dawn of advertising, many complaints and concerns have been spreading everywhere and cannot be controlled. Several questions arise in the minds of the people regarding the influence of advertising. For instance does advertising has have a strong impact on society? Does it obviously influence the millions of people? The information related to the birth and growth of the media, have provoked society to think about the consequences of new technology.The emergence of media has given us great power and knowledge even then we see its consequences in our lives and in wh ole society. However, many people feel that advertising has had great negative consequence. The present chapter which is on advertising and society provided in depth analysis on role of advertisements in relation to society. The literature provided in the chapter revolves around the various studies and approaches which linked with the different aspects of advertising and its consumption effects over society.Moreover we came to know about the changing historical perspective of the advertising. The main critiques regarding advertising and society which were included in whole section (Neo Marxist positions, pluralist positions and cultural critiques) formed the base for rest of the researchers who further worked on it. Although these positions were very authentic to describe his argument about pessimist and optimistic views. It would be more clarified if the author put more different perspectives like Modernization theory.Modernization theory is more related in the sense that it deals with mass media that plays a very important role in transforming of the societies. As advertising â€Å"contact with the media helped the process of transition from ‘ traditional’ to a ‘modernized’ state, characterizing the mass media as a mobility multiplier which enabled individuals to experience events in far off places forcing them to reassess their traditional way of life. Exposure to the media made traditional societies less bound by traditions and made them aspire to a new and modern way of life†. Daniel Lerner, 1958; 56) When ones discussed about the different perspectives regarding advertising and its impact on society one has to take into consideration gradual changes in its culture. This can be explained in a way that culture of advertising has switched from information to a more abstract way to communicate with consumers. Previously in 1970s more informative advertisements were shown to the consumers which helped them in making decisions by identifying the positives and the negatives of competitors and their products.Then in 1990s focused was on emotional advertisements and in 2000 with the emergence of internet advertising industry experienced a boom. With the internet traditional informative advertising got changed by encouraging interaction with consumers by clicking on various sites and links. Eventually these methods of advertising offered a new way for consumers to become more interactive in the process of marketing. This was the lacking point of author, he should have to mention about this changing shift in advertising in relation to society after discussing the main critiques.In his studies there was a lack of link between the pessimist and optimistic views. All of them were presented in such a perplexed way that one can’t comprehend what the author actually wanted to communicate. The major studies he took to support his argument depicted that advertising has got an adverse effects on our society as h e related the terms like monopoly, deceive, imagination and commodification and mentioned that advertising is playing key role in diminishing our social and cultural values etc.On the other hand some of the studies were showing advertising as a positive tool towards the information and education of the society as mentioned in the capitalistic pluralism that saw advertising as an information provider. Although the author has provided many good theories to explain what actually advertising is and what role it is playing in society but it failed to provide a strong link between advertising and norms of the society.To support this argument we can take the example from social communication in Advertising which provides a clear` debate on advertising and society† where a survey of the controversies on advertising. Here the authors viewed advertising as an influential form of social communication. Another important contribution that author should have mentioned in order to explain th e positive role of advertising in society is by â€Å"Leiss/Kline/ Jhally† who worked on role of social communication in advertising (1978), described the origin of consumer culture and how the shift from industrial to consumer took place.Moreover they clearly pointed out that advertising agencies played a vital role in modern advertising industry and advertising is the central institution for the market-industrial economy. One of the shortcomings of this literature was not to highlight media monopoly while discussing about political economy and the power of media institutions because the concept of media monopoly by Bagdikian’s played a very vital role in history even till now dominating the advertising.Critical researches play a very important role to study effects of advertising in relation to society as they address the social and cultural effects of communications and its role in propagating unfair social order. In the previous discussion author failed to mentione d the importance of persuasion of consumers regarding advertising in relation to society. Another missing point while discussing about the consumer behavior is related to the buying behavior because most of the advertisements aim to affect the purchasing decision of the consumer in the market.Moreover it is proven that advertising has become a powerful force in terms of persuading society to support the product, service, or idea. So, consumers tend to buy it to make them feel good and beautiful. Two most important contributions in critical researches are by Williamson’s Decoding Advertisements and Ideology in advertising (1986). They have examined the content and structure of advertisements for their distorted communications and ideological Impact. Employing of semiotics played an important role in examining how advertising persuade consumers.At one point author discussed discourses, myths, ideologies and representation. There he failed to mention about semiology and content analysis because these four are basically the derivation from semiotic and content. Because semiology is all abut the study and importance of language for the communication of message. To support this point a study was done on â€Å"The Theatre of Consumption† by Jhally in 1987, in which the researcher examined the structure and content of advertisement using semiotics and their social and cultural impact using Content Analysis.The conclusion drawn from study clearly showed that advertisers use different codes and strategies to appeal different audiences. The codes are beauty, female relations, romance and fraternity for both males and females. Both the studies on social communication and advertising and on codes by Jhally are very important studies that provide a very useful analysis of how advertising play a vital role in producing consumers and how the consumers reshaped themselves in the society.If author included such studies in his chapter, it would provide a strong arg ument regarding discourse, ideology, myths and representations. As far as discussion by author regarding gendered representation in advertisements is concerned he did a tremendous job by describing the huge effect which is related to a persons dissatisfaction of the body by stereotyping women and men, that if ladies wanted to be beautiful they have to show such qualities like fair color, long and beautiful hair, skin tone, etc. , and for men if they want to be handsome they have to hold the worked-out body, etc.Also, portrayal of women as sex objects in most of the commercials changes the perception of people on women as homemakers. Some major points that author should include in his literature are related to various advertising trends. Most of the important trends of advertising related to consumers need to be mentioned when one is discussing about economy, markets and their relationship to customers. As we know that advertising costs a lots of money and that money comes from the c onsumer. For example hidden costs, lying to customers and censorship etc.Almost all advertising companies bend and curve the truth for their personal benefit and for promotion and advertising of their product. Even the Companies exaggerate certain features of their products. One of the true purposes of advertising is to set trends that the customers will follow. One of the draw back of advertising is not to focus on censorship even the author didn’t mention any positive suggestions regarding this. Because element of censorship played a very important role in the inception and elimination of any phenomenon.Conclusion: Although the author has been successful in highlighting the changes in society caused by advertising but on the other hand his study was highly abstract and failed to provide deep insight into the actual phenomena of the society because most of the researches taken by author were not analyzed in detail. Moreover he didn’t mention any useful suggestions reg arding how a society can be organized with the meaningful use of advertising and reduction of the unnecessary exaggeration of the products.Finally, it is being concluded that advertising has got a positive as well as negative impacts over society. There is a need to focus on the balance that what should be necessary and what should be not. On the other hand advertisements can create contentment and discontentment simultaneously. The marketing of products and our society depend so highly on advertising that even its negative effects on society cannot offset its positive socio-economic impacts.

Learn How Separation of Powers Balances the Government

The term separation of powers originated with the Baron de Montesquieu, a writer from the 18th-century French enlightenment. However, the actual separation of powers amongst different branches of government can be traced to ancient Greece. The framers of the United States Constitution decided to base the American governmental system on this idea of three separate branches: executive, judicial, and legislative. The three branches are distinct and have checks and balances on each other. In this way, no one branch can gain absolute power or abuse the power they are given. In the United States, the executive branch is headed by the President and includes the bureaucracy. The legislative branch includes both houses of Congress: the Senate and the House of Representatives. The judicial branch consists of the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts. The Fears of the Framers One of the framers of the U.S. Constitution, Alexander Hamilton was the first American to write of the balances and checks that can be said to characterize the American system of separation of powers. It was James Madisons scheme that differentiated between the executive and legislative branches. By having the legislature divided into two chambers, Madison argued that they would harness political competition into a system that would organize, check, balance, and diffuse power. The framers endowed each branch with distinct dispositional, political, and institutional characteristics, and made them each answerable to different constituencies. The biggest fear of the framers was that the government would be overwhelmed by an imperious, domineering national legislature. The separation of the powers, thought the framers, was a system that would be a machine that would go of itself, and keep that from happening. Challenges to the Separation of Powers Oddly, the framers were wrong from the outset: the separation of powers has not led to a smoothly working government of the branches that compete with one another for power, but rather political alliances across the branches are confined to party lines that hinder the machine from running. Madison saw the president, courts, and Senate as bodies who would work together and fend off power grabs from the other branches. Instead, the division of the citizens, the courts, and the legislative bodies into political parties have pushed those parties in the U.S. government into a perpetual struggle to aggrandize their own power in all three branches. One great challenge to the separation of powers was under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who as part of the New Deal created administrative agencies to lead his various plans for recovery from the Great Depression. Under Roosevelts own control, the agencies wrote rules and effectively created their own court cases. That enabled the agency heads to select optimal enforcement to establish agency policy, and since they were created by the executive branch, that in turn greatly enhanced the power of the presidency. The checks and balances can be preserved, if people pay attention, by the rise and maintenance of a politically insulated civil service, and constraints by Congress and the Supreme Court on agency leaders. Sources Levinson DJ, and Pildes RH. 2006. Separation of Parties, Not Powers. Harvard Law Review 119(8):2311-2386.Michaels JD. 2015. An Enduring, Evolving Separation of Powers. Columbia Law Review 115(3):515-597.Nourse V. 1999. The Vertical Separation of Powers. Duke Law Journal 49(3):749-802.