Welcome to Cora's World, I thought I'd start off by explaining what I do and what this blog is for.
I am an anthropologist, though one in training. Anthropology can very generally be defined as the study of people. Anthropology is a profession and an area of academic study. I personally believe that it is much more than this and can be of use to all of us in our everyday lives. In these blogs I hope to explain what I mean.
What I am describing below is (in my humble opinion) the soul of anthropology, it gives a real feel for the subject and how any of us can relate to it:
I write as a novice, as one who is eager to learn more.
I’ve met people from a myriad of different places and backgrounds and have spent as much time as I can learning all I can about people.
People fascinate me; we display the greatest extremes we can imagine, of emotion, of inventiveness etc. We, people, or to put us as a whole, the human race have discovered a great deal about the physical workings of the universe, have categorised and studied the natural world and create incredible diversity and complexity with our societies.
When I say I write as a novice, an eager learner, I mean to say I write as a human being. Every person is different; we all have an unique set of parameters that make us who we are. Mix millions of unique individuals interacting with others, the circumstances of each interaction being inimitable and you get the diversity present within humanity.
We humans are all different from one another, we do however have things in common that are universal. The most obvious thing that we all have in common is that we are all people; we are all the same species. We are also so all mortal, there is only so much one can learn in a lifetime and as such are fallible, none of us are omnipotent!
So, we have our limitations, does this mean we can know nothing about the world around us and life in general as we cannot be absolutely sure?
I would say no, we do the best we can to come up with as holistic, rational opinions as we can using the information available to us to come to our conclusions.
The key thing is to acknowledge our fallibility, our humanity, and to accept that we may be wrong, We can act on our convictions but with the humility to look at other perspectives.
If we can analyse ourselves and our opinions the conclusions we can come to after having compared them to others are far more comprehensive and justifiable.
To understand our humanity, and in turn our fallibility, is the key to truly enlightened thinking.
