I fully intended for this post to be super awesome and feature my first prezi presentation as a testament to the sweet changes brought by a new medium. As it turns out prezi is harder to work with than I had previously imagined, so it isn't something I can do in an hour of unfocused work. You'll get to see that in the next couple of days as I work in some focused time...
In the mean time I'll share a little of what we talked about today in class. First off for those of you that don't know most of the student population at Brigham Young University are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saint. (If you want to learn more about our church look here.)
Because of the background of most of our students Dr. Petersen decided to help us out with a little definition clarification.
Restoration:
In the mean time I'll share a little of what we talked about today in class. First off for those of you that don't know most of the student population at Brigham Young University are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saint. (If you want to learn more about our church look here.)
Because of the background of most of our students Dr. Petersen decided to help us out with a little definition clarification.
Restoration:
- LDS: In reference to the return of the true Gospel of Christ by Joseph Smith
- Everyone else: Restoring of crown to Charles 2 of England
Reformation
- LDS: Any effort to correct doctrine
- Everyone else: The Protestant Reformation popularly begun by Martin Luther
As she discussed these definitions I thought this was an interesting point to bring up. I can see now that if the discussion had continued we might have run into significant confusion on the part of some.
But now (12 hours later) I'm thinking about all the mediums we've talked about for transporting knowledge, and how despite each of them present in the current circumstances the overriding influence, in the case of these definitions at least, is folk knowledge.
We have Printed and Written Knowledge, which give us the "everyone else definitions", we also have Oral Knowledge from teachers and others giving us definitions, and yet in the end it is the cultural or Folk Knowledge that tells us our definitions.
Why do you think that is?
I think we associate a level of automatic credibility with those ideas that we just hear over and over as part of our culture and traditions.
ReplyDeleteSo you think that it is Folk Knowledge that has the most influence in our lives? Is that why many have the same beliefs as their parents? They simply never question it?
ReplyDeleteI don't know about you, but I don't usually just take something because everyone else believes it. I like to understand something first. Sometimes you do have to take things on faith (physical chemistry for example), but I think a lot of us like to have at least a small part of logic along with the belief of others. This being so, I think parents and those in authority do have a lot of power to sway people.
ReplyDeleteWell even with faith, children lean on their parents' testimonies before they develop their own. I think folk knowledge is such a huge influence because there is an innate trust that children have for their parents.
ReplyDeleteKimberly, I agree, mostly this subject comes back to how much people trust the authority of the knowledge, whether or not they verify it extensively. I also think that most people fall with Emily in that they at least want most of their world to make sense. What of those that don't? Do they not care, or are the too scared to question their world? How does that affect the rest of us?
ReplyDeleteWell there are some people who are scared to be wrong. I'm thinking mostly within the context of the Church; investigators are scared to gain a testimony because it would mean all they thought before was untrue. I know that for me it's frustrating to see people who know they know the truth but won't admit it to themselves.
ReplyDeleteOk, I can see that.
ReplyDelete