I haven’t been able to make a connection between their world and mine. Their world seems to be so far away from mine.
They all look the same; they eat the same, read the same, do the same. Are they even different people? The only way to preserve your world is to close it off from everything outside. Then you can continue in your eternal circle.
I know one thing: you can’t end something entirely. Influences will be there anyway; perhaps drop by drop, but drops are water too. Like water coming through a small hole in the dyke, drop by drop it fills the land with water and finally floods it untill there’s nothing left.
It’s a good thing that Hans Brinker put his finger in the dyke.
September 13th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
I agree totally with your thought or question if we are really that diffrent from them. I do not think so. When you look at it as a whole you can see that we are still secretive to other happenings in the world. Sometimes, we close our eyes to presevere the shiny world. We do not worry about everything as long as it not affects you. We have still in a way lots of ,more or less, little Folks who lives their own life together, allthough we are able to connect with everybody anywhere. So we are kind of still the same.
But why do you talk from “they “and “them”, and that their world seems so far away from yours?
Is it not also your world? Without “them” you would not have this world, they are a part of you and me and everybody. Its our past and because of that we can live our life how it is right now.
ManuelaE, mitchela4@hotmail.com
September 16th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
From your posting the question arising in my mind is: “Can we really understand and describe the folklore from other cultures?”. Cultural anthropologist often situate themselves in a different culture. They observe and study the behavior and traditions of the culture they surround themselves in. The anthropologists report their data by writing about the observations made during their stay in the new culture. This writing is referred to as ethnology. However, although this writing could be a good description of the folklore of that culture, we must not forget two aspects. First, the members of the culture may react (behave differently) to the outsider(anthropologist) that has suddenly come into the normally so closed culture. Secondly the perceptions of the anthropologist will also be tainted by the culture he/she comes from.
FundaJ funda_jelsma@hotmail.com
September 17th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
I guess I talk about them and they because talking about dutch folklore I don’t feel at all like it’s my history. This can have to do with the fact that I’m not entirely dutch, and certainly not raised as dutch, but also because I think a lot of people from our generation in Amsterdam do not feel connected to their country and their history. (I say Amsterdam because I’m not sure how this is in the rest of Holland.) I can only speculate about the reason but I’ve always felt the presence with me and with people around me. Maybe it’s a kind of arrogance that people from Amsterdam have, thinking al that matters is here, now and their own world. I know it’s that way for me!