Culture from Cranium :: essays research papers fc

Culture from CraniumEliot BrownThroughout the history of anthropology it has been a habitual viewthat people be largely products of their culture, and not the other authority slightly. Yet culture is an exclusively human phenomenon. While it is truethat everyone lives in spite of appearance a cultural context, and that context accountsfor varying degrees of who that person is (indeed, there are those who saythat certain people are wholly products of their culture), the reverse is excessively true. Each person, then, has well-nigh degree of impact on the culturearound him or her. The current culture of this country, for example, washugely shaped by the intellects and ideals of those who founded it, notwithstanding ofthe original European settlers. Just as a person fanny be almost fullycreated by their culture, so can a culture result almost fully from onepersons intellect.There restrain been many cases of such things happening throughouthistory. Some have met with success, and many not. For the purposes of thisessay I have chosen to examine one case, which, considering its laconicdeviation from the cultural context from which it came, was surprisinglysuccessful. The Oneida Community, in Oneida, New York was a uniquereligious communist society in the mid-nineteenth century. The communitywas establish on the radical religious beliefs, and biblical interpretations ofJohn Humphrey Noyes.Noyes grew up in a well to do household in Vermont. He graduatedfrom Dartmouth College in 1830 with high honors. Up to that point he hadbeen cynically agnostic. only when in 1831 he attended a revival with his mother baksheesh by Charles Finney, the leader of a large religious movement in thenortheast. Deeply moved he decided to enter the ministry. Noyes attendedthe Andover theological Seminary and Yale Divinity School. It was at Yalethat he started developing his controversial views, which then preventedhim from being ordained. He decided that when one accepted Jesus th at theywere then completely without sin and had achieved a state of spiritualperfection. He also became convinced, as he wrote in a letter to a friend,that he was Gods factor on Earth. Returning to Vermont, Noyes assembled acore group of 32 followers, consisting of his family and some friends,calling themselves the Putney Association. In 1844 the group adoptedcommunism. They owned three houses, a store, a small chapel for collectiveworship, and ran two farms. Two eld later they began practicing thesystems of Mutaual Criticism and Male Continence. These practices lead tothe persecution of the group by the adjoin communities, culminating inthe arrest and indictment of Noyes.