floating

2007/05/23

here are some translated words from my faculty professor VVG (Vesna Vuk Godina), she's talking about mousse's experiance with some tribes. it's not dull :)

Auto suggestive death is caused by an individual’s belief that he or she will die. And death came only as a result of that belief: the individual wasn’t sick, didn’t do a suicide and nobody have harmed in a way that could cause his death.

The perfect example of this would be when breaking the taboo of stepping on someone’s shadow. There are some cultures which strongly prohibit stepping on other peoples’ shadows. Violation of that prohibition results in the death of the person who stepped on other person’s shadow. Natural death. Nobody kills this person nor does this person make a suicide. The person just dies without even being sick.

A person who lives in the culture where stepping on someone’s shadow results in death, is expected to live up until when he steps on someone else’s shadow. He himself expects that as well. Others expect that. But switch of expectations is triggered the moment he steps on someone’s shadow. At that moment that person and every member of his group expect he’s going to die. And in the end he does. But not because stepping on someone’s shadow would objectively be lethal. Westerners can walk on each other’s shadows and absolutely nothing happens. No, that person dies, because he expects to die and because others expect that too. Person’s physical processes respond on the expectances that he and people around him have. This is why westerner can step on someone’s shadow and nothing happens. And this is why person from a culture where that is taboo dies. Because he and people around him know that stepping on someone else’s shadow causes death.

but this is just me walking my dog, you step on ME and you don't get to die :P

posted by calamity @ 5/23/2007 08:44:00 pm

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